Rivers of life

“To write history without putting any water

in it is to leave out a large part of the story.

Human experience has not been so dry as that “

(Rivers of Empire, 1985) Donald Worster

All land is part of a river basin and all is shaped by the water which flows over it and through it. Indeed, rivers are such an integral part of the land that in many places it would be as appropriate to talk of riverscapes as it would be of landscapes. A river is much more than water flowing to the sea. Even the meadows, forests, marshes and backwaters of its floodplain can be seen as part of a river, and the river as part of them. A river carries downhill not just water, but also important sediments, dissolved minerals and the nutrient-rich detritus of plants and animals, both dead and alive.

Fishing Eagle (Doñana, Huelva SPAIN)

The diversity of a river lies not only in the various types of country it flows through but also in the changing seasons and the differences between wet and dry years.

The great milestones of human history took place along the banks of rivers. Fossilized remains of our earliest known hominid ancestor were found by Ethiopia’s Awash River. The first civilizations emerged in the third millennium BC along the Euphrates, Tigris, Nile and Indus, and little later along the Yellow River, and the rich variety of plants and animals which they sustain, providing hunter-gatherer societies with water for drinking and washing, and with food, drugs, and medicines, dyes, fibres and wood. Farmers reap the same benefits as well as, where needed, irrigation for their crops. For pastoral societies, who graze their herds over wide areas often of parched plains and mountains sustaining food and fodder.

Towns and cities use (and misuse) rivers to carry away their wastes, while rivers also serve as roadways for commerce, exploration and conquest. The role of rivers as sustainers of life and fertility is reflected in the myths and beliefs of a multitude of cultures. Rivers have often been linked with divinities, especially female ones. In Ancient Egypt, the floods of the Nile were considered the tears of the goddess Isis. The rivers of India are perhaps wrapped in more myths, epic tales and religious meanings than those of any other nation.

The state of the issue : A couple of rivers  -The Ganges and the Mekong-.

The Ganges

This river, which starts in Nepal, in the Himalayas, flows fifteen hundred miles through India and Bangladesh and into the Bay of Bengal at Calcutta, is considered by the Hindus as a goddess, a river that is both pure and purifying. It is the dream of all good Hindus to visit Varanasi (Benares), the holiest city in India, and to bathe in the Ganges at least once in their lives.

Millions of devout Hindus plunge into the Ganges during the Kumbh Mela festival. This festival lasts 45 days and around 70 million Hindus usually participate in it, immersing themselves and filling small containers with river water for the relatives that can not attend.

The Kumbh Mela Festival

The Kumbh Mela Festival (2)

But in some places at Varanasi, the fecal-coliform count has reached a hundred and seventy million bacteria per hundred millilitres of water. Around five hundred million of people live in the basin of the Ganges and its tributaries and hundred and fourteen cities dump their raw sewage directly into the river. Waterborne illnesses like amoebic dysentery, typhoid and cholera are common killers, especially among children. The river also has alarming concentrations of heavy metals. It has been known for years that there are high rates of certain cancers in the plains of the Ganges.

So why such pollution allowed, then? It is not just that people are not aware of the dirtiness or ignorant of the dangers. In India, there is an additional obstacle to change: so sacred is the Ganges that it is considered beyond harm. Its waters are pure, even medicinal, and this is the responsibility of the gods, not of humans.

Nevertheless,  some initiatives and efforts have been taken to try to change the situation.  A spiritual leader and civil engineer – V.B. Mishra- is trying to clean up the river. In 1982, with two other engineers, he founded the Sankat Mochan Foundation, a private secular organization dedicated to cleaning the Ganges. They are conducting a feasibility study  for a waste-pond system at Varanasi. The foundation has won the support of both the central and municipal governments; the final obstacle to building the ponds is now the state government of Uttar Pradesh.

It should be point out that the Ganga Action Parivar (GAP), a non-profit organization launched in April 2010 by the Dalai Lama and P.S.Ch. Saraswati  is also trying to help in clear up the river. One of its outstanding members said this about the issue: “The Ganga needs and deserves serious cross-sector collaboration that involves the government and scientists, but  also faith leaders who have the networks and the capacity to shape perspective through story rather than shaming”.

The Mekong 

The Mekong River is located in Southeast Asia. Whit headwaters in the Tibetan Plateau, the river flows approximately 4,900 kilometres on its way to its delta, located in Cambodia and Vietnam, before emptying into the South China Sea. The river spans six countries including China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The Mekong is still a relatively healthy, natural, free-flowing river. It is one of the most biodiverse rivers on Earth. Most of its habitats and connections between habitats are still intact. It is capable of producing 2.6 million tons of fish a year, despite fishing pressure from millions of people who depend on the river for their sustenance. This makes it the most productive river in the world. 

The Mekong is also home to many species of giant fish. It’s unclear why so many species of giant fish live in the river. Certainly part of the answer is the river’s size: large rivers have more space and more food to accommodate larger types of fish.

Giant Mekong catfish (Thailand, May 2005)

The ecoregions that make up the basin comprise an incredibly wide diversity of habitats. These unique landscapes are home to no fewer than 20,000 species of plants, 1,200 bird species, 800 species of reptiles and amphibians, and 430 mammal species. Moreover, new species continue to be identified.

From 1993 to 2005, economic growth and electricity demand in the Mekong region increased at an average annual rate of about eight percent. Power demand is expected to grow at six to seven percent annually to 2025. The total potential for hydropower is estimated at 53,000 MW, of which only about five percent is currently installed.

The largest threat to the conservation values of the river system is from the series of dams and other hydropower projects planned for the river’s mainstream and tributaries. Such impacts are expected to include a growing inequality in the lower Mekong Basin countries and an increase in poverty in the short and medium term, especially among those in rural and urban riverside areas. Food is also likely to be affected by reductions in fisheries production and impacts on agricultural productivity due to inundation and changed water levels.

There are also significant threats unrelated to hydropower development:

-          Sand mining, to provide material for construction industry.

-          Over-fishing.

-          Pollution, particularly from agriculture and residential runoff.

Saving the world’s rivers

These are only two samples of our rivers. Both are in very different and difficult situation. The Ganges, a river to clear up, a river to be reborn and The Mekong, a river to take care of, a river to propose as world heritage.

Phong Dien floating market (Vietnam)

Rivers of all sizes all over the world have felt the process of human development. Across the world, we have mismanaged and in some places almost destroyed, the ecological core on which river health –and indeed our own survival- depends. Vast areas across both the developed and developing world have similar levels of threat to their freshwater resources. Moreover, the engineered “solutions” developed by the industrialized nations, which typically emphasize treatment of the symptoms rather than protection of resources, only too often turn out  to be too costly for poorer nations, but also appear to do little to secure the health of the rivers.

Large hydropower projects are often propagated as a “clean and green” source of electricity by international financial institutions, national governments and other actors. The dam industry advocates for large hydropower projects to be funded by the Green Climate Fund and many governments advocate dams as a response to climate change through national initiatives.

Man fishing in Cambodia

Support from climate initiatives is one of the reasons why more than 3,700 hydropower dams are currently under construction and projected. But large hydropower projects are a false solution to climate change. They should be kept out of national and international climate initiatives for the following reasons: 

1. Particularly in tropical regions, hydropower reservoirs emit significant amounts of greenhouse gases. In some cases, hydropower projects are producing higher emissions than coal-fired power plants generating the same amount of electricity. 

2. Rivers take about 200 million tons of carbon out of the atmosphere every year. In addition, the silt that rivers like the Amazon, Congo, Ganges and Mekong carry to the sea feeds plankton and absorbs large amounts of carbon. Hydropower projects and other dams impair the ability of rivers to act as global carbon sinks by disrupting the transport of silt and nutrients. 

3. Hydropower dams make water and energy systems more vulnerable to climate change. Unprecedented floods are threatening the safety of dams: In the US alone, floods have caused more than 100 dams to fail since 2010. 

4. In contrast to most wind, solar and micro-hydropower projects, dams cause severe and often irreversible damage to critical ecosystems. Building more dams to protect ecosystems from climate change means sacrificing the planet’s arteries to protect her lungs. 

5. Large hydropower projects have serious impacts on local communities and often violate the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands, territories, resources, governance, cultural integrity and free, prior informed consent.

6. Large hydropower projects are not always an effective tool for expanding energy access for poor people. Large hydropower projects are often built to meet the demands of mining and industrial projects, despite developers' claims that the energy is intended for the poor. 

7. Even if they were a good solution in other ways, large hydropower projects would be a costly and time-consuming way to address the climate crisis.

8. Unlike wind and solar power, hydropower is no longer an innovative technology, and has not seen any major technical breakthroughs for several decades. 

9. Wind and solar power have become both readily available and financially competitive, and have overtaken large hydropower in the addition of new capacity. As grids become smarter and the cost of battery storage drops, new hydropower projects are no longer needed to balance intermittent sources of renewable energy. 

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH US!!!!!  (Watch the video)

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