UKC

i can't believe this hasn't generated more attention

http://www.sierrarios.org/Peru/SaveRioMaranon.html

the building of wind turbines in the UK causes significant debate, and there are legitimate concerns that areas of important wilderness are now being affected

but this appears to be an ecological catastrophe in the making. the maranon is the main source of the amazon, and appears from reading this and other information to be one of the most spectacular rivers in the world. it also appears to be ecologically vital, delivering nutrients in the form of silt to the rainforest of the amazon basin, and acting as a breeding ground for many of the river's fish species. the proposed dams are reported to be hugely unpopular with local people, who will be massively disrupted by it

this appears to be on a par with damming the grand canyon, or yosemite valley. if they were at the same time as being among of the natural wonders of the world, also the home for tens of thousands of people.

yes, peru needs to deal with the need to increase energy production to meet demands, but there must be other ways that could be achieved without the destruction that this would lead to. there are surely some natural features of world significance that need protection, and this must be one of them

yet i cant see any objections other than this website. not sure what posting here will achieve other than letting people know about it. and what else can i do? not encouraged to contact my MP after being flat out ignored over Gaza. contact Greenpeace? they dont seem to have anything about it on their website.

thoughts and comments welcome, especially about what i could actually do...

best wishes
gregor

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

Yosemite and The Grand Canyon have dams.

In reply to Philip:

yosemite valley doesnt- and the damming of hetch hetchy was one of the key stimuli to the development of the conservation movement in the US

and the colorado may be dammed, but not in the grand canyon- teddy roosevelt's intervention helped prevent a proposal for that going forward

the glen canyon dam on the colorado is widely regarded as a problem now- lake powell is more than half empty, and has left a massive bathtub scar all around its shore where the previous high water mark was. add the destruction of native american sites, environmental damage, and possibility that climate change is going to empty it anyway, and there is debate over whether to pull the plug on it

In reply to


Care to put forward any suggestions that don't involve the use of finite fuels? It's all very well being opposed to things but it needs to be tempered by realism. The need for electricity isn't going to disappear - even if we want it to - so we need to find solutions. I don't know the details of this project but using hydro power is, to me, infinitely preferable to building gas or coal fired power stations.

In reply to Edradour:
have a look at the details then. the down sides seem to be pretty serious, including the likely forced removal of entire communities of indigenous peoples who have lived there since before peru existed; and the removal of the source of nutrients to the amazon basin- as its not just the maranon, there are dams proposed for all the major headwaters of the amazon

i agree its a difficult one; but are there not some natural treasures that should be protected, being of world significance? or is there nothing which can be spared in the quest for development? peru has extensive deserts near to the lima, close to the equator, where most of the population live. seems like somewhere solar power may have some viability as an energy source.

two comments, both critical of objecting to the proposal. somewhat surprising for a climbing website, but there you go...

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

It sounds like it's one of the natural wonders of the world, as well as being important ecologically.

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

Rightly or wrongly, I think you'd better get used to this. Developing countries want power to help them to develop and they are going to generate it in the best (ie cheapest) way they can. If they can do it by making use of an internal natural resource, a huge river, rather than buying in fuel at exorbitant prices and putting themselves at the mercy of foreign producers and rapacious energy markets then they will.
Somehow I doubt the Peruvian govt will be unduly bothered about downstream silt or displaced Indian tribes in the jungle and will be even less bothered by the eco-concerns and complaints of Europeans who have been burning fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow for the last couple of centuries.

In reply to Timmd:

yes. i accept there will be damming; there has to be development. but of all the amazon headwaters, this seems to be the finest, and if one is to be spared, then surely it should be this one.

and if *all* the amazon's headwaters are to be turned into extended reservoirs, what a depressing outcome that would be.

In reply to Wiley Coyote:

i agree, to a point

but i'm not suggesting there should be no dams. there are several other major headwaters proposed for damming (160 dams in all), and in the end, they may be 'fair game'.

and yes, there is hypocrisy in our position, given the energy we use per head in the west. and the peruvian government is likely to be limited in the attention it pays. but you are surely not arguing that pressure from environmental organisations has no effect at all?

we've had phases of untrammelled environmental exploitation in the west in the past, but as time passed, an acceptance of the importance of protecting wild land grew and certain key landscapes have been preserved. the national park movement is not a purely western phenomenon; in south america, chile and argentina both have highly developed systems of protected land (though damming rivers outside of that is an issue in chile- see the futaleufu and patagonia sin represas)

the maranon looks like could be a massive source of revenue if properly developed as a national park (if developed is the right word), and sparing one river from the dozens available seems a reasonable position to take

cheers
gregor

In reply to Wiley Coyote:

That other people have been doing something could be used to justify lots of things which would be better not being done, though.

What's in my mind is that technology is always progressing, and that by the time this is completed, if it does become completed, there could be a less disruptive alternative which could provide energy.

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

Donate to one of the groups researching small fusion reactors, perhaps EMC2, Tri-Alpha or General Fusion.

Or seek to pass an international law that says the rights of foreign types in far away lands to the first world infrastructure we here enjoy should be sacrificed to keep something most of us will never see in a state of wild purity that we here lost from our countryside - to buy the world we enjoy - half a millennia ago. Because you're more important than them!

In reply to Timmd:


True but anyone in a rich high energy-consuming country like the UK is not going to get much of a hearing telling less well off countries not to try to emulate our lifestyle.


Also true but a govt's not going to put its energy programme on hold on the off-chance that something better may turn up eventually. We never have. They want the goodies we enjoy now, not in some unspecified time years down the line.

(In answer to Gregor) I agree a national park could produyce tourist income but I suspect it would be a fraction of the GDP that would be generated by huge hydro schemes. Could be wrong on that - I'm no engineer or economist

In reply to wintertree:
A way of helping to conserve the rainforests is being developed, which is to place a financial value on it, which is then paid to the relevant countries, which is money that can be spent on development of a kind which doesn't have cutting down the rainforests involved.

I don't suppose it's impossible that something similar could be arranged in connection with this river in the long term?

In reply to wintertree:

I normally rate your contributions wintertree but that seemed needlessly sarcastic

Did you actually read the article in the link, or what I posted

I am not saying peru should be frozen at its current stage of development for the benefit of some rich westerners who like the idea of wild land. Ive spent 2 months in peru, and seen first hand the development problems the country faces.

But its not a choice between the status quo and exploiting every last resource until its gone. We didnt do that, and no developed country has.

The concept that there are certain areas worthy of preservation is over 100 years old, and not confined to rich countries. I am currently looking at a poster on my wall showing 32 national parks in peru's neighbour, chile.

There are over 100 dams planned on the headwaters of the amazon. Is it really western cultural imperialism to suggest that a single river, out if the dozens scheduled for damming, be left in its wild state?

Especially when the people that will be most affected by it, those that actually live on its banks, appear to be very strongly against it?

Best wishes

Gregor

But that's exactly what we are doing - exploiting oil gas and coal until they are all gone. It's currently what every industrialised country is doing. No renewables program yet will stop us fully depleting these resources. Unlike damming a river, our resource usage is screwing the entire planet.

Our sustainable energy policy is to burn gas until it's all gone and then worry about it.


It's not imperialism but unless someone cracks nuclear fusion its increasingly narrow minded, not to mention hypocritical given our ever rising carbon footprint. Better to suggest that the dam is sympathetic and maintains a traditional flow level so far as possible - after all, dams for power have to let the water through...


Who will be most affected by not having enough electricity, or by the legacy waste of fossil fuel power generation needed instead? The displacement or people for civic works is not exactly a new problem. If a state does this people should be treated fairly. There are villages under dams the world over.

Mind you there's San Francisco with it's cheap Eco friendly hydro power and the green movement is inching closer to having Hetch Hetchy drained.

In reply to wintertree:

i agree that reducing the use of fossil fuels and resulting CO2 emissions is one of the biggest challenges we face as a species, and currently we are not being successful in developing solutions

i disagree that this means there can be no limits on the development of renewables, no matter what the consequences for displacement of established populations, damage to globally critical downstream ecosystems, and loss of internationally significant wild land.

what is being proposed is not just a dam, or a few dams; it is transforming all the headwaters of the greatest river system on the planet to a series of reservoirs along their whole length.

the US faced similar choices in the early years of the last century, and a balance was struck; there was development, and there were dams created, but some rivers, and portions of rivers, were spared. so the colorado has the hoover and glen canyon dams, but still has free running sections through the grand canyon, but also upstream in canyonlands national park, and the areas around that in utah and colorado. a conscious decision was made to sacrifice possible development in favour of retaining world class wild land for future generations. this decision was not made by the global superpower the US has become, but when it was very much still developing, and the decision was stuck to through challenges like the great depression

of course there will need to be development, and dams. but leaving one of the many rivers that form the amazon free running would at least preserve something for future generations to see, in the way that other countries have.

and the displacement issue is particularly acute in peru when the people being displaced are the original inhabitants, and the people with the power to displace them are part of a power structure left over from the colonial era, in conjuction with foreign multinationals. the future for the tribes that will be moved would be pretty bleak, and i think they will worry less about the long term consequences of climate change and more about joining the millions living in shanty towns around Lima trying to eke out an existence,

best wishes
gregor

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:


Yes, but the decision was made to release vast quantities of pollutants and CO2 instead, so that preserved wild land comes at the cost of perhaps 200,000 deaths a year in the USA (more than 3,000,000/year worldwide) from air pollution and untold future effects of a century of CO2 release into the atmosphere. Will the decision stick through the ever rising costs of oil? Is the wild land saved by not damming it all enough to outweigh the far wider ranging effects of a century of fossil fuels? Certainly the destruction and displacement is more localised and more total, but it's the net sum that matters?

We complain about the destruction of wild land from the UK, where there is no wild land, and almost every piece is heavily shaped by 1,000 years of taming and industrialisation to our purposes.

I'm not a fan of big hydro schemes, or the environmental consequences, or the willy nilly destruction of habitat and living space they bring, but what else are we going to do world wide as the oil runs out? The sooner someone cracks fusion, the better, as the energy demands of the people are not going away.

In reply to wintertree:
really? 3m deaths annually because previous generations didn't 'max out' on exploiting hydro power in the developed world?

surely not. i'd have thought the incremental difference between the total global deaths annually attributed to climate change and pollution from fossil fuel burning, and the total had some high profile hydro schemes which were cancelled in order to protect key wild land gone ahead, would be hard to measure, but would be much much less than that.

and even then it is only one part of the equation- the amazon rain forest is one of the biggest carbon sinks on the planet. the annual flooding inundates an area the size of the UK and allows nutrients to be delivered to the forest. without that, there may be serious damage to the integrity of the forest, and loss of its ability to act to offset CO2 from fossil fuels, which as you rightly point out, look like they will be exploited to the last drop irrespective of the consequences

the blanket damming of the amazon is far from a consequence free alternative to burning fossil fuels; it is likely just to swap one set of potentially catastrophic consequences for another, with more obvious immediate devastation to the locations of the damming.

in the end you are right; unless fusion saves us it is hard to see how energy demands of future generations can be met, irrespective of how many dams are built.

but humans don't operate on a purely abstract cost/benefit analysis of the value of energy policies. wild land is important to the human psyche, and you are too dismissive of the importance of the UK's wild land to our wellbeing. nor is this a purely western phenomenon; having spoken to chileans, peruvians and argentinians, many are aware of the global importance of their landscapes, and justifiably proud of them. other nations find spiritual significance in their wild areas. these landscapes provide value, inspiration, and meaning to people.

so in the meantime, while we hope for fusion to save our bacon, preserving certain iconic landscapes and features, to inspire future generations, while accepting we have to develop others, looks like a balanced way forward. and in any analysis of what counts as a globally important landscape worthy of protection, the main source of the greatest river in the world, as it passes through unspoiled canyons 10000 ft deep, and still provides a home for the original inhabitants of the regions, surely counts as one,

best wishes
gregor

In reply to Wiley Coyote:


I realise that, it's just something which makes me sad, the advancement of technology happening alongside the natural would being changed and developed, and it's specialness reduced, for want of a better way of putting it.