“Water is a basic means of mobilizing people” (Boelens 2013, 234). While this statement has been proven true in Chilean basins and countless others throughout the world, the effectiveness of such social momentum is complicated. Hydropower has become more than a technical system through which to harness kinetic energy. It is now so deeply intertwined with larger political, economic, social and ecological contexts that the impacts it generates must be mitigated in a equally multifaceted manner. More over, those who have the political authority to manage such dilemmas must be held under scrutiny as the communities they govern struggle in finding effective means to combat financial allegiances to, and institutionalized preferences for, river development. Ultimately, Chile’s and many other countries’ peoples and rivers have been abandoned by their political systems, and left vulnerable to private interests masquerading as “renewable” energy while simultaneous exploiting profit margins.
International Guidelines and Implementation
Social and ecological dilemmas generated by hydropower development and perpetuated by political and economic contexts are not new concepts. These implications have all been heavily considered and analyzed on international, national, and occasionally project specific scales. While several organizations have proposed solutions, some exclusively created to develop mitigation guidelines, their implementation is underwhelming. In considering the guidelines for hydropower development that have been presented in the past two decades, it is clear that in the case of privatized water management systems, such as Chile’s, these guidelines are ineffective as there is no political motivation nor accountability for their implementation.
The World Commission on Dams (WCD) was created in 1997 by the World Bank and World Conservation Union. The group disbanded in 2001 after generating a report that focused upon increasing resistance to dam developments. The Commission’s report presented global guidelines for dam development, considering ecological, social, and economic impacts, while accounting for perspectives within the private, academic, and political sectors (United National Environment Programme Dams and Development Project 2000). As the report explains, “unlike every other aspect of our lives, large dams have long escaped deep and clear and impartial scrutiny into the process by which they emerge and are valued” (United National Environment Programme Dams and Development Project 2000, ii). WCD guidelines notably promote the necessity for open and clear communication regarding proposed development goals before specific project plans may ensue. Additionally, in explaining requirements for both comprehensive and accountable project impact assessments, the commission emphasized the need for public acceptance. Informed consent must be freely obtained from all potentially affected communities. Transboundary basins must also inform and compromise effectively with downstream nations in terms of river development. Ecological assessments should decipher basin-wide impacts and account for threatened and endangered species habitat alterations. Guaranteed flow releases which would sustain downstream ecosystems based off of scientific data collection are necessary. Furthermore, those most directly impacted by project infrastructure should receive benefits beyond the compensation provided for all financial losses or displacements costs. Importantly, all agreements must be legally enforceable and mechanisms to review and ensure compliance of such agreements are necessary.
More recently, the International Hydropower Association (IHA) developed the Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol in 2010. This protocol claims not to “attempt to duplicate or re-write the WCD outcomes,” but acts as “a cross-sector collaboration looking at an existing performance measurement tool and proposing enhancements” (International Hydropower Association 2010, under “How was the Protocol created?”). This protocol is an assemblage of general “sustainable topics” behind hydropower development, with a notable lack of emphasis on social acceptance of projects themselves.
In 2015, the Nature Conservancy produced The Power of Rivers, a report which analyzed three separate hydro projects for the purpose of depicting what a more balanced hydropower future should entail. While their guidelines follow similar trajectories as the WCD’s and IHA’s, they explain that funding more responsible projects will be significantly more expensive. The Conservancy identifies that “[s]eventy percent of all planned hydropower investment is projected to occur in river basins where development would threaten basin-scale connectivity” (Opperman 2015, under “Funding better outcomes”). The Conservancy’s Hydropower by Design concept, which would largely avoid such basins, minimizing and mitigating any unavoidable impacts, would add “an additional global cost of approximately US$3 billion per year over business-as-usual approaches between now and 2040” (Opperman 2015, “Funding better outcomes”). While, the study emphasizes that the economic values of healthily functioning basins and integrated water management will ultimately promote funding for Hydropower by Design, this has yet to become a pattern.
While these guidelines and others promote logical and necessary considerations for hydro development, enforceable implementation has rarely been taken into effect. Hydropower continues to move forward most notably disregarding guidelines which require externally founded ecological assessments and community approval. While these reports focus on large-scale dam projects, smaller scale dams and run-of-river projects also continue to be constructed without sufficient consideration. Moving forward in light of largely unenforceable yet necessary guidelines, hydro resistances must identify and utilize mechanisms that apply sufficient political pressure to demand river preservation.
Tourism Influences
One such mechanism is the tourism industry. Whitewater tourism specifically presents opportunities for not only environmental education and social connection to river preservation, but also for economic incentive. Tourism is considered to be the world’s largest industry and generated US $852 billion in 2009 (World Tourism Organization, 2010). Like many nations, Chilean tourism has yet to reach it’s potential, and nationally speaking does not have an influential economic presence. However, Bittencourt emphasizes that “development for me now is conservationism and tourism…different type of development, we have the chance to have that still even if we have dams and projects on some rivers, we still have so many other rivers.” This sentiment, expressed by many river communities, seems to be largely powered by the river guide and kayaker culture. Expanding this idea to groups less directly related to river conservation may generate enough social pressure to influence policy change.
Furthermore, as the end goal of free flowing and healthy rivers is one that many can agree on, the economic benefits and cultural influences of whitewater also have to potential to curtail environmental passivity. Broadly speaking, hydropower developments have altered an impressive amount of South American basins. Similar to the previously mentioned Puescofest, the Jondachi Fest in 2015 collected both Ecuadorian and international kayakers in defense of Ecuador’s Jondachi River, which is under threat of a hydro development. Matt Terry, founder of the Ecuadorian River Institute reflected: “We need to make a collective effort to establish an international wild & scenic river protection program[1] to preserve strategic whitewater resources around the globe. We also need to be seen actively using these resources…Bring some friends and be sure to let the local population know their whitewater river resources are important and worth saving” (Terry 2016, para. 17). These ideas of visible whitewater recreation and cultural momentum, including groups beyond boaters, are important in promoting river conservation’s global influence.
Conclusion
Without water humanity would not survive, yet the way it is continuously undervalued on an economically determined scale, discounting social and ecological requirements, has created fundamental imbalances. These imbalances have given private interests the ability to expand profit margins of rivers, while degrading the health and integrity of the communities and ecosystems through which they flow. There have been extensive analyses of Chile’s and other countries’ relationships with hydropower, proposals have been made, and yet they continue on the all too familiar trajectory as other hydropower dependent nations, such as Spain, India, China, Brazil, the U.S., and Canada. The hydropower problem further compounds as social attention spans, on local, regional, national, and global levels, are quick to move beyond such complex issues as no easy solutions are available. Even with a more realistic public perception of invasive and unsustainable river development, without direct political action and a diversified river conservation culture, hydropower will continue to dismantle the rivers of Chile, and the world. Ideally, flow standards need to “occur in a consensus context where stakeholders and decision-makers explicitly evaluate acceptable risk as a balance between the perceived value of the ecological goals, the economic costs involved and the scientific uncertainties in functional relationships between ecological responses and flow alteration” (Poff 2010, 2). Finding a way to apply ecologically healthy and socially approved water management, rather than perpetuate free-market demand allocation, requires negotiation and commitment from actors both within and outside of the water sector. While “sin represas” or “without dams” has been a powerful concept in Chile, a global transition towards “ríos libres” or “free rivers” without physical barriers or political economic boundaries is needed.
Additional Research
Here I suggest a few of the many related topics for future research that this thesis did not cover. In reference to the institutionalized preference for hydropower in Chile, the need for a more accountable shift towards “non conventional” renewable energies, such as solar and wind, is necessary. Bittencourt spoke to the difficulty in finding cohesive social support for this large shift explaining that those who enjoy the sky will not want turbines in it, those who live in the desert will not want it covered in panels, and those who take to the sea will fight against turbines. Although these are generalizations, the social dynamics in Chile and the rest of the world regarding renewable energy are perhaps as complicated as the political infrastructure needed to promote them. Thus, how such a legitimate transition would realistically occur requires further research. Additionally, this analysis did not take into account Chile’s consumptive water rights dynamics, which also heavily involve the mining industry, and have created citizen access issues to potable water. Analysis is also needed in reference to Chilean education and specifically the amount of students focused on environmental law. Possible education funding motivations should be considered.
[1] For more information on the Wild and Scenic System, enacted in the U.S. in 1968, please reference (National Wild and Scenic Rivers System 2016). Chile and many other nations could greatly benefit from a legally binding river conservation program such as this.