Blog #8 Environmental Order in China to Prevent Building of Contested Dam

The city of Chongqing in China lies at the upper part of the Yangtze river. The city's officials had created a plan to build a dam in the upper Yangtze and turn it into a hydroelectric form of energy. This would have been the city's larges infrastructure achievement. However, environmentalists were not pleased with the idea. They claimed that the dam would destroy a protected area of river that had been designated to be an "ecology friendly counterpoint to the construction of the Three Gorges Dam." They were also angry that the dam would cause problems for the fish of the area. The river is home to many species of fish, including fish that are on the rare and endangered species list. These fish require access to fast moving water in order to survive, and thus building a dam would cause severe problems to their survival rates. They argued that building the dam in that area would invalidate the protection zones that had been put into place and people would implement even more environmentally devastating projects. Therefore, the project was shut down. The government of the city attempted to shrink the protected areas of the Yangtze in order to take down the obstacles keeping them from building the dam.

There are many governments who are more focused on building and developing and less focused on the environmental consequences of their actions. It is a great thing that we have environmental activist groups to keep the governmental projects from overdeveloping and taking over all of the nature that we have left. Without these activists we would lose many species of animals and pieces of beautiful land and nature. It is understandable that the government officials would want to advance their cities, but they must consider all of the consequences, instead of only the monetary effects to their cities.

Sara Idol
4/10/2015
4:18pm
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/11/world/asia/environmental-order-in-china-to-prevent-building-of-contested-dam.html