Relationship between the main economic, environmental and social impacts of hydroelectric dams
Determinação das relações entre os principais impactos econômicos, ambientais e sociais das usinas hidrelétricas
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34117/bjdv8n10-100Keywords:
dams, barrages & reservoirs, environment, hydrology & water resource, management, social impact, sustainabilityAbstract
Hydroelectric power plants have been a growth tool to supply communities with water resources and electricity. In the last seven decades, large dams increased their environmental and social impacts, which caused the fragmentation and transformation of rivers. It is estimated that around 80 million people are displaced by its construction and operation; and its greatest impact comes from reservoirs by flooding large tracts of land permanently. In this sense, this study seeks to determine the relationship between the main economic, environmental and social impacts of the construction of hydroelectric power plants.It addresses the different non-participatory methods, such as secondary data, documents, records and databases were reviewed. From this information, principal component analysis, simple regression, correlations, multivariate and 3D dispersion graphs were performed. Once the different methods were applied, a significant correlation was identified between the variables of installed capacity and number of displaced people. The study concludes that natural resources are a source of attraction for people to settle around them, the water resource is of special interest, therefore, it is not strange that when establishing a hydroelectric project, there is invariably displacement of people in order to benefit a greater number of them through the generation of energy, prevent floods and droughts among other benefits, depending on the category that the dam have, as there are single purpose and multiple purpose. It is undeniable that there is a very strong correlation between the construction of dams and the economic development of a region, however, the correlation that exists between the construction of dams and the displacement of people is also undeniable, hence the importance of this study that is presented, since it allows having clearer economic, environmental and social perspectives that allow identify whether large hydroelectric project construction projects succeed or fail in their purpose of sustainable regional development.The results indicate that by increasing the installed capacity, there is a social impact as it will increase the displacement of people due to the construction or operation of hydroelectric power plants.
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