Two sides to every story-an ecological engineers prospectivive

by Shayna
(Alaska, United States)

It’s so easy to type on a computer to say no to this project. As a river engineering specialist, Who has written and contributed to dozens of environmental impact surveys for controversial projects globally, I can say without a doubt this river system will so easily be destroyed hydrologically, hydraulically, in terms of ecology ( wildlife, fisheries, botanically), economically in terms of tourism, and will have compounding effects I cannot begin to fathom at a project of this scale.

Even if the dam is only in commission for a couple of months for example, the sediment loading and erosion would completely alter everything that the river has occurring naturally. Say goodbye to the 60 species of fish endemic to this river upstream of the dam. Extreme Differences in Lentic and lotic environments for fisheries will kill every species that has called this river home. A short term 70 million dollars to Zimbabwe seems like a complete rip off in perspective to the 4.5 billion dollar project and the long term effects this WILL have on tourism. That money could be made in 4.5 years of tourism on the Zambezi, now gone forever.

While those points may be true, to say this project is “insane” completely misses the idea of this project, and seems hypocritical at best. Especially while we type on our own electronic devices that derive power from somewhere. To scream at others that they can’t have the luxuries we have is paradoxical and comical. The only difference is we (I’m speaking from the US) put our power sources in place before many environmental regulations were in place. Less that .3% of Americans even know where their power comes from. The most common answer given when asked, Americans claim their electricity simply comes from the outlet in their walls.


Yes there are other solutions to power. But to scream at point fingers at another country that wants to get by and have what all developed countries have is not insane. It makes sense. The question we need to ask is at what expense do we want these luxuries? If we are going to tear down their “solution” to their power problem, are we going to help them actually come up with other answers? At what point to define ourselves in humanity by what we choose not to destroy rather than what we think we can build?