- Bruce Rich
- Environmental Forum
- January-February 2015
- p. 20
A recent comprehensive review of the economic costs and benefits of 245 large dams on five continents by four Oxford professors....Examin[ing]“the largest and most reliable data set of its kind” the authors find “overwhelming evidence” that the real economic costs of large dam projects, calculated even in the narrowest fashion — without factoring in any environmental costs, nor any resettlement or other socio-economic costs, nor even costs of debt servicing or inflation — are for the most part too large to yield a positive economic return.....The resurgence of mega dams exemplifies a perverse political economy and deeply flawed political incentives that ignore the environmental, social, and economic lessons of the past half century. It is an investment path now fostering growing inequality as well as exacerbating a multifaceted global ecological crisis.
