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larger than that of the runner-up, Itaipu belong to the Mekong River Commission on the Paraná River between Brazil and which China had refused to join during Paraguay. And concurrently with its dam the late 1980s. In the early 1990s all of megaprojects, China began to build the them expressed their concerns about world’s largest water-transfer schemes. planned Chinese dams on the Mekong’s The idea of south-north water-transfer upper course. project was first proposed under the So- China went ahead and completed first viet guidance during the 1950s, but actual the 1,500 mw Manwan project in 1996 and Finding Mutual work on the eastern diversion—the least then the Dachaoshan (1,350 mw) and difficult 1,130-kilometer long route that Gongguoqiao (750 mw) dams in, respec- follows the ancient Grand Canal—began tively, 2003 and 2008; Jinghong (1,750 Interests in Nature only in December 2002. In November mw) should come online in 2010. The gi- 2001, preparatory work on the much more ant Xiaowan (4,200 mw) and even larger difficult central route commenced. This Nuozhadu (5,850 mw) should be complet- by Vaclav Smil conduit, about 1,250 km long, would bring ed in 2013 and 2017. Filling of the first two 2 water from the enlarged Danjiangkou res- dams caused exceptionally low down- ervoir on the Han River in northern Hubei stream water levels and the filling of and from Sanxia via a large canal snaking Xiaowan reservoir, with the world’s tall- along the edges of Funiu and Taihang est dam (292 meters) would be even more uring the 1950s, Stalinist upper Huanghe in Gansu province) and Mountains all the way to Beijing’s Yuyu- demanding: although the Chinese water- planners (whose modest Danjiangkou on the Han River in Hubei antan Lake. sheds make-up only about 20% of Mekong slogan was “We order the province (900 mw) have worked more or The work on the central diversion was annual water flow, their contribution ris- D wind when to blow, the less as planned. Gezhouba, the first dam accelerated in the summer of 2009 so that es to 50% to 70% during the dry months. rain when to fall!”) wanted across the Yangzi, was started in 1970 and both canals would be supplying water to In the long run, after the entire series of to flip the direction of several voluminous finally completed in 1988. As Deng Xiaop- the north by 2014. The eventual annual ca- Chinese dams is finished, there are justifi- north-flowing rivers of Western Siberia ing’s reforms began to make China more pacity of the two routes should be close to able worries about the water flows down- (Irtysh, Ob, Yenisei) and use them to prosperous, water megaprojects made a 30 billion cubic meters. Comparatively, the stream, particularly in the watershed of change the Soviet Central Asia into an ir- strong return under a policy guided by Li diversion of the lower Colorado River to Cambodia’s Tonle Sap, the country’s larg- rigated communist paradise. Fortunately, Peng, a hydro engineer educated during California, Arizona and New Mexico has est source of fish. Stalin died and Khrushchev had other Stalin’s last years at Moscow University annual capacity of 9.3 billion cubic meters. It would not be exaggeration or nation- problems, but before 1960, the megapro- who also served as China’s premier in Indeed, China has technical knowledge alistic paranoia for India to think that the ject propensities of the Soviet experts 1987-88. His successors not only continued and the capital necessary to undertake next westward step in China’s megaproj- working in Mao’s China left a deep imprint but increased the pace and scope of the ef- these megaprojects, and the leadership ects, after damming and diverting the on China’s water engineers. Soviet experts fort; without any doubt, China by now has will ignore foreign concerns as well as Yangzi and damming the Mekong, is to helped plan a number of audacious water done more than any country to change the some surprisingly bold criticism by con- move into Tibet and start building dams projects but only one, the first dam across flow of its rivers and to dam so many of its cerned experts within China. on another of the world’s mightiest rivers, the Huanghe, or Yellow River, at San- major streams, and no other country has Not surprisingly, the projects have also the Brahmaputra. From its sources in menxia, was completed before their with- so many plans to keep on building them. engendered major concerns by China’s western Tibet, it flows some 1,800 km drawal. The dam turned out to be a major The Three Gorges Dam (Sanxia), the neighbors. As the megaprojects moved eastward at about 4.5 km above the sea disaster, and the rapid silting of the reser- world’s largest hydrostation, was complet- further southwest into Sichuan province, level until it makes a 180 degree hairpin voir was solved years later only by creating ed in 2006, and the aggregate generating concerns about damming the Mekong Riv- bend around the 7,782-meter Namchag- large outlets at the dam’s bottom and dras- capacity of its turbines will be about 60% er came first. Originating in China’s Qing- barwa, the tallest mountain of the eastern tically reducing its electricity-generating hai province, the 4,350 km river with an Tibet, and breaks in a series of enormous capacity. annual discharge of 475 cubic kilometres gorges through the easternmost spur of n Mr. Smil is a professor in the Faculty of En- Large hydro projects completed or be- vironment at the University of Manitoba, and drains a basin extending to six countries: the main Himalayan chain before it enters gun during Mao’s life were relatively small, author of 25 books on energy, the environment China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambo- Arunachal Pradesh in India; then it turns and the dams at Liujiaxia (1,160 mw on the and China. dia and Vietnam. The last four countries south on the borders of Assam and Bangla-

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desh and end its more than 2,000-km jour- meters of water every year north into the of the first dam to cut the Yarlung in cen- ernmost limit of its territory and it has not ney by emptying into the Bay of Bengal. Huanghe. This plan was promoted in the tral Tibet (at Lhokha in Shannan prefec- formally abandoned its claim to most of In 1956, the Austrian physicist Hans 1980s, the first official route survey was ture, about 150 km southeast of Lhasa) the Arunachal Pradesh, claims that extend Thirring suggested that by building a dam done in 1999. Over time this truly gargan- should start in 2009. At 510 mw, it will be almost to the northern bank of the west- just above the gorges and then tunneling tuan scheme received support from the a relatively small project but it will most flowing Brahmaputra and all the way to about 16 km under the Doshong Pass, the army and from many deputies of the Na- likely be followed by bigger dams down- the eastern border with Bhutan. But the river’s water could be diverted into a valley tional People’s Congress, and publicity stream closer to the great bend. After the most important factor that will affect wa- above Yortong where a series of dams was especially bolstered in 2005 with the decisions to go ahead with such highly ter supplies and water policies of the two could add to the total capacity of at least publication of a book entitled Save China controversial and much criticized projects states—the pace and the eventual severity 27 gw. In 1996, Richard Cathcart, the through Water from Tibet. as Sanxia and the south-north diversions of global warming—is beyond their con- American geographer, argued against a But the scheme has not received any it would be most imprudent to assert that trol, and still beyond anybody’s confident massive permanent dam in favor of a low formal official blessing. In November the world’s greatest canyon will never be- understanding. nylon-reinforced anchored rubber bladder 2006, Wang Shucheng, Minister of Water come a site of a Chinese megaproject. There is no doubt that the Himalayan that would create a Resources, criticized Indians have no doubt that that is ex- glaciers have been receding, some losing shallow reservoir; af- all proposals to divert actly what will happen and, naturally, they well over 10% of their volume during the terwards, virtually the It would not be the Yarlung waters are worried more about the oft-denied last three decades (at the same time, there entire river’s flow could exaggeration for India northward in order to massive water diversion than about a new is good evidence that precipitation in parts be diverted to a 42-km feed the third, west- hydrostation. In the Aug. 4, 2009 issue of of the Himalayas has been increasing). If tunnel with a fall of to think that China’s ernmost route of the the Daily Times, Brahma Chellaney of an accelerated glacier loss were to be com- more than 2.1 km where next westward step is massive south-north New Delhi’s Center for Policy Research bined with greater variability of precipita- a series of turbines water transfer, called wrote that “the issue now is not whether tion then, even if the annual precipitation could generate 240 to move into Tibet. such schemes “unnec- China will reroute the Brahmaputra, but total remained the same, seasonal water TWh of electricity a essary, infeasible and when. Once authorities complete the fea- shortages would worsen. If both the gla- year, nearly 2.5 times as much as Sanxia. unscientific” and said that the Chinese sibility studies and the diversion scheme cier and precipitation volumes were in a But building the world’s largest hydropro- government has no plans to build a dam begins, the project will be presented as a prolonged retreat, then both countries ject in the Yarlung Canyon is easier said on the Yarlung to divert water northward. fait accompli.” This is a case that combines would have to resort to extraordinary than done given the remoteness of the re- In May 2009, Mr. Wang, who by that time a deep-seated mutual distrust (albeit re- measures to secure their essential water gions, the extreme seismic nature of the had retired from the Ministry of Water peatedly papered-over during all those of- requirements. bend area (it lies where the giant tectonic Resources, repeated the assurances to an ficial photo-ops of the two premiers), Despite those often catastrophic pro- plates collide), as well as all the inevitable international water seminar in Beijing unsettled strategic matters and genuine jections of future wars over water, water consequences for the downstream water and, meanwhile, the government set up a worries about the adequacy of water sup- problems have actually been catalysts for flow to India. new national reservation in the Yarlung’s ply in two of continental Asia’s largest cooperation rather than promoters of vio- By 1995, another plan was consider by grand canyon. economies that may have been recent par- lence. Given the commonly inefficient use some in China: using nuclear explosives to India remains hesitant, and the latest agons of rapid economic growth but that of water in both China and India through excavate a 20-km canal cutting through news from Tibet will do nothing to ease are also both relying on increasingly pre- frequent subsidies and ridiculously low the mountain range north of the river in its concerns. In March 2009 Beijing de- carious water supplies. prices paid by farmers, who by far are the order to bring massive volumes of irriga- cided to invest 15 billion yuan (almost $2 The principal strategic complication is largest users of water, there is a great deal tion water north to the arid Gobi Desert. billion) for environmental protection in the unsettled state of Sino-Indian borders. of room for easing the strains. Still, the And during the 1990s yet another diver- Tibet as part of a grand ecological plan Though the Chinese army withdrew greatest uncertainty remains beyond our sion project began to attract attention, the that will run until 2030, and the chairman shortly after it took over most of the ken; we need to wait and see to what ex- plan for the westernmost route of the of the Tibetan regional government re- Arunachal Pradesh during the brief 1962 tent and how rapidly the future warmer south-north water transfer tapping into peated that no water will be diverted to Sino-Indian War, China still refuses to climate will undermine or strengthen the the four largest rivers in the westernmost other parts of China—but at the same time recognize the old British McMahon line, human propensity for cooperation—or for Tibet—Yarlung, Nu Jiang (Salween), Lan- he announced plans to build several big created in 1914 and unilaterally declared confrontation—between Asia’s most popu- cang Jiang and Jinsha Jiang—as well into hydropower electricity stations on the by India as its border in 1947, as the south- lous and deeply distrustful, neighbors. Yalong Jiang and Dadu He in Sichuan and Yarlung, Nu, Lancang and Jinsha rivers. channeling as much as 200 billion cubic And, without any delay, the construction

46 far eastern economic review m October 2009 Finding Mutual Interests in Nature 47