Alberts, H. C., Alberts, R. M., Bloom, M. F., LaFlamme, A. D., & Teerikangas, S. (2004). The three Gorges Dam project from a SYSTEMS VIEWPOINT. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 21(6), 585-602. doi:10.1002/sres.604
Henry C. Alberts et al. formed a research team to travel up the Yangtze to Chongqing where the Three Gorges Dam located, interview project managers, and analyze the heated problems posed by the critics. In this article, the authors mainly discusse whether the engineers and managers of the Three Gorges Projects (TGP) used a systems approach from both environmental and social perspectives.
Firstly, the authors introduce functions the dam is supposed to perform: providing electrical power, improved navigation, water transfer, irrigation, and also effective flood control. At the same time, they note that performing the totality of its function not only means to provide benefits but also to ensure the related disaster posed by the dam will not occur. From the environmental standpoint, although the official TGP document states that sedimentation will not bring any serious adverse impacts, the authors still stress that a monitoring system needs to be developed.
Besides the functions and the technical challenges, the authors also discuss the human factor considerations and mental health effects. Because of the institutional context, as the authors mentioned, there is a tendency that major groups may disregard the needs of unorganized groups of affected residents. Therefore, the authors conclude that project managers and engineering do use a systems approach and aware of the potential problems, but it still needs time and more attention on the problems related to the distant resettlement.
This article is well structured but has several limitations. Firstly, it was written in 2004 when TGP was not operated at full capacity. Thus, the authors themselves’ statements involve many uncertainties and hold the opinion that only time can tell if the analysis and predictions they made are accurate or not. Also, the research group had limited experience and time in China. It is difficult for them to dig into the problems and conduct in-depth interviews to gather enough data.
Through this article, my attention about TGP is brought to focus on the human factor considerations and also the distant resettlement. It is worthwhile to investigate not only the environmental impacts but also the social impacts which seem partially to be ignored. The meaning of the infrastructure is to provide development, freedom, and opportunities to the country and the public. However, in constructing the TGP, there’s an apparent trade-off need to be balanced carefully between economics and the freedom of people who would be relocated.
Rouch, D. A. (2019) Role of Geographical Information Systems in Promoting Sustainable Agriculture, Working Paper No. 8, Clarendon Policy & Strategy Group, Melbourne, Australia.
This article was written in 2019 which is around ten years after the Three Gorges Project (TGP) was operated at full capacity. The author compares the environmental and social/economic outcomes with the original EIS report and then identifies the problems of the original EIS report and proposes recommendations for EIA improvement.
In terms of environmental impacts, the author lists twelve environmental factors and compares each value with the original EIS report. By contrast, the author finds out that the original EIS report underestimated seven factors which are water quality, major domestic fish species, reservoir bank stability, air temperature, precipitation, downstream riverbed erosion, and lake Poyang. For two social/economic factors, displacement and land carrying capacity, the author concludes that the original EIS report underestimated outcomes substantially. Also, the author evaluates project outcomes with three main dimensions of Sustainable Development Goals provided by the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Compared with that of the environmental and economic dimensions, poor performance is mainly observed in the social dimension.
From the three comparisons above, the author concludes that because of the difficulty for optimal EIA reports and monitoring, the selection of the site for TGP was clearly focused on topographical, geographical, and hydrological aspects. For the recommendation, He proposes that a modeling system that provides comparable global evidence can be used to support better integration of aims from both biophysical and socioeconomic aspects. In the comparison about Sustainable Development Goals relevant to the Three Gorges Project, the author uses more a qualitative analysis approach than a quantitative analysis approach. Without the support of relevant data, the readers can be easily confused by the words “poor outcomes”. For example, the author lists the description of Goal 5 which is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls and simply mark “-“ which means the poor outcomes to evaluate the TGP assessment. This kind of qualitative analysis can be interpreted as the TGP fails to address potential social impact at all which is a biased conclusion.
This article provides a clear comparison between outcomes and original evaluations that is helpful for me to recognize the difficulties the project managers faced and also lead me to think a deeper question that what impacts those poor performances in the social dimension have on the affected residents. Also, when compares this article with my first annotated bibliography that was written in 2003, it is interesting to find that some of the improvements and recommendations suggested by Henry C. Alberts et al. are indeed needed like focusing more on the human factor considerations.
Heming, L., & Rees, P. (2000). Population displacement in the Three GORGES Reservoir area of the Yangtze River, central china: RELOCATION policies and MIGRANT VIEWS. International Journal of Population Geography, 6(6), 439-462. doi:10.1002/1099-1220(200011/12)6:63.0.co;2-l
In this article, Heming et al. review the Three Gorges Project (TGP) relocation policies and affected residents’ feelings through questionnaire surveys and in-depth interviews. The author first identified several types and differences of involuntary resettlement, including displacement caused by developments related to the Three Gorges Project. It is said that because those development-induced displacees’ resettlement is for infrastructure instead of escaping persecutions or natural disasters, so given the choice, most people affected by dam projects would have preferred to remain in their place of origin(Parnwell, 1993).
Firstly, the author defines the total number of people that need to be resettled and three problems that can lead to estimation inaccurate—geological disasters caused by the formation of the TGP, neglect of unregistered urban residents, and increased number of resettlement caused by “false migration”. When reviewing the number of people that need to be resettled in the original official EIS document, authors find that it is unfair to only include people who are defined as the “directly affected population” without covering the “indirectly affected population”. All of these problems may lead to underestimation of the original data from the official EIA. After recognizing the total number, the authors then evaluate the three major approaches for resettlement which are settling in nearby areas, moving far away, and moving to urban enterprises. However, each approach has its own pros and cons.
In surveying what do migrants feel about their relocation, the authors employ a location selection-centered strategy which arranges the counties into geographical strata and bases on the displacement categories and different standards of living in each county. This strategy both ensures objectivity and also overcomes the difficulty in being accessible to specific respondents. Two groups, “migrants after relocation” and “migrants before relocation” are divided into surveys. The survey method used for interview, interviewer training, is adopted to reduce bias and improve representativeness. After analyzing the data, the authors conclude that most of the relocatees (around 86% of the relocatees) expressed their support for the TGP but also the concerns of their relocations. To be more specific, most affected residents are unwilling to move far away and willing to move into towns instead of cities. Also, sufficient compensation, the betterment of housing, and better education for the young are the three areas that the relocatees concern most. They also find that most of the people express they don’t expect that the displacement can create opportunities for them to escape from poverty. At the same time, even authors are trying to employ a scientific method in conducting surveys and interviews, they admit that respondents may hide their true feelings because they don’t want to leave the impression of standing on the opposite side of the government.
According to this article’s analysis, it may seem that the majority of migrants can’t be better off after their relocation. Thus, besides the environmental disaster caused by the formation of the dam, those affected residents also pay the cost for the TGP. In the book, Development as Freedom, written by Amartya Sen, the author evaluates the better off of a society based on every individuals’ development and freedom. By applying this opinion into an evaluation, it may be helpful to evaluate the performance of TGP by adding up all the influences of affected people no matter positive or negative.
Xu, X., Tan, Y., & Yang, G. (2013). Environmental impact assessments of the Three Gorges project in CHINA: Issues and interventions. Earth-Science Reviews, 124, 115-125. doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2013.05.007
In this article, Xu et al. compare the actual outcomes of the performance of the Three Gorges Project (TGP) with the initial estimations made by the official EIS report to recognize the potential issue and review interventions being taken. They focus mainly on five crucial environmental outcomes.
Firstly, the authors review the reasons and improvements in the increased number of resettlers. What the third annotated bibliography doesn’t expect is that the higher growth rate and lower human carrying capacity than the EIS report assumed originally can also contribute to the underestimation. To address this problem, there are two adjustments to the resettlement policy are applied. Secondly, decreasing water quality and increasing severity of eutrophication emerged since 2003. By recognizing the reasons for this problem which are extensive industrial expansion, rapid urbanization, and increasing living standards, the authors state that the Chinese government budgeted 22.8 billion yuan to improve the water quality and improvement is seen. Thirdly, decreasing reservoir sedimentation is one of the reasons that exacerbates the downstream riverbed erosion which can be expected to improve because many pieces of research and surveys are conducted. Fourthly, in response to the pattern of reservoir-induced seismicity which is high frequency and low intensity, geological hazard monitoring and the alerting system were established and additional investment was budgeted. Fifthly, implementation of several ecological projects, the practice of transforming sloping cropland to terraced land, and utilization of new agricultural technics help reduce soil erosion.
The author concludes that even though the estimation of the official EIS report is not entirely accurate, it still provides an overall trend for potential environmental impacts of the TGP. Also, the recommendation of improvements which are to evaluate cumulative impacts and also conduct long-term environmental monitoring systems are made.
According to the analysis, I find out many of the problems evaluated here is not only caused by the formation of the dam but also many other factors that already exist. Thus, when analyzing the issue of relocation, it may help to take other factors which may indirectly associate with the TPG into account, such as the original human capacity.
When talks about the way forwards of environmental impact assessment(EIA) for TGP, the articles all discuss the importance of using cutting-edge technology, geospatial technology. However, none of the articles above go deeper into how to apply this technology to the EIA process and how this technology can predict the future more precisely. This technology is important to research carefully in the next assignment is because the development of technology is an inevitable means to maximize the benefits for the public, especially for those who have to resettle in another place again and again as a result of unexpected geological hazards that didn’t be predicted in the original EIA process.