The world’s big rivers and their floodplains were central to development of civilization and are now home to c. 2.7 billion people. They are economically vital whilst also constituting some of the most diverse habitats on Earth. However, a number of anthropogenic stressors, including large-scale damming, hydrological change, pollution, introduction of non-native species and sediment mining, challenge their integrity and future, as never before. The rapidity and extent of such change is so great that large-scale, and potentially irreparable, transformations may ensue in periods of years to decades, with ecosystem collapse being possible in some big rivers. Prioritizing the fate of the world’s great river corridors on an international political stage is imperative. Future sustainable management, and establishment of environmental flow requirements for the world’s big rivers, must be supported through co-ordinated international funding, and trans-continental political agreement to monitor these rivers, finance their continual upkeep and help ameliorate increasing anthropogenic pressures. To have any effect, all of these must be set within an inclusive governance framework across scales, organizations and local populace. Stressors such as large-scale damming, hydrological change, pollution, the introduction of non-native species and sediment mining are challenging the integrity and future of large rivers, according to a synthesis of the literature on the 32 biggest rivers.

Anthropogenic stresses on the world’s big rivers

This paper updates and builds on 'Modelling with Stakeholders' Voinov and Bousquet, 2010 which demonstrated the importance of, and demand for, stakeholder participation in resource and environmental modelling. This position paper returns to the concepts of that publication and reviews the progress made since 2010. A new development is the wide introduction and acceptance of social media and web applications, which dramatically changes the context and scale of stakeholder interactions and participation. Technology advances make it easier to incorporate information in interactive formats via visualization and games to augment participatory experiences. Citizens as stakeholders are increasingly demanding to be engaged in planning decisions that affect them and their communities, at scales from local to global. How people interact with and access models and data is rapidly evolving. In turn, this requires changes in how models are built, packaged, and disseminated: citizens are less in awe of experts and external authorities, and they are increasingly aware of their own capabilities to provide inputs to planning processes, including models. The continued acceleration of environmental degradation and natural resource depletion accompanies these societal changes, even as there is a growing acceptance of the need to transition to alternative, possibly very different, life styles. Substantive transitions cannot occur without significant changes in human behaviour and perceptions. The important and diverse roles that models can play in guiding human behaviour, and in disseminating and increasing societal knowledge, are a feature of stakeholder processes today. Display Omitted Participatory modelling has become mainstream in resource and environmental management.We review recent contributions to participatory environmental modelling to identify the tools, methods and processes applied.Global internet connectivity, social media and crowdsourcing create opportunities for participatory modelling.We suggest structured mechanisms to examine and account for human biases and beliefs in participatory modelling.Advanced visualization tools, gaming, and virtual environments improve communication with stakeholders.

Modelling with stakeholders - Next generation

The City in Late Imperial China.

Managing freshwater resources sustainably under future climatic and hydrological uncertainty poses novel challenges. Rehabilitation of ageing infrastructure and construction of new dams are widely viewed as solutions to diminish climate risk, but attaining the broad goal of freshwater sustainability will require expansion of the prevailing water resources management paradigm beyond narrow economic criteria to include socially valued ecosystem functions and services. We introduce a new decision framework, eco-engineering decision scaling (EEDS), that explicitly and quantitatively explores trade-offs in stake - holder-defined engineering and ecological performance metrics across a range of possible management actions under unknown future hydrological and climate states. We illustrate its potential application through a hypothetical case study of the Iowa River, USA. EEDS holds promise as a powerful framework for operationalizing freshwater sustainability under future hydrologi- cal uncertainty by fostering collaboration across historically conflicting perspectives of water resource engineering and river conservation ecology to design and operate water infrastructure for social and environmental benefits. evaluation a significant challenge 7,8 . These costs can be substantial, as evidenced by human displacement 5,9 , local species extinctions 10

/pdf/sustainable-water-management-under-future-uncertainty-with-1dudu6wjt3.pdf

Sustainable water management under future uncertainty with eco-engineering decision scaling

"Oriental despotism : A Comparative Study of Total Power", Karl A. Wittfogel, Yale University Press, New-Haven 1957 : [recenzja] / Leszek Dzięgiel.

This article uses hydropower development on the Lancang (upper Mekong River) and Nu (upper Salween River) as a lens for exploring institutional change and decision-making processes among governmental units and hydropower companies under the Great Western Development campaign. Scholars of the campaign tend to focus on central government policies and individual provinces' responses, and on the campaign's role as a central-state-strengthening project aimed at curbing regionalist tendencies. Large-scale hydropower development in Yunnan, however, is a complex affair involving national and provincial power companies, regional grids and governmental units at many levels. Conceptualizing Yunnan as the “powershed” of Guangdong, I argue that the Western Development campaign paves the way for increasingly strong interprovincial linkages between Guangdong and Yunnan that are not necessarily central-state-strengthening, and that consideration of such linkages should be fundamental to any attempt to understand the impacts of China's western development.

Powershed Politics: Yunnan Hydropower under Great Western Development

https://www.ceaa.gc.ca/050/documents/49362/49362E.pdf

Modeling the costs and benefits of dam construction from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Hydropower and sustainability: resilience and vulnerability in China's powersheds.

Rapid hydropower development is occurring in China’s Yunnan province in response to increasing clean energy demands, exposing potential vulnerabilities of the area’s ecosystems, communities, and geopolitical systems. Here, the authors present original data on the cultures, economics, hydro-politics, and environments of the Nu River basin, based on household surveys, analysis of geopolitical events, and hydrological, hydraulic, and landscape modeling. The authors identify sources of vulnerability and investigate relationships among biophysical, socioeconomic, and geopolitical elements that contribute to vulnerability. The results illustrate the role of geographic isolation in intensifying vulnerability to hydropower development and how access to information, data uncertainty, and geopolitics influence the vulnerability of people and the environment. The authors emphasize specific needs for developing support mechanisms for social, ecological, and political groups that are vulnerable to hydropower development.

https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss3/art16/ES-2012-5465.pdf

Biophysical, Socioeconomic, and Geopolitical Vulnerabilities to Hydropower Development on the Nu River, China

Approximately 78% of China's electricity demand is met by burning coal, which has taken a serious toll on the environment. Hydropower represents a sustainable alternative source, and China already derives 16% of its electricity supply from hydropower. However, evidence from other hydroelectric projects such as the Three Gorges Dam suggests that the socioeconomic consequences of such large public works projects are enormous. A series of dams has been proposed for the middle and lower reaches of the Nu River (Upper Salween) in Yunnan Province. If completed, the 13-dam cascade would have greater power-generating potential than the Three Gorges Dam. However, the Nu is considered to be the last "virgin" river in China, and many of the proposed dams are located in an environmentally-sensitive area. Moreover, approximately 50,000 people - many of them ethnic minorities - would be forced to resettle by the resulting reservoirs. Finally, the economic status of northwestern Yunnan is quite low, suggesting that socioeconomic vulnerabilities among the displaced population would be quite acute. Although construction has officially been halted, surveying has begun on at least five of the dams, and recent news reports indicate that the actual construction process has begun on one of these. After providing a detailed account of China's electricity supply, this paper quantifies China's hydropower potential. We then describe the socioeconomic effects of population displacement from dam development using the Three Gorges Dam as a case study. Next, we provide a detailed economic profile of the Nu River area, arguing that poor farmers from disparate language groups are more likely to face extreme vulnerabilities in the resettlement process. Finally, we employ microevidence from interviews of affected households to demonstrate that the dam construction process in western Yunnan has been neither transparent nor consultative.

Darrin Magee

Papers

Powershed Politics: Yunnan Hydropower under Great Western Development

Modeling the costs and benefits of dam construction from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Hydropower and sustainability: resilience and vulnerability in China's powersheds.

Biophysical, Socioeconomic, and Geopolitical Vulnerabilities to Hydropower Development on the Nu River, China

Socioeconomic Vulnerability in China's Hydropower Development