Mega Dams and their role in Climate Change

It was the book by Peter Tomkins and Christopher Bird,  "Secrets of the Soil", which alerted me.

The Aswan Dam was built -    and soon after, Lake Chad dried up,
 Africa has been in drought and famine ever since then.

It is quite a story.  It is very important.

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Chapter 14:-

Topsoils gone----------may require another ice age to grind more rock----------------evidence points to end of interglacial age coming soon----------------cooling—deserts-------planet’s been cooling the last 600 years--------Sahara became desert 4500 years ago------incr co2---------------incr cold at poles-incr snow and ice at poles-----incr pressure on earth----bulge,  volcanoes, earthquakes------------

Aswan Dam----cut off Nile Delta----no more silt----Mediterranean Sea began to die, (no plankton)------incr co2 from Europe usually absorbed by Mediterranean Sponge--------------over Sahara---huge dust cloud------------------Sahara Chimney---no longer worked to drive hot air up ,  cool, to rain over Congo etc.—drying up----------more forests burnt----------1982 Lake Chad OK;  1985 empty--------cloud 1984--  over Atlantic-----Mexico---hurricanes---Hawaiian Islands----dust traps heat,  cold air advances unimpeded----colder weather---surging glaciers----10,000 sq miles of dust (NASA photo)—

------------28 miillion acres rainforest cut last year + burning + 30 billion tons co2----dust in troposphere 8 to 10 miles above earth----------trouble if in….below…stratosphere. 

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Of most concern is the Giant 3 Gorges Dam on the Yellow River in China.  See http://www.abovetopsecret.com  for info.  If even a crack develops in this dam then the Earth could wobble on its axis.

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How about the Mekong River and the Amazon River!?

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The US has chosen to dismantle some dam(s) on the Colorado River
 and more are on the way to Release..

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Downstream of a mega dam one sees a mighty river become a piddle.
eg our Snowy River is just a poor waterway,  at towns downstream
 The arteries of Mother Earth are clogged.
More is the pity because one day solar will be king,
possibly even torus plasma energy will provide energy.

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Here in NSW a new dam is being proposed for Canowindra.  Here is a press clipping from the Sydney Morning Herald (sorry, I did not date it).   There are beautiful limestone caves on a private property and they are due to be flooded if the dam gets built.  I google searched it,  and there is info,  which I shall copy and paste.
Can anybody tell me if the dam is built in limestone country---will the limestone  all dissolve  ad infinitum.....?....forever......
We already have a huge dam nearby,  Wyangla Dam, near Cowra.

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  see http.www.theatlantic.com/urifriedmanapr 30 2014
for images.

The Woman Who Breaks Mega-Dams

How to stop 7,200 megawatts of power with the force of law.

URI FRIEDMANAPR 30 2014, 7:00 AM ET

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Ruth Buendía standing in a part of the Ene River Valley that would have been dammed by the Pakitzapango project. (Goldman Environmental Prize)

Ruth Buendía Mestoquiari has built her career, and staked the fate of her people, on the law.

But she doesn't have a law degree. In fact, she didn't even start elementary school until she was a teenager and didn't finish high school until age 25. While her peers went to class, she spent her childhood in the 1980s and 90s shuttling between her native village of Cutivireni, the town of Satipo, and the city of Lima, as Peru's two-decade civil war devastated her community and claimed her father, who was killed in the violence when Buendía was only 12.

"Just as they do to us with legal documents we are going to do to them."

What Buendía does have is five children, all 18 and younger, and a "wonderful husband." She has the distinction of being the first female president ofCARE, an organization representing roughly 10,000 indigenous Asháninka who live along the banks of the Ene River in the Peruvian Amazon. And she has a knack for blocking massive hydroelectric dams, having thwarted not one but two planned projects that she believed would displace the Asháninka and destroy the ancestral lands they depend on for their livelihoods. It's a threat she characterizes as "economic terrorism," in an allusion to the armed terrorism she experienced during the civil war.

Through it all, she's managed to redeem what we've come to consider something of a dark art: the lawsuit.

The 37-year-old, who received a Goldman Environmental Prize this week for her efforts, has employed several tactics in her duels with the dams, which were first proposed as part of an energy agreement between Peru and Brazil in 2010. She's marshaled technology, using a laptop and computer simulation to show constituents how the dams would flood the Ene River Valley. She's courted media attention, established international partnerships, and mobilized her people in regional assemblies.

But above all, she's insisted, again and again, that she has the law on her side—specifically an International Labor Organization treaty that Peru ratified in 1994 and national legislation that the country passed in 2011. Both require the government to consult with indigenous communities before launching development projects—be they infrastructure initiatives or mining concessions—that will affect them. The concept is known as "prior consultation."

Buendía's primary argument isn't that the dams are illegal per se, but rather that Peruvian authorities must first secure her people's consent about how the projects should proceed—if, that is, there are grounds to proceed in the first place. By filing lawsuits in Peruvian courts with the help of legal advisors and making her case to bodies like the D.C.-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Buendía has pressured Peruvian officials and Brazilian companies to halt the construction of the Pakitzapango and Tambo-40 dams—at least for now.

The Ene River, where Ruth Buendía and the Asháninka live, is in the center-left of the map, just east of Lima, Peru. (Wikimedia Commons)

In prioritizing legal strategies over others, Buendía's key insight is to fight fire with fire. After all, the proposed dams are a product of a compact between governments—a 50-year energy agreement that Peru and Brazil struck in 2010. The plan was for Brazilian corporations to dam rivers in the Amazon rainforest in Peru and produce up to 7,200 megawatts of hydropower.

Peru's leaders trumpeted the numerous benefits the dams would bring: Brazilian companies would be investing heavily in one of the country's few energy sources—its rivers—and leveraging a renewable energy source at that. The projects would create thousands of jobs for Peruvians and bring affordable energy to rural areas. But under the deal, most of the power generated would have been exported to Brazil. And the Asháninka, along with several studies by conservation groups, have warned of the grave environmental and social impacts of the plants. The dams, for instance, could flood the surrounding jungle, submerging arable land, threatening water quality, endangering the forest's biodiversity and the rivers' fish populations, and forcing Asháninka to migrate.

"They think we're going to break windows and protest like in Conga, but we aren't,” Buendía told The New York Times in 2012, in reference to fierce demonstrations in northern Peru against a gold-mine project. "Just as they do to us with legal documents we are going to do to them."

International treaties and national laws have granted the Asháninka rights, she reasons. Now it's up to the Asháninka to apply the law.

So far, Buendía has had tremendous success—especially considering that she and her scrappy organization (CARE had no office, and one typewriter, when she took the helm in 2005) have bested governments and giant multinational companies with a lot of money on the line.

But her approach has its drawbacks as well. To begin with, national and international legal frameworks don't always accommodate indigenous people's expansive definition of their territory, which perhaps explains why Buendía is still pressing the Peruvian government to establish land rights for all the Asháninka communities she represents. CARE's 2015 strategic plan describes the land in terms that are as much spiritual as economic: "The Asháninka of the River Ene as a cultural group have their own forms of defining their things, so the word Territory is alive and consists of a whole in its integrity, it helps us live or dwell, feed ourselves, heal ourselves, make our homes, and within it we are accustomed to leading a quiet life without suffering."

When I spoke with Buendía, she didn't sound like a woman who had faced off with two mega-dams and won.

The legal process is also byzantine, fitful, and protracted. When I spoke with Buendía by phone earlier this month, she didn't sound like a woman who had faced off with two mega-dams and won. She sounded like a woman who had faced off with two mega-dams and made it to the next court hearing, with the construction of the dams an ever-present prospect.

"We are still waiting, we are still waiting," she told me, in reference to her habeas data lawsuit for information on the Pakitzapango project (a Peruvian judge ruled that Peru's Ministry of Energy and Mines should hand over corporate documents associated with the planned dam to the Asháninka, but the ministry has yet to comply with the order).

The ministry continues to believe in the economic potential of the dams but simply hasn't found new companies to finance and build them, she explained, adding, "We are staying alert."

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Bravo!
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Heaps more Stories:-

Japanese First Nation Ainu Man  Kayano Shigeru became a politician to save the Saru River in Hokkaido .  The dam has been built to allow factories nearby but a traditional Aimu village was submerged---it seems long ago I heard this story.  Mr L\Kayano has retired from politics saying that the young people must carry on the struggle....

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Here in Australia,  First Nations man Noel Pearson, a lawyer,  has lost the will to save the last pristine Rivers in Cape York  ---in the Lockhardt.....(I must search for the text of references)

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A great success story is from former now  retired Greens Senator Dr Bob Brown,  regarding the Saveing of the Franklin River in Tasmania,  long ago now.  
 People had not been able to save the pink sandy beaches of Lake Pedder from being flooded to make way for hydro electric schemes -  in the 1970s..  
Dr Brown is a great shining example of humanity in gentle Action.  Bravo!  His new book is a fabulous Read!

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One guesses this Story is to BE CONTINUED.

Yes!  22/6/2019
Please see post More on Mega Dams 6/13/2015 with p.s. written today.

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