Communicating about Hydropower, Dams, and Climate Change

Abstract

As the global imperative for sustainable energy builds and with hydroelectricity proposed as one aspect of a sustainable energy profile, public discourse reflects the complex and competing discourses and social-ecological trade-offs surrounding hydropower and dams. Is hydropower “green”? Is it “sustainable”? Is it “renewable”? Does hydropower provide a necessary alternative to fossil fuel dependence? Can the ecological consequences of hydropower be mitigated? Is this the end of the hydropower era, or is it simply the beginning of a new chapter? These pressing questions circulate through discussions about hydropower in a time of changing climate, globally declining fisheries, and aging infrastructure, lending a sense of urgency to the many decisions to be made about the future of dams. The United States and European Union (EU) saw an enduring trend of dam building from the Industrial Revolution through the mid-1970s. In these countries, contemporary media discussions about hydropower are largely focused on removing existing hydropower dams and retrofitting existing dams that offer hydropower potential. Outside of these contexts, increasing numbers of countries are debating the merits of building new large-scale hydropower dams that, in many developing countries, may have disproportionate impacts on indigenous communities that hold little political or economic power. As a result, news and social media attention to hydropower outside the United States/EU often focus on activist efforts to oppose hydropower and on its complex consequences for ecosystems and communities alike. Despite hydropower’s wide range of ecological, economic, and social trade-offs, and the increasing urgency of global conversations about hydropower, relatively little work in communication studies explores news media, social media, or public debate in the context of hydropower and dam removal. In an effort to expand the scope of communication studies, after reviewing existing work the attention here shifts to research focused more broadly on human dimensions of hydropower. These dual bodies of work focus on small and large dams from Europe to the Americas to Asia and have applied a range of methods for analyzing media coverage of the hydropower debate. Those studies are reviewed here, with an emphasis on the key themes that emerge across studies—including trust, communication, local engagement, and a call to action for interdisciplinary approaches, intertwined with conflict, conflict resolution, and social and ecological resistance. The conclusion offers an original case brief that elucidates emerging themes from our ongoing research about hydropower and dam removal in the United States, and suggests future directions for research.

Changes in long-term properties of the Danube river level and flow induced by damming

“…A plethora of thus produced further empirical results confirmed the original findings of the existence of scaling in time series of river levels and flows, informing on the ubiquity of memory in river flow dynamics (see, e.g., Kantelhardt et al (2003) and Bunde, Bogachev, and Lennartz (2013) and references therein, Koutsoyiannis (2005) and studies of scaling in river flows mentioned therein, or Mandelbrot andWallis (1968, 1969), V. N. Livina et al (2003), Bogachev and Bunde (2012) and Bunde, Büntgen, Ludescher, Luterbacher, and Von Storch (2013)), and extending them to the research of details of complexity of this dynamics, including comprehensive examination of nature and sources of non-stationarity in river hydrological records (Klemeš, 1974(Klemeš, , 1987(Klemeš, , 1997Mesa & Poveda, 1993;Vanmarcke, 1983), or multifractality of its behavior (Kantelhardt et al, 2003). We offer the addition to this body of knowledge that examines human-induced alterations in long-range order of river flows caused by damming, aiming to provide research from which future interdisciplinary programs linking hydrology and hydro power with climate and climate change can arise (Lundberg et al, 2017).…”

“…According to the World Commission on Dams (WDC, 2000) "less than 2.5% of our water is fresh, less than 33% of fresh water is fluid, less than 1.7% of fluid water runs in streams", while human interventions have been stopping even this, for "we dammed half our worlds rivers at unprecedented rates of one per hour, and at unprecedented scales of over 45 000 dams more than four storeys high". As an important technical innovation of humankind, dams are supporting our living by regulating river flows for flood con-trol, irrigation support and electricity production, and continue to hold central stage in recent years of increasing desire for non-fossil fuel-based energy (Klemeš, 2002;Koutsoyiannis & Ioannidis, 2017;Lundberg et al, 2017;WDC, 2000). At the same time, however, researchers in ecohydrology, closely following these developments, provide evidence about ecological consequences of hydro power river flow management and regulation, such as the decrease in water quality and impact on the exchange of sediments, nutrients, and organisms between and among aquatic and terrestrial regions (Klaver, van Os, Negrel, & Petelet-Giraud, 2007;Pavlović et al, 2016;Teodoru & Wehrli, 2005), or causal role in species shifts and increased mortality rates of aquatic species migrating downstream (Bacalbaa-Dobrovici, 1997;Brezeanu & Cioboiu, 2006;Martinovic-Vitanovic, Rakovic, Popovic, & Kalafatic, 2013).…”

“…At the same time, however, researchers in ecohydrology, closely following these developments, provide evidence about ecological consequences of hydro power river flow management and regulation, such as the decrease in water quality and impact on the exchange of sediments, nutrients, and organisms between and among aquatic and terrestrial regions (Klaver, van Os, Negrel, & Petelet-Giraud, 2007;Pavlović et al, 2016;Teodoru & Wehrli, 2005), or causal role in species shifts and increased mortality rates of aquatic species migrating downstream (Bacalbaa-Dobrovici, 1997;Brezeanu & Cioboiu, 2006;Martinovic-Vitanovic, Rakovic, Popovic, & Kalafatic, 2013). Damming is additionally reported to induce an important impact on changes in biogeochemical river cycles (Friedl & Wüest, 2002), resulting, among other, in methane emissions contributing to global climate change (Lundberg et al, 2017;WDC, 2000). With this in mind, in this study we specifically investigate how damming affects scaling dynamics and cyclical consistency, in the case study of the Danube river flow.…”