Building China's New Wall: Human and Environmental Impacts of the Three Gorges Dam.

The Three Gorges Dam, located 1,200 miles upriver from the Chinese port city of Shanghai, has been described as a modern engineering marvel, a source of clean electricity, and an environmental catastrophe in the making. One of a handful of man-made structures that can be seen from space, the 1.4 mile long dam towers 607 feet over the Yangtze River. The reasons for building the dam are monumental. Flooding along the river routinely kills individuals and displaces communities. Second, the dam is expected to generate one-tenth of the electricity needed for the country, as well as creating better ports further inland. Finally, the dam has been seen as a symbol of the country's "emerging engineering prowess." Yet, these benefits come with human, cultural, and economic costs. Close to 1.5 million people will be displaced by the project; cultural and archaeological sites will be lost to the new reservoir; and the hydrology of the river will be changed. Furthermore, the dam has affected the habitat for the critically endangered Siberian Crane and has lead to the functional extinction of the Baiji, otherwise known as the Yangtze River Dolphin. In this paper, I will conduct a public policy analysis that looks at, among other things, the dynamics of the rural-urban divide, the role of focusing events in the creation of environmental policies, and the problems of bounded rationality and negative externalities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]