Large scale water projects: More harm than good?

Welcome back to my blog where I discuss water and politics in Africa. In this blog I will discuss some of the earlier methods used for providing water in African nations in the post-colonial period. As mentioned in my second blog, the government assumed a much more involved role in the provisioning of water, manifesting in large scale water projects implemented from the top down. At the time, this was seen as the model approach for getting water to people and promoting economic growth, mainly by increasing agricultural production through irrigation.

Towards the end of the 20^th century however, a considerable amount of studies on this approach had led to shift in paradigms for the way we manage water resources. The primary reason for the shift was due to the significant social and environmental degradation the dams caused by altering river flows and changing flood patterns. Adams (1985) discusses in the article, The downstream impacts of dam construction: A case study from Nigeria, the social and environmental destruction caused by the construction.

Aerial view of Bakolori Dam.

During the mid-1970s, construction began on the Bakolori Dam. It was located in the northwest of Nigeria along the River Sokoto for the purpose of supplying an irrigation scheme of 30 000ha. The project was granted permission based on the economic opportunities it provided, however, the impacts to the downstream community, comprising of 50 000 people using the flood plain for fishing and agriculture were not considered in the decision making in the process (Adams, 1985).

The construction in the dam resulted in the reduction in river discharge greatly reducing the extent of flooding during the wet season. One of the most extreme examples of flood reduction for a particular village identified only 3% of plots flooding compared to 93% before the construction of the dam. This inevitably had significant impacts on flood-plain based agriculture, particularly for some varieties of rise that are more flood-tolerant. Similarly, one of the most significant reductions in households producing rice occurred in Rane Village whereby 95% of the households stopped producing rice. Fishing activity was also an important source of economic opportunity, however the number of households containing fishermen declining from 17% to 8% (Adams, 1985).

In this regard, the economic value of the dam did not reach the expectations that provided justification for its approval in the first place. This is because the loss of downstream economic activities such as fishing and agriculture was not considered as part of the decision making process highlighting the political importance of considering environmental and socio-economic effects. Furthermore, an article written by Fred Pearce for the online magazine Yale Environment 360, argues that the major water projects helped trigger Africa’s migrant crisis. This is due to large amounts of wetlands are being drying up in the Sahel region resulting in environmental refugees.

People in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri gather along the seasonal Ngadda River, which feeds into Lake Chad. Source: Stefan Heunis/AFP/Getty images.

 Thank you for reading this blog post. In a future one I will be discussing new approaches that seek to manage economic, social and environmental effects of water projects in a more balanced way.