[新聞] Worth a dam?
標題: Worth a dam?
Voluntary agreement enables rating of hydroelectric impacts.
Jeff Tollefson
Hydropower is booming in the developing world, but one megaproject faltered
last week. On 13 June, after years of community protests, Peru announced that
it was revoking an agreement with a Brazilian consortium to build the
2,000-megawatt Inambari Dam, which would have flooded 400 square kilometres
of Amazonian forest.
Now, to foster a less confrontational way of advancing projects, the
hydropower industry, environmental and human-rights organizations, and
representatives from banks and governments have negotiated a mechanism for
evaluating, and perhaps mitigating, the impact of dams before they are built.
Released on 16 June in Iguaçu Falls, Brazil, the Hydropower Sustainability
Assessment Protocol provides a method for assessing dams in all phases, from
development to operation. Projects would be ranked on a scale of one to five
according to their likely effects on biodiversity, ecology, hydrology and
erosion as well as on broader issues regarding regional planning, cultural
heritage and effect on local inhabitants.
The protocol is voluntary, and a poor rating may not prevent a project from
going ahead. Yet quantifying anticipated effects could generate pressure for
managers to rethink plans to improve the outcome. "If we have some good
results in a few test cases around the world, I think it will take off," says
Pedro Bara, who works for WWF, one of the environmental groups that helped to
develop the protocol. "It's very useful to have an international standard,
especially for countries that don't have much experience in hydropower
development."
The document has its roots in the World Commission on Dams, which produced
comprehensive international guidelines in 2000. The International Hydropower
Association (IHA), a trade group based in London, followed up with its own
sustainability protocol in 2006, but continued criticism that the protocol
was weak led the IHA to establish a formal dialogue with environmentalists
and human-rights groups in 2008. Since then, the process has brought groups
such as the WWF, Oxfam and Transparency International together with industry
officials to hammer out a compromise.
Advocacy groups, governments and companies can use the protocol informally,
but a governance council representing the stakeholder groups will oversee a
more formal assessment carried out by trained auditors. Companies would pay
for this assessment and would be required to publicly release the results.
How the protocol will be applied remains to be seen. Companies that sign it
are not required to use it, or to alter their projects if the assessment
identifies problems. This has split environmental groups, many of which
called the protocol a dangerous public-relations tool that will allow
companies to 'greenwash' their projects and will weaken existing standards.
The protocol is designed to be applied one dam at a time, missing cumulative
impacts of development as well as opportunities to identify the best sites
and coordinate energy production across an entire river system, such as the
Amazon. "Where you have a cascade of dams, you really need a broader
assessment," says Mathias Kondolf, a fluvial geomorphologist at the
University of California, Berkeley.
Nonetheless, advocates hope that governments will require formal evaluations
under the protocol and apply minimum standards to the projects that they
support. "The aspirational end point would be some kind of independent
certification system," says David Harrison, a senior adviser at the Nature
Conservancy based in Salem, Oregon, who worked on the protocol.
Within industry, many see the protocol as a way to head off the kind of
public opposition that can stall or quash a project after years of
investment, says Cameron Ironside, a programme director at the IHA.
"Everybody would be very happy if industry were able to apply the protocol
early on," he says, "because that would solve a lot of the issues that people
are running into downstream."
At least 140 major companies have signed on, including representatives of
utility companies such as the China Three Gorges Dam Corporation in Yichang,
Paris-based EDF and Eletrobras in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. WWF officials have
noted that many Chinese companies that are building dams around the world are
not yet parties to the protocol. Yet companies on the sidelines may
ultimately have to act in accordance with the protocol, says Bara, if it
becomes standard practice. "If the banks get involved, it will be difficult
not to jump in."
新聞來源: (須有正確連結)
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110621/full/474430a.html
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