Assessment of the Influence of Zhaveh Dam on the Neighboring Rural Areas; Sanandaj County

IntroductionSustainable management of scarce agricultural water resources is an unavoidable necessity for countries facing the incremental water demands and suffering from water deficiencies, such as Iran. In order to reserve the limited existent water resources, dam building can potentially help the more efficient use and allocation of them. Nevertheless, implementing the policy without true comprehensive assessment of its consequences, especially for target communities, can practically lead to destruction of surface water resources and deprivation of natural and human ecosystems from these essential resources. This study aimed to evaluate the attitudes of the villagers residing at the basin of Zhaveh dam in Sanandaj township of Kurdestan province towards the environmental and socio-economic impacts of the project under construction. Implementation of a dynamic and stable program for rural communities entails comprehensive environmental and socioeconomic studies on water resources management projects, such as construction of dams.
Theoretical FrameworkDamming projects are often believed as development attainment tools. The economic impacts of dams on neighboring communities and residents are usually improving the job and income opportunities and available water for agriculture. These positive economic impacts, assumed as the main objectives of dams, are obvious in short terms. Contrarily, negative impacts, which are imposing much more costs on the environment and society, are realized in longer terms. Due to the dominance of structural thinking in the opinion of policy makers, rivers have been the victims of aggressive human developments for enhancing regional economies, similar to the enclosed water bodies. Therefore, dams are built one after another to store water in reservoirs in order to support agricultural activities, increase power generation, and secure urban water supplies. Different experiences of serious ecosystem damages, water quality degradation, inundation of historic sites, land use changes, water seepage, and increased downstream development under the perception of increased water availability make the Iranian dam construction pride questionable. These problems are normally the products of the rapid investment and growth in one sector without considering the dynamic relationships of the growing sector (e.g., economy, agriculture, and infrastructure) with other sectors (e.g., water, environment, and ecosystem) in the absence of an integrated view of the complex human-natural system of systems. A paradigm of thought, which separates “development” from “environment” and implements such aggressive shortsighted regional development plans have resulted in unintended hydro-environmental problems whose long-term costs are significantly higher than their short-term benefits. As a result, growth in one sector has caused secondary negative impacts on other sectors (e.g., ecosystem losses) and a long-term negative feedback or impact on the original sector (e.g., forced migration due to increased water and air pollution). If timely regulatory actions are not taken in these cases, the unintended damages can become irreversible.
MethodologyThe case studied here is the Zhaveh dam in Kurdestan western province of Iran, which was under construction by the year of study, 2014. The statistical population was the villagers of Sirvan District of Sanandaj County, which have directly or indirectly been exposed to the project impacts. 250 household heads were selected as the sample determined by Cronbach test. The required data was gathered primarily and secondary via survey and field operations. To do this, a detailed questionnaire was designed and validated to interview the respondents of 13 selected villages of the region, containing attitudes towards the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of the project. The impacts were evaluated considering two phases: the construction period, since the project’s beginning by the time of the study and the time of the dam water supplying in the future, separately.
Results & DiscussionAccording to the results, some benefits, such as the relative increasing of cultivable lands around the dam, have occurred. Nevertheless, serious vulnerabilities such as loss of noticeable fertile lands, elimination of permanent surface water resources from the ecosystem, and changing other dam downstream land uses have been the considerable consequences of the project perceived and clarified by the residents. In this regard, attitudes towards the dam impacts after water supplying in the future, has been evaluated as more important by the residents, compared to the phase of its construction period. The economic and environmental damages of dam construction considered by the villagers were related to their livelihood instability, losing and inefficiency of their agricultural productive resources, and the undesired impacts on their social relations. However, the villagers’ sense of place and residency motivation remained invulnerable. Relating and assessing the respondents’ attitudes with the macro attributes of their villages revealed that the mentioned negative impacts are evaluated as more influential with regard to the increase in the villages’ population, arable lands, and the distance to the dam location. In fact, the construction of dam has been evaluated as a threat against the region’s dwelling capability and livelihood sustainability.
Conclusions & SuggestionsDam projects are usually implemented considering the national and regional macro objectives, and contrarily the least participation of local communities, in spite of vast environmental and socioeconomic consequences for them. Taking regional and national necessities into account and prioritizing them over the local and rural socioeconomic situations in planning and implementing of dam projects deviates their consequences from their initial objectives. Hydro-environmental and settlement threats are the most important damages, which emerge due to a consideration of the national and regional needs and the infrastructural advantages of dams and neglecting the sustainability requisites of the involved local communities. Unavoidable feedbacks of such processes are irreversible and irremediable for the whole system viability in the long-term.