Earthquake may rattle China's hydropower plans, raising spectre of more coal-fired pollution, tighter energy markets

May 15, 2008 -- The massive earthquake that struck Sichuan province last week may have dealt a huge blow to China's plans for a vast network of hydro-electric power dams, and the aftershock could mean more reliance on coal, more pollution and more competition for scarce global energy resources, suggests the author of a new book on the politics of China's epic dam-building campaign.

"There has been growing grassroots opposition in China to the governments heavy-handed push for ever-larger hydropower projects, and the dangers now posed by earthquake-damaged dams will only strengthen citizen opposition to these projects," suggests Andrew Mertha, an assistant professor of political science in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Andrew Mertha

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Mertha's book, "China's Water Warriors: Citizen Action and Policy Change" (Cornell University Press, March 2008), includes a detailed account of a successful grassroots campaign that in 2003 stopped the construction of a massive hydroelectric dam on the Min River near the city of Dujiangyan — the epicenter of last week's quake.

News reports out of China suggest that the earthquake destroyed a power plant and left large cracks in Zipingpu dam on the Min river just six miles upstream from Dujiangyan.

"The government is saying that the dam is in no danger of failing, but any sort of breach could easily be catastrophic," says Mertha. "More than a half million people live just downstream of the dam."

Mertha lived in China for seven years, including two years in the hard-hit Sichuan region. His book, based on fieldwork in some of the most remote parts of Southwest China, is filled with first-hand accounts of widespread opposition to dams at Pubugou and Dujiangyan in Sichuan province and the Nu River Project in Yunnan province.

"As China has become increasingly market driven, decentralized and politically heterogeneous," he argues, "the control and management of water has transformed from an unquestioned economic imperative to a lightning rod of bureaucratic infighting, societal opposition and open protest," says Mertha. "Fifteen years ago, opponents of large-scale dam projects in China were greeted with indifference or repression. Today they are part of the hydropower policy-making process itself."

Editor's note: Mertha is available for media interview and is best reached by email amertha@artsci.wustl.edu, or cell phone: (314) 322-3666.