Utilising a system dynamics framework to investigate socio-environmental impacts of hydropower in the upper Brahmaputra basin

Emerging economies are increasingly constructing large hydropower projects to meet growing energy demand. The Yarlung Tsangpo-Brahmaputra transboundary basin shared by China, India, and Bangladesh holds enormous untapped hydropower potential, attracting ambitious hydropower development plans in the region. The transboundary basin is a highly biodiverse region sensitive to environmental and anthropogenic stressors. Hydropower projects are advertised as powerful development infrastructure that can provide greater access to clean water and clean energy. However, these projects also present grave environmental challenges including the degradation of ecosystems and their services, biodiversity loss and increased risk of natural hazards like earthquakes, landslides and floods. Further, dams have social and economic effects like population displacement and loss of livelihoods. Such effects are gendered: women are often disproportionately impacted. Stakeholder engagement with indigenous and other local communities is often absent or negligible in planning these hydropower projects. The projects usually export the electricity produced to far-away urban centres, leaving basin populations energy-poor, further aggravating existing inequities in resource access.

This paper presents a systems model examining the interactions between the socio-economic, ecological, hydrological, and institutional structures operating in the river basin to investigate the socio-environmental impacts of hydropower development in the region. The systems model has been conceptualised using stakeholder inputs gathered through fieldwork in the upper Brahmaputra basin. The model will especially examine interlinkages between hydropower development-induced systemic changes and socio-ecological well-being.