Grand Coulee Dam, credit Wikimedia commons

PODCAST: The World is Experiencing an Unprecedented Boom in Dam Building

The world is experiencing a dam building boom. According to research by my guest today, David Hulme, there are plans underway around for the construction of over 3,700 new dams around the world. This explosion in dam building comes after a period in which there was a lull in the construction of new dam projects.

So what accounts for this new interest in dams? Where are these new dams being built?  Do dams contribute to sustainable development or do they detract from it?

We discuss these questions and more in this episode.

David Hulme is an academic who leads the FutureDAMS consortium at the University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute.  In this capacity he helps policy makers make better informed decisions about dam projects, and we discuss at length what academic research can teach us about what makes dam projects succeed or fail in their stated goals.

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