In this section, Pearce discusses water usage in southeast Asia, western Africa, the Middle-East, and England, with a particular focus on the consequences of dam building and agricultural irrigation. I found it interesting that a common theme throughout Pearce’s analysis of most of these regions seemed to be upstream countries staging development projects on rivers that subsequently have negative impacts on downstream countries. First it was China’s dam-building on the Mekong, causing adverse effects on the fisheries of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, then Ethiopia building a dam on the Omo River, causing the significant decline in water levels of Lake Turkana, and finally Afghanistan building a dam on the Helmand River, contributing to the complete destruction of the Hamoun wetlands over the border in Iran. The common motives for the constructions of these dams seemed to be energy from hydroelectricity and irrigation of crops, both of which were prioritized by each of the governments over the long term sustainability of their respective water ecosystems.
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