Climate resilience |
Above: Flooding in Tennessee, US after Hurricane Helene in September 2024
“Despite impounding a major reservoir, the plant
has limited capacity to buffer inflows because it is operated like a run-of-river plant,” the authors explain. “Energy generation at weekly to monthly scales thus relies mainly on the hydrological functioning of the upper Huallaga Basin. Specifically, dry season low flows (from June to November) determine the plant’s capacity to deliver firm power, an indicator for the reliability of power generation, which is critical for the plant’s operational and financial baseline.”
Below: Nolichucky Dam in Green County, Tennessee. Water flow over the Nolichucky Dam at the height of flooding during September 2024 was 1.3 million gallons per second. TVA says the dam remains stable. Its old powerhouse has been removed because of damage caused by flood waters but the facility hadn’t been in service since 1972
Challenge The Andean headwaters of the Amazon are described
as being symbolic of the challenge of meeting demands from the interconnected water-energy-food sectors, while enabling ecosystem conservation. Indeed recent decades have borne witness to rampant deforestation and degradation within the region - with severe consequences. “Exploring the environmental challenges and opportunities to reconcile the dual imperatives of nature conservation and restoration along with human development is urgent in these geographies,” the authors state.
Utilising 10,080 possible land use/management adaptation pathways, the research study found limited opportunities for win-win solutions under climate change. In the light of such challenges, the authors say their results highlight the need for navigating structural trade-offs between upstream land and water users and downstream interests in the Andes, in a strategic and equitable manner. But as their results highlight, although irrigation will be critical for maintaining food production under climate change, any unplanned expansion could lead “to a near total loss of firm hydropower downstream”. According to the Ding et al, their findings “are of importance for the entire Andes-Amazon region”, where current (6700MW) and future (up to 39,000MW) hydropower production intersects with opportunities to intensify agriculture, along with governments’ ambitions to restore and conserve ecosystems. Without regulation and efficient irrigation practices,
it is likely that widespread and unplanned adaptation of irrigation could hamper downstream hydropower generation, a major source of renewable energy. “Trade-offs between hydropower and agriculture
are often framed with respect to the potential conflicts of upstream dam operations with downstream irrigation,” the authors continue. “However, impacts are mutual, with a major dependence of dams on the management of upstream catchments. This is particularly evident for hydropower facilities with little regulation capacity which are vulnerable to small changes in the timing and magnitude of low flows.” Previous studies of the lowland Amazon have highlighted the risk that deforestation creates for hydropower outcomes, the authors admit, but state: “these findings did not shed light on complex upstream-downstream trade-offs nor identify opportunities to actively influence hydropower outcomes through proactive catchment management”. Such trade-offs are described as being much harder
to navigate in the more densely populated landscapes of the Andes-Amazon, since large-scale conservation
36 | February 2025 |
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