The risk of dam construction is far greater than cutting down forest trees
Nowadays, dams are referred to as running water inhibitors that move and find their way. Maybe a number of dams play their role well and with full effect, prevent the wastage of water for years and in addition to irrigating their downstream farmland, have also provided drinking water to millions of people. But experts believe that if a dam is not built with careful studies and scientific studies, not only will it not be profitable but also It wastes water and dries up the lands after it.
When it comes to commenting on dams, first of all the environmental issues arise that have two perspectives. The first view of this is that, Given the construction of 45,000 dams in the world today, global experience has shown that environmental issues and the dangers of large dams must be prioritized and carefully considered and do not overdo them by using these valuable experiences . But the second view just thinks of building and insists on the assumption that many developed countries have built dams in the past decades and are now against the construction of dams due to environmental issues.
A study of 1000 dams in a thousand different areas conducted by 500 ecologists showed that not a single dam was found for the sample, whose harms were less than its profit. Dams increase greenhouse gases and climate change. Dams increase the intensity of evaporation very high. One of the worst things that a dam does is evaporate water. When it rained in the past, it would go deep into the earth and be stored there. That’s why in low water and dry areas ,humans had access to fresh water. But today a significant amount of rainwater which is stored behind the dam evaporated and got lost.
It is very unreasonable to keep water on the ground in dry lands if we can keep water underground at the lowest cost. The cost of building a dam is very high and is provided from the national resources of each country. Nowadays, experts have come to the conclusion that the best way is to understand nature and its laws and design progress and development based on them, just like the ancients who, by understanding the conditions of nature, both exploited it and passed it onto the next generations in a healthy way. It is possible that based on the experience of the past generations, we would have a far better situation. Our ancestors designed many aqueducts in water-scarce lands. They brought billions of cubic meters of water to the surface and used it.
The dam is like morphine in the human body, which just makes us not notice the pain
Since 1980, no dams over 15 meters high have been built in the United States, and more than 1740 dams have been destroyed. Due to the construction of dams in some areas, the earth is sinking. Natural ecosystems are interconnected and will have irreparable consequences if we do not follow their law.
The work of building a dam is like sitting on a branch and cutting it. In many areas, the lives of humans and animals are in danger. From the point of view of passive defense in wars, one of the first things the enemy does is capture the dams and, by polluting the water, they threaten to destroy.
Disaster after disaster:
In today’s world, one of the causes of environmental degradation is dam construction, which can cause irreparable damage to forests, rivers, Mountains, watersheds, lakes, wetlands, plains and even seas. Even a group of university professors believe that dam construction is a desert activity. They say that each dam annually evaporates part of the country’s renewable water, which amounts to more than 5 billion cubic meters. Unfortunately, in different countries, dams cause serious damage or threat to aquatic ecosystems and Its associated habitats are in wetlands and lakes.
It was recently reported that a city’s ecosystem is being destroyed due to water shortages, and if the life of animals, plants and habitat is to be supported, the water they need must be supplied from a dam.
Many dams that have been built in recent years and have stored water behind them to evaporate can be examined and downstream they witnessed the extinction of many plant species and the extinction of animals and birds that live in a peaceful environment with humans.
The dams dried up wetlands that were home to a variety of migratory birds, and many people around them were engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry. Dams may have collected some water but killed a lot of life.
Dismantling the dams
Dams are being built one after another, and one after the other, their problems and damages to the environment are being visible. Again with concern and According to experts, today the dam industry is thriving only in developing countries, and this is in a situation where its market in developing countries has dismantled. The negative effects of dams on the physical, biological and social environment are so great that many developed countries from from the 70’s onwards, not only did they no longer build dams, but they also began to assemble and dismantle their dams at exorbitant prices to offset their negative effects on the environment and rehabilitate its rivers and groundwater aquifers.
When some are still building a dam and others are destroying the dam:
The negative effects and pressure of environmental groups in some countries of the world, such as the United States, caused the destruction of some dams; Removing the dam from the river Elwha in Washington is an example of this destruction, and the last dam on the river was removed in 2014. This movement is not limited to the United States, and today China has shut down its major dam projects.
It was between 1940 and 1950 that the dam-building fever spread throughout the world. In a short time, important rivers, especially in the United States, were blocked and water was stored. But it took time for humans to become aware of the catastrophes caused by these massive structures. During 60 years large reservoir dams have left the most destructive environmental effects on the people and the environment.
In one example of dam construction, 80% of the fish population in rivers and even migrating fish to river ecosystems were reduced.
In the year 2000, The Independent Global Commission on dams, which examined the benefits and harms of dams, concluded that the dams caused the removal of 40 Up to 80 million people, and this is of course another crime that has led to increased marginalization, social tensions and depression.
In the meantime, what is the situation in developing countries? In the last two decades, the construction of the dam has become a huge movement. Dams construction that some of them can be considered without scientific reason and without evaluating the effects, and of course there are those who consider dams to be the main cause of water stress. Dams that today, more than anything else, have become a place to store water for metropolitan areas and have lost their other main functions.
“One of the mistakes in dam construction is that we built the dams, but because of the lack of proper planning, we did not use them properly, because we lacked a realistic view,” said a dam management in a Middle Eastern country. Our dams are generally multi-purpose, both for drinking water supply, for electricity generation, for agricultural water supply and, of course, to prevent the occurrence of floods. This way we look at dams is wrong. Unfortunately, in the matter of dam construction, different countries were in a competitive course and intended to build a dam, so agriculture should allocate water and generate electricity from it, which only made the dam concrete and high. Although their attitude is benevolent, the result was the opposite.
The fact is that building a dam is not just a bad thing if we do not use it in the wrong place and do not do something without studying and evaluating. if we want to be realistic, many dams built in the country have not had favorable effects not only in terms of environment but also in terms of social and economic
Gotvand is one of these unstudied dams. Gotvand Dam in Iran has become a crisis by being in an inappropriate location. Dam water that was supposed to be life-giving, has become brine and now the life of the Khuzestan Plain, one of the largest fertile soils in Iran, is seriously threatened.
Many villagers had no choice but to leave their ancestral lands and be displaced as the soil become saline.
We have destroyed many upstream and downstream villages to build a dam, and because we didn’t have a good plan for the villagers whose lands have been destroyed many of them migrated to cities, and this is in addition to the damage it did to the agricultural production sector.
