Thayer Scudder

Health impacts of large dams

Large dams have been criticized because of their negative environmental and social impacts. Public health interest largely has focused on vector-borne diseases, such as schistosomiasis, associated with reservoirs and irrigation projects. Large dams also influence health through changes in water and food security, increases in communicable diseases, and the social disruption caused by construction and involuntary resettlement. Communities living in close proximity to large dams often do not benefit from water transfer and electricity generation revenues. A comprehensive health component is required in environmental and social impact assessments for large dam projects.

Ten Thousand Tonga: A Longitudinal Anthropological Study from Southern Zambia, 1956–1991

The Gwembe Study was launched in 1956 to monitor the responses of 57,000 Tonga-speakers from the Middle Zambezi Valley to involuntary relocation. Since then, periodic censuses and frequent field visits have generated a wide variety of information. This article examines the demography of four Gwembe Tonga villages from 1956 to 1991, a period characterized first by relocation, then prosperity, and finally by economic hardship. White nuptiality does not respond significantly to socio-economic trends, marital fertility falls sharply during relocation, rebounds with the onset of prosperity, and decreases slowly during the most recent decade of economic hardship. Mortality of the very young and old is also sensitive to such changes. There is striking excess male mortality in all periods, especially among male infants and in particular male twins. The sex ratio at ‘birth’ is 92. This abnormal sex ratio at birth may be the result of conscious sex preference favouring females.

Resettlement Outcomes of Large Dams

The adverse social impacts of most large dams continue to be unacceptable. They also reduce a project’s potential benefits. This is especially the case with resettlement which some experts (including Asit Biswas and Robert Goodland, former Chief Environmental Adviser of the World Bank Group) consider to be the most contentious issue associated with large dams. Fortunately, there is potential for helping resettling communities to become project beneficiaries.

Okavango River Basin

The Okavango River Basin presents an incredibly dynamic and complex situation. It is a double challenge: first to convey the river’s importance in a policy-relevant way to all kinds of people interested in its management, and second to draw upon a vast literature in hopes of making useful suggestions for the way forward. Four sections follow. The first deals with the basin’s exceptional bio-cultural diversity. The second examines ongoing political economy, environmental, and international constraints to the basin’s sustainable conservation and development. The third section deals with the pioneering shift in the mid-1990s for Southern and Central Africa from a conflict-laden nationalist approach to international waters to the formation of the Permanent Okavango River Basin Water Commission (OKACOM) in 1994 and to a “water for peace” approach. The final section presents some suggestions on the way forward during the 21st century.

My Increasing Disillusionment with the Planning, Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation of Large Dams, Especially as Illustrated by The World Bank—The Largest and Most Influential Financier of Large Dams

Starting in the mid-1960s I believe that I have had longer experience with the World Bank than any other human ecologist or anthropologist/sociologist. I was familiar with the World Bank as a financier of Kariba and Kainji in the 1950s and 1960s. Thereafter I had no direct contact with the Bank until, as a replacement for Philip Gulliver, the Bank recruited me on a part-time basis as their first consultant anthropologist/sociologist in order to join John C. de Wilde’s study of African Agricultural Development during 1964–1968.

1956–1973: I Believe Large Dams Provide an Exceptional Opportunity for Integrated River Basin Development

Harvard Graduate School became more interesting during the Spring Semester when I began project planning for my Ph.D. dissertation fieldwork. The project I had in mind would combine both my interest in doing an original human ecological study of an African culture and my love of the mountains and nature. The Mountains were the Ruwenzori Mountains of the Moon in Western Uganda which, rising to 16,000 feet, were the most glaciated mountains in Africa. The people were the Bakonjo who lived only on the lower slopes of the Ruwenzori and apparently was the only ethnic group living there. Better yet, they were said to communicate from one ridge to another across steep canyons by an African version of yodeling.

The International Research Activities of the Institute for Development Anthropology and Increasing Concerns About the Socio-Economic and Environmental Costs of Large Dams for Free Flowing Rivers and Riverine Communities: 1976–1995

David Brokensha, Michael Horowitz and I, while attending a meeting on West Africa in Arizona in 1976, decided to form an Institute for Development Anthropology. Opinions among knowledgeable colleagues were that the three founders would not succeed because of their very different backgrounds and personalities.

Introduction of the Book

Currently over 50,000 large dams are operational. There are two major types: dams at least 15 m high or, if between 5 and 15 m in height, with a storage capacity of more than 3 million cubic meters of water.

Aswan High Dam Resettlement of Egyptian Nubians

During the 1960s, construction of the High Dam approximately 10 km up the Nile from Aswan created a 500 km-long reservoir, with a surface area of over 5000 km2. Named Lake Nubia in the Sudan and Lake Nasser in Egypt, the reservoir extends into the Sudan and required the relocation of at least 100,000 Nubians. This chapter deals only with High Dam impacts on the 48,000 Egyptian Nubians resettled between October 1963 and June 1964.