More Damming Evidence in India: Dams Increase Greenhouse Gas Emissions
by Kimberley D. Mok, Montreal, Canada on 07. 6.07
Here’s one more reason to question the environmental viability of dams: another study shows that India’s dams are significantly contributing to greenhouse gas emissions in the form of methane, a gas which is not measured in the overall statistics for carbon emissions.
Both carbon dioxide and methane are released from the decaying vegetation of spillways, reservoirs and turbines of hydropower dams, but methane is twenty-three times more formidable in trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
India has approximately 4,500 dams, the third largest number of dams after the US and China. According to the study done by the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil, these dams emit an amount of methane that is equivalent to 850 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
Government authorities deny however that methane discharge from dams are a factor, stating that regular procedure is to remove vegetation from the reservoirs.
Dams in India are a sensitive and complex issue – they supposedly provide much-needed irrigated water to its enormous agricultural sector – which generates around 22 percent of the national GDP and employs 70 percent of the workforce on one hand – yet cause massive environmental destruction on the other.
For this reason, there has been intense opposition to dam-building from environmentalists and ordinary citizens alike, as dam projects also displace tens of thousands of impoverished people, submerge huge tracts of valuable farmlands and forests, while also destabilizing fragile aquatic ecosystems in the process.
Dams historically have been a huge point of contention in India. Most recently, a hunger strike was initiated by thousands of people from numerous villages affected by the Indira Sagar and Omkareshwar dams along the Narmada River.
As a developing nation, India is not required under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce its emissions, but it is clear that India’s mounting fuel consumption – which contributes to around four percent of carbon emissions annually and is now growing between two to three percent a year – will speed it along towards the dubious honours of becoming a major polluter, with its dams heavily adding to that equation.
Via ::Planet Ark
See also ::The Guardian
Image from Nadir.org
Damn. :)
That doesn't sound right...
Dams cause stagnant water which in turn are breeding places for mosquitos and disease causing organisms. Even the people of Brazil as well as India have been fighting against further dam development in their areas because they fear the spread of dam related diseases.
Dams prevent silt deposit for farming and the pose great expense when it comes to their disposal at the end of their life cycle.
It would be much better to develop free hydro electric generation rather than to continue building more dams. Mistakes of the past must be corrected sooner or later and now is a good time to begin.
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another problem is that dams end up converting sequestered mercury into methyl mercury and releasing it into the environment. see: http://www.american.edu/TED/james.htm
Thts shattering....
but what surprises me is that US with lesser polulation seems to dominate in all areas of Green House Gas Emissions..does it mean that the people of US need to be held accountable for all this ???
More polluting gas gussling cars..More Dams... More supermart pollution... more urban space.. less use of public transit...
but we cant live without dams. unless they are work out a greener way of storing or converting water. its still the best we have.
so its about ever getting rid of them. the direction of this criticism has to be about how to make them greener. offsetting it is not good enough in the long run.
would this be the one place that logging would work? how do we get rid of methane thats out there? how does it end up at the bottom of the ocean? can we havest it?
Free current hydro for rivers should be developed to replace the building of more and more dams. We have to depend on dams for stored water energy but the more we turn to free hydro current devices, the more we will become less dependent upon dams for power.
Free hydro produces more power for the same volume of water flow in a river than if it is damed up; this has been proven. We look at dams as a steady source of power but they are wasteful in terms of actual energy efficiency as compared to free hydro. If free hydro could be developed in conjunction with wave and ocean current generated power, India could reduce dam requirements. Wave and free ocean current energy could be depended upon during times of drought and fewer dams would be needed.
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Before the Arkansas river was damned this area was prone to frequent and destructive flooding. This is true of many many areas. There is no way to remove the dams .
I am not saying that we must remove all dams immediately. What I am saying is that with the planned construction of thousands of dams in the next decade and the thousands of dams that will be ending their life cycles, we have to think ahead in terms of the next century. We know that dams are not a natural way to extract energy and that they have many harmful side effects. What we need to do is to gradually move to free hydro whenever this is possible and practical over the next few decades.
I am also saying that with the eventof ocean free hydro, the extraction of energy from this source would help produce energy during times of drought for which we presently depend upon for dams. Yes, there is a need for dams now but that is not the point. The point is that we have to find methods better than dams for hydro production and it is my belief that free hydro will do the job.
Flood control is a different issue and if the primary job of he dam is for this purpose, then I it should be kept in place. I presently cannot suggest a better method of flood control but there may be one, no doubt. Actually, though, without flooding, farm lands cannot be replenished so flooding does have some good effects.
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