Water is released below the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. Photograph by Bill Hatcher, National Geographic
“The world’s dams have allowed cities to sprout in dry lands—but at a steep cost to hundreds of millions of already impoverished people, according to a new report.”
‘Lead author Brian Richter, co-director of The Nature Conservancy’s Global Freshwater Program, knew from previous estimates that 40 to 80 million people have been directly displaced over the past decade by dam and reservoir construction.”
“But he wanted to know how many people living farther downstream had been harmed.”
“Richter and his coauthors used published studies, population estimates and geographic information system (GIS) data to take a look.”
““Our conservative estimate of 472 million suggests that the number of people . . . exceeds by six to twelve times the number directly displaced by these structures,” the authors write.”
“Those affected include downstream fishermen and farmers who have had their lives and livelihoods altered or even destroyed by dams, many of them poor people who may find it hard to adapt. For example, when the Maga Dam and a water diversion scheme went in on Cameroon’s Logone River in 1979, combined hits to floodplain agriculture, fisheries, and other downstream attributes reduced the regional economy by $2.4 million per year, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)”
This story is part of a special series that explores the global water crisis. For more, visit National Geographic’s Freshwater website
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