International Rivers Network (IRN)

This document by International Rivers Network provides a background for the recent plans initiated by India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bhutan to build several hundred dams on the Himalayan mountains, which store vast amounts of water and with their high slopes and fast moving rivers, present a huge potential for generating hydropower.

India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bhutan have been facing the increasing challenges of meeting their rising elecricity and energy needs and hydropower dams in the Himalayas are being proposed as solutions to meet a considerable part of these requirements.

The document examines the various arguments that have been put forward against the building of the dams as against the proposed advantages that the dams are claimed to have for these four countries, which share common geographical, topographical and eco-climatic features but have starkly different political and economic contexts.