In view of the destructive nature of dams, many countries are having a rethink on constructing new dams, or even thinking of pulling down some of the old ones. Daniel Beard, the then US Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation (BuRec), the main public builder of dams (the other being the US Army Corps of Engineers), in 1993, when pulling out of the agreement to supply technical support for China's Three Gorges Dam, said "the bureau's current priorities are water resource management and environmental restoration, not large dam projects."

In 1994, he strengthened this commitment, saying, "The dam building era in the United States is now over. The opportunity for any future projects is extremely remote, if not non-existent."

Furthermore, "the actual contribution made by (large-scale)water projects to the (US) economy is small in comparison to alternative uses that could have been made with these public funds" Even Jimmy Carter when he became president in 1977 had an agenda of stopping dams on economic and environmental grounds.

In the US, some dams are urged for removal, to restore salmon and other populations as well as for recreation. Officials have identified several - Edwards, Elwha and Glines Canyon dams.

The US Army Corps of Engineers are studying the idea of removing four dams on the Lower Snake River. These are all revolutionary for the Corps and BuRec. Another proposal, also very revolutionary, is to remove the massive Glen Canyon Dam in Colorado and draining the huge Lake Powell. This is gaining ground and has even got a hearing in Congress.

In 1997, Beard, now former Commissioner, wrote that "environmental concerns have become more urgent. Draining a reservoir and restoring a canyon may just be the cheapest and easiest solution to our restoration problems." The then Secretary of Interior, BuRec's boss, Bruce Babbitt, expressed similar views.

After the signing of the landmark agreement for the removal of the Edwards Dam, he said this "is a challenge to dam owners and operators to defend themselves - to demonstrate with hard facts, not by sentiment or myth, that the continued operation of a dam is in the public interest, economically and environmentally."

Expensive affair

In Sweden and Norway, almost all the remaining free-flowing rivers are protected under the state river conservation laws. In the US, around 16,000 km of 'outstanding' sections of rivers and streams are now 'preserved in free-flowing condition' under the 1968 federal National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Many more tens of thousands of kilometres are protected under state river conservation laws.

In India, after the massive opposition to the Sardar Sarovar dams of the Narmada water project, the India power minister in 1993 declared that "We are not going in for large dams any more. We want to run the river projects and to have smaller dams, if they are necessary at all, which will not cause impediment whatsoever to the environmental needs."

Similarly, again after massive opposition to the Nam Choan and Pak Mun Dams, the Prime Minister's office of Thailand in 1995 declared that 'for the sake of environmental protection,' Thailand would 'no longer build dams for power production'

However, decommissioning or removing dams, is an expensive affair. It can be more expensive than putting them up in the first place. Furthermore, even after they are removed, species loss and environmental damaged caused may not be able to be corrected.

As Professor Wilson of Harvard says, an ecosystem is that web-of-life which require enough of the original players to be still available when an environment is attempted to be restored. If too many of them were already lost, the ecosystem would not be revived. This goes for river, sea or forest ecosystems. It is thus best not to make the mistake in the first place.

Dams supply water and electricity, both of which are essential for economic growth. The ecological problems of the world, for too long have been disregarded in the economic equation. This is due to the belief that economic growth is a good thing in itself.

The bigger the growth the better it is. This growth is reflected in the ever-increasing demand for scarce resources. In the belief that more growth is good in itself comes the belief that this ever-increasing demand must be met with the appropriate, ever increasing, supply.

My contention: It is the apportioning of supply to every claim made by demand that is causing our ecological problems- supplying more fuel and roads to meet the demand of more cars; of better technology to cope with demand for goods and services; and pertinent to our case with dams, supplying more electrical power and water to meet household, industrial and agricultural demands.

Dams in meeting supply to demand, without looking into the control of demand, are an important cause of human and ecological problems in themselves.

Faustian bargain

What is feared is, in the near future, when supply can no longer meet unsustainable demand, there might be a catastrophe to world ecology and thus to fauna and flora populations, including us - the sixth extinction.

We could just be putting off limits to growth of the present to the future. We could just be buying time with our unsustainable development. According to the Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems (PAGE) report released by the World Resources Institute (WRI, Oct 2000), by 2025, at least 3.5 billion people or nearly 50 percent of the world's population will face water scarcity.

The report indicates this is the outcome if no concrete steps are taken to check demand, either as a result of population growth or increased affluence, or both. (Rich people use more manufactured goods which use more water, as a well as using more water-based modern conveniences.)

This is a very simple position to see: Supplying more fuel and roads contribute more pollution as well as cutting down forests and reducing green lungs in urban areas - which further worsen the pollution.

More technology producing more machines create more goods which require more depletion of resources, and in the process produces more pollution. Technology too, instead of enabling us to cope with scarcity, can hasten it. For example, when fishing catch is reduced, better ships with better technology are introduced.

When sustainable yield is not taken into account, this only hastens the collapse of fish stocks as can be seen with the collapse of fishing off Newfoundland, Scotland, Japan, California (sardine, 1950s) and others.

In Malaysia too, the catch is unsustainable against fish stock renewal. And with regard to power, more available power means more means for industrial growth and its subsequent ecological impact.

This is a Faustian bargain - putting off the ugly hard choices that need to be made now to the future: let the devil take tomorrow; for now, let me have my comforts.

The late astronomer, Carl Sagan, in answering the question, why was there no contact from other worlds with earth said that high-technology civilizations tend to develop massive overkill-weapons, such as nuclear bombs, that they wipe themselves out.

I believe there is another possible reason: By sheer greed, ignorance and unwillingness to cooperate, they destroy themselves through ecological collapse. (Among the very first things that the new US President George W Bush did was to pull out of the Kyoto Protocols on limiting carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming.)

Sustainable supply

Water is a very important component for industrial production, for domestic consumption, as well as for food production. With ever-increasing population growth, and increasing consumption by the increasingly affluent middle classes, water for these purposes assumed the utmost importance.

It is no wonder that water supply has always had to meet demand. The mind-set of growth is good in itself is so entrench under the dominant economic system, the free market/capitalist system. But like over-fishing, all over the world water supply is unsustainable.

Water extraction is exceeding the ability of supply refurbishment, be it in the United States, India and Pakistan, Iraq, Syria and Turkey (competing over the Tigris and Euphrates), Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt, China, and Central Asia.

And supply, trying to meet the water demands of Kuala Lumpur and the Klang Valley is wreaking and will further wreak much environmental damage. After the five dams for the water supply in the Klang Valley, it is followed by the Selangor Dam.

Next, water will be imported from afar, the first in line are the Pahang Dams. How many more are needed to satisfy the thirst of the Klang Valley inhabitants, or elsewhere for that matter?

How many more firefly colonies, endangered birds, animals as well as plants species will be lost when the dams drown their habitats? Dams are sited in pristine areas and thus are very important ecologically, and for their watershed-preserving role.

Thus, the areas flooded relative to the total land of the country do not reflect the significance of the loss. The pristine lands too are often of immense natural beauty, something in which our psyche has a close affinity for, what Wilson terms as biophilia - the deep emotional attachment to nature that we instinctive feel in our hearts; the reason why we yearn for the peace of the forest, mountain and meadow, or the beach.

And too, how many more Orang Asli will be moved, yet again, to other areas without proper compensation, without regard to their close ties with their ancestral lands? Their culture is heavily embedded to their land.

Displace such a community from their land and we will surely kill their culture and thus, as surely, kill the community itself. Displaced Orang Asli communities immersing themselves in alcohol is becoming common place.

This immersing is not surprising given the experience of displaced indigenous communities anywhere in the world. Alcohol drowns their sorrows, making the reality of their environment and existence less painful, be it in the reservations of the Native Americans or the Australian aboriginal people. Or our Orang Asli.

Fireflies or humans

In the case of the Selangor dam, some dam proponents have simplified the issue to, 'fireflies or humans?' Put it in this manner, it does sound like opponents of the dam are a bunch of very unreasonable people, putting their love of animals and nature at the expense of their own humankind.

But the issue is of course more complex. If this time around it is fireflies (and berembang trees, as well as unknown number of species that will be affected by a changed river environment) that will be sacrificed, the next dam may sacrifice some birds and tree species and yet the next, some animals and other tree species.

Each new dam built, each new pristine area drowned, adds a few more species. In the end, when no more new dam areas are available (as already happening in Selangor, with Sungai Selangor being the last available, clean, river left), when so many species have been lost, what then?

We will be left with a desolate landscape, bereft of beauty. Life will merely be, at best, functional, but ultimately unsustainable. The web of life will be destroyed. The PAGE report and other examples [see (1) and (2)] point that way.

To hope that technology will be able to solve the next problem is mere wishful thinking. As the technology historian, Lewis Mumford, says, "the belief that social dilemmas created by the machine can be solved merely by inventing more machines, is today a sign of half-baked thinking which verges close to quackery."

Technology is often the false prophet pointing that the way ahead is clear, be it irrigation, dams, the green revolution, or the latest promise, genetic engineering. We cannot postpone the inevitable, hoping that some new technology in future will solve present problems.

We need to bite the bullet here and now - we need to use water (and other resources) in a sustainable manner, that is, using resources now without jeopardising future generations' ability to use the same.

Using the water supply authorities own data, SOS Selangor has calculated that the loss from leaky pipes is as high as 35% of the supplied water - much higher than the 16% or so acknowledged by the authorities.

Doing something

We need to replace our water pipes. They are so old that Jabatan Bekalan Air Selangor (Waterworks department) does not even know where most of them are (as we found out in our meeting with them) - until they burst, that is. Fix the pipes, spare the river!

Clean up the rivers so that we have more sources of water supply. With more sources, we might not need dams, or even if we do, they can be small run-of-the-river type rather than massive ones. Have rain water harvesting done.

We can do much more to control water demand if there is a will. It is just that supply-side management is so much easier: Dams are so visible to show the rakyat that the government is 'doing something' to solve water needs. And too, they are good on the pockets of some.

Reiterating the position: Without regard to sustainable development and sustainable consumption, without regard to ecological impact of development by always meeting supply to demand, without regard to controlling demand to a sustainable supply, dams, or other sources of water or electricity, will only contribute to ecological collapse - and thus human collapse.

DR ROSLI OMAR is an academic interested in the impact of science and technology on society and environment (being bred on the white heat of technology creed himself), be they dams, genetic engineering, or polluting machines. He believes that science and technology, as used at present, are sustaining an unsustainable development - the worst of all possible paradoxes.