DAMS AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS
by Gustavo Castro Soto
Other Worlds, Chiapas
The climate crisis is the biggest problem that has faced humanity. A global problem which nobody can remain indifferent to it. Its effects are already catastrophic and irreversible. We know that the countries of the north, the most industrialized countries, are the major cause of global warming-ing. United States has 3% of world population is responsi-ble for more than 30% of the glo-bal warming the planet. And Europe's almost 28%. Therefore, it is clear that about 60% of global warming-to industrialized societies are the most responsible and from which the causes of floods, melting glaciers, the islands are disappearing under the water, but also diseases, food crisis, the hurricanes and droughts and heat wave. In the indigenous communi-ties say that the Mayan calendar does not work, that they can not plant or harvest according to the ancestors, note that the bras always rot by heat, or the cycles lengthen or shorten affecting crop of foods, or increase the pest, or some we-cos of the hot regions, among other effects.
It is therefore important to have a global awareness of the problem of global warming and clarity on climate justice. Is a structural problem which climate crisis is a reflection of the crisis of capitalism. Need to fight in overall slope, Sando in local about how we as immediately affects Warming diately globally. However, this is not enough. We have to fight also in local thinking global. This integration and articulation is what we call "Glocal." In the immediate to have to take care in countries of the South of mega projects and also increase as climate change accelerates. The MEGAPRO-projects that threaten the land and territory. You are done with 50% of the forests, and by mangrove swamps of the world, large areas that breathe the main gas blamed for global warming, CO2 (carbon dioxide), and convert it into oxygen for the planet. Therefore, if we were with academic topsoil, with forests, trees, increases the concentration of the Ga-ses Effect Gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere and thus increases the heat
that causes the climate crisis. And one of these mega projects are dams.
DAMS, truncheons limitless destruction.
For decades we have thought that repre-sas generate clean energy and are associated with the development. Thus, a person who the question is seen as an "enemy of development '. But after the Report of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) in 2000, it became clear that dams are a mechanism dirty energy strategy, a mechanism of mass destruction. More than 50 000 large dams in the world have dis-placed more than 80 million people from their homes leaving them in greater poverty, 30% of freshwater fish in the world have guido extinction by dams, 60% of the largest river on the planet and have been dammed. Man-groves, forests and other ecosystems have disappeared-vantaged because of these mega projects. Many governments have been heavily indebted to multilateral and commercial banks have also implemented mechanisms of repression and coercion against the population to drive the population of their land to build them. The re-dams for electric power generation have not met their expectations, those of flood control have not controlled Irrigated and have not served. Is this clean energy? DAMS crisis deepens CLIMATE
Dams cause climate change for several reasons. On the one hand thousands of acres that are flooded, underwater. Who is going to breathe the CO2 from the atmosphere if not the trees? The topsoil of the planet absorbs 40% of CO2 in the atmosphere there. If you build pre-sas, this percentage decreases and increases the concentration of gases and therefore global warming. On the other hand, displace thousands or millions of people (in China Three Gorges dam displaced over a million persons), these lead to more deforestation as they have to settle in new lands, clearing more forests or jungles, deforestation to build vi-watching or for other agricultural land as it generates more CO2 emissions to the environment.
But there is another reason. The flood of vegetation causes the decomposition of organic matter in the reservoir causing large amounts of greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). And if the dam is not in an area of \u200b\u200bdesert or low vegetation, but in regions tro-Tropical Diseases, GHGs are causing even greater, even more than the soles of electric power generated from fossil fuels (gas, coal and petro-leum products such as gasoline or diesel). When ne decompose organic carbon reservoir is formed from carbon dioxide (CO2). However, methane (CH4) gas 25 times more potent than CO2, is produced by decomposing organic matter by bacteria under low oxygen, the reservoir bottom. The gas starts to bubble-bujear or leave through the turbines or the gate when they open. In the case of nitrous oxide (N2O) is produced by bacterial breakdown of nitrogen. There is research to show large amounts of CO2, CH4 and N2O to 40 km downstream of the Reserve Petit Saut in French Guiana. Other research confirms that the Balbina dam in Brazil, emissions downstream methane len equivalent to 3% of total methane released from the floodplains of central Amazonia. Large re-dams in the world, whose curtains measuring over 15 meters high, issued each year to 104 million metric tons of methane, from the surface of the dam, turbines, spillways and the rivers currents below you. This means that methane emissions from dams provide about 4% of the total warming, dams being the main source of methane that causes me-human activity, accounting for nearly a quarter of all emissions of me- tano provoked.
DOES THE CLIMATE CRISIS unsustainable in DAMS
The excessive rainfall or drought make the dams more useless. Where once they could not control the floods now less. With the climate crisis and to increase the deforestation and we can not guarantee the amount of water that falls in a region, or the amount of water that will flow through a watershed. With the recent tropical storm Alex in Mexico, the National Commission of Water-nal (Conagua) carried out "controlled dump" in the dams of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas incommunicado flooded dozens of towns and villages, bridges collapsed, Short-ron highways and roads, and collapsed the pub-lic services. Around half a million people were affected. Dams La Amistad, Falcon and Venustiano Carranza in the emergency room are on the brink of disaster. But just about the majority of dams in the country. In Michoacan the heavy rains caused the overflow of a dam and thousands of hectares of crops flooded producers have lost. Conagua practically empty the dam of El Bosque. According
Conagua, until 1 June for the intentions of the 170 rain sas country's major dams, eight were at 100% capacity and by late July and arrived at 21. For the first time since 1971 the dam Vicente Guerrero in Tamaulipas had to open its gates to reach 100% capacity. In the Laguna region in the dam dora San Fernando derived fracture was opened and then co-lapse for several days so they had to close the gates of the dam Francisco Zarco "The Tor-tola. In Tlaxcala and Queretaro, the authorities were launching an alert levels that are the prey El Sol, Santa Catarina, centennial, Cajon, Pi-rules, Carmen, Zapote and Mompani to-be point of overflow and river populations down in imminent danger. In Veracruz start the relocation of 500 families by the imminent flooding of the river Panuco. In Chiapas began the vent of the La Angostura dam, and dams are in danger Chicoasen, Malpaso and Penitas, the largest hydroelectric system in the country, with 50% of the country's hydroelectric generation, equivalent to 3% of total electricity. And in the Usumacinta River, which aim to build 5 dams in 2012, communities have been invited to leave their territories to the river overflow imminent. Recently, the construction
responsible for Three Gorges Dam in China agree that "The extreme climate changes and major trends of nature, are very far from the control of the Three Gorges project, the largest dam in the world is about to be overwhelmed and that it has stopped a balance of 701 dead, 347 missing, 117 million people affected by storms, floods and mud avalanche chas. So
displaced, homes flooded, thousands of affected people drowned or missing, fallen bridges, dams cracked and about to fall apart, isolated populations, rivers about to be overwhelmed, is the balance left by the prisoners before the crisis cli-matic. Dams are not the solution either for energy or for irrigation or flood control. We have to find other possible worlds, local, decentralized, another way of managing water, energy, another way of living. The problem is not the dam itself, but the system sustains capitalist. Change the system, not the weather.
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"THE TOPILE" MONTHLY BULLETIN OF ANALYSIS AND REFLECTION
TOPIC: Climate Change (Movements of Resistance and Alternatives)
-Dams and Climate Crisis Gustavo Castro Soto
.......
"Indigenous Peoples in Resistance to the Environmental Risk .....
Angélica Castro-International Meeting of People Affected by Dams ...... Maria Gonzalez
-with an eye Oxfsm Cancun ...... Mexico
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