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Three Gorges Dam

Decent Essays

Should the Three Gorges Dam Been Built?

Dear President Hu Jintao,
I am writing to you today to explain what the Three Gorges Dam is, why it is needed, the social, environmental and economic advantages and disadvantages and whether should it have been built? Firstly the Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric dam that spans the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, located in Yiling District, Yichang, Hubei province, China. The Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest power station in terms of installed capacity it can create up to 22,500 MW enough to power New York for 10 years. In 2012, the amount of electricity the dam generated was similar to the amount generated by the Itaipu Dam. This is the world’s largest dam as is located in …show more content…

The top five investors in the project are Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Brazil, and Canada. All are part of the Organization for Economic and Co-operative Development, membership of which requires the agreement to the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises to “respect the human rights of those affected by their activities”
. Over 10 million Chinese have been relocated by dam-related projects throughout China’s history, 46% of them living in extreme poverty. Of the 1.2 million relocated so far by the Three Gorges Dam, 500,000 are peasant farmers, many of whom earn just 1/3 of the World Bank poverty level of $1 per day. The resetllers were not offered substantial compensation to cover the cost of new housing. Most were moved into to urban centres near Chongqing, or into the new cities built specifically for relocation, on steep unstable slopes that have now been determined unfit for development or farming**************
Even though the Three Gorges Dam produces electricity for nearly the whole of china’s population I still do not believe that it should have been built. Despite the fact that the dam helped reduce pollution of the air because 1-4 coal power stations were being built and the dam help reduce that the impacts on the environment, people, and just the cost of the dam it would have probably been better to keep building coal power stations. I believe this because nearly 1.2

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