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Published in:
2012 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Damming China’s Angry River: Vulnerability in a Culturally and Biologically Diverse Watershed
Author : Bryan Tilt
Published in: Water, Cultural Diversity, and Global Environmental Change
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
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Of the 50,000 large dams that exist in the world today, nearly half of them are in China. They provide flood protection, supply water for irrigation, and produce hydroelectric power in a nation with a seemingly insatiable appetite for energy. The southwest region, on the edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, is home to the major share of China’s vast hydropower potential. Currently, a 13-dam hydropower development plan is underway on the region’s Nu River, in a remote corner of Yunnan Province that is renowned for its cultural and biological diversity. The dam project has a total hydropower potential of 21,000 megawatts (MW), which is slightly more than the mammoth Three Gorges Dam. Should all 13 dams in the cascade be built, it is estimated that more than 50,000 people will be displaced.