Patricia Adams | Gráinne Ryder
Patricia Adams, Executive Director
E-mail: PatriciaAdams@nextcity.com
 Patricia Adams is an economist and the Executive Director of Probe International, an independent think-tank and watchdog over the environmental consequences of Canadian government and corporate activities around the world. Her books include In the Name of Progress: The Underside of Foreign Aid, (Doubleday 1985), and Odious Debts: Loose Lending, Corruption and the Third World''s Environmental Legacy (Earthscan 1991), which exposes the jeopardy of years of loose lending for both the Third World''s environment and their economies, and proposes a legal remedy to place responsibility for the Third World''s debt crisis on the parties involved, instead of on First and Third World taxpayers. Pat also edited the English language translation of Yangtze! Yangtze!, the extraordinary critique by Chinese experts of the Three Gorges dam that inspired the democracy movement when it was first published in 1989, led to the postponement of the dam, and was subsequently banned by Chinese authorities.
Before coming to Probe International, Pat worked on a variety of development projects for the International Development Research Centre and Acres International. She has taught economics in Jamaica, advised the World Council of Churches'' energy program, and Chaired the Nairobi-based Environment Liaison Centre, a coalition of 300 environmental and citizens'' groups from around the world. She is a co-founder of the International Rivers Network and the World Rainforest Movement, and is an associate editor of the British magazine, The Ecologist.
Pat has appeared before Congressional and Parliamentary Committees in the US and Canada and has given speaking tours of the United Kingdom, Argentina, and Chile. She submitted the paper, Patronage Canada, to the 1998 Export Development Act Review. She subsequently presented a Statement on The Review of the Export Development Act to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. She has written editorial page articles for major daily newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, Guardian, New Statesman, and the Indian, Malaysian, and Jamaican press, and in Canada, the National Post, Globe and Mail, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Winnipeg Free Press, Vancouver Sun, and Hamilton Spectator. She has appeared on many of Canada''s major radio and TV news and current affairs programs, including Canada AM, As It Happens, Ideas, Newsworld, Face Off, and Morningside. Outside Canada, she has appeared on British, Australian, French, Thai, and Japanese TV and radio.
Articles by Patricia Adams (author and co-author):
- EDC tempts a trade war
The National Post, July 6, 2000
- Secret of EDC''s ''success'': Taxpayers'' money
The National Post, May 25, 2000
- The Debts of Corruption
The Financial Post, May 10, 1999.
- China''s dam begins to crumble
The Financial Post, Tuesday, April 06, 1999.
- EDC''s Quebec tilt hardly ''commercial''
The Financial Post, March 1, 1999
- All aboard the EDC money train
The Financial Post, January 11, 1999
- China''s Great Leap Backward: Uneconomic and Outdated, the Three Gorges Dam Will Stunt China''s Economic Growth
International Journal vol. LIII, no. 4, Autumn 1998.
- Patronage Canada: Poor countries weep, and we do too, when business and government get in bed with each other
The NEXT CITY, Spring 1997
Gráinne Ryder, Policy Director
E-mail: GrainneRyder@nextcity.com
Gráinne Ryder is a water resources engineer by training and policy director at Probe International, an independent policy research group that investigates the environmental and economic consequences of Canadian government and corporate activities around the world.
She currently serves as an international advisor to the 3S Rivers Protection Network, Cambodia’s first community-directed river protection network, and is a co-founder of the Bangkok-based group Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance. She is a contributing editor of the English-language version of Three Gorges Probe, the world’s only bilingual news service monitoring China’s Three Gorges dam and related water and energy issues.
Gráinne’s research-for-advocacy interests include: negotiated river flow management, power sector reform, and decentralized generating technologies.
For two decades, Gráinne has campaigned to stop the use of international aid for environmentally destructive and uneconomic large-scale hydro development, and has written extensively on electricity issues in the six-country Mekong region. Her reports and speeches have been translated into French, Khmer, Lao, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese.
Gráinne’s articles have appeared in Bangkok Post, Cogeneration & On-Site Power Production, Cultural Survival Quarterly (U.S.), Energy Pulse (www.energypulse.net), International Journal (Canada), National Post (Canada), New Internationalist (Canada), Phnom Penh Post, Praxis (Bangladesh), Watershed (Bangkok), World Rivers Review (U.S.), and The Nation (Bangkok), She has also appeared on radio and television in Australia, Belize, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Thailand, and the US.
In the late 1980s, Gráinne produced the path-breaking book, Damming the Three Gorges: What Dam Builders Don’t Want You To Know (Earthscan 1993), which exposed serious flaws in the Canadian engineering feasibility study for China's Three Gorges dam and led to complaints of negligence, incompetence, and professional misconduct against the Canadian engineers responsible. Gráinne later edited and wrote the introduction for The Mekong Currency: Lives and Times of a River (International Books, 1993), a photojournalist’s portrait of rural communities threatened by large-scale development schemes in the Mekong region. She has written chapters on Mekong dam politics for two books, Wasser in Asien: Elementare Konflicte (Asienhaus Essen, 1997) and Dams as Aid: A political anatomy of Nordic development thinking (Routledge, 1997).
In 1999, Gráinne was chosen by TIME (Canada) magazine as one of 25 young Canadians likely to make a difference in the next century.
Publications
China’s Three Gorges Corporation vying to build world’s largest hydro project in Central Africa, Three Gorges Probe, June 22, 2007.
Carbon Boondoggles, National Post, April 26, 2007.
Compliance Review: An Assessment of the Swedish-Funded EIA on the Cambodian Part of the Srepok River, Probe International et al, February 2007.
VN hydro dams threaten Cambodian food security, Bangkok Post, October 7, 2006.
China's new dam builders and the emerging regulatory framework for competitive power markets. Paper presented to the Mekong Region Waters Dialogue, Vientiane, Lao PDR, hosted by World Conservation Union, Thailand Environment Institute, International Water Management Institute and M-Power Network, July 6, 2006.
Yunnan power company losing money: ADB reports, Three Gorges Probe, June 22, 2006.
Big hydro in the red - the drive for DE-friendly reform in China, Cogeneration & On-Site Power Production, May – June 2006.
Finding the True Cost of China’s West-East Hydro: SERC Should Step In, Energy Pulse (www.energypulse.net), May 24, 2006.
Skyscraper dams in Yunnan: China's new electricity regulator should step in, Three Gorges Probe, May 12, 2006.
Ertan's market failure and the World Bank's outlook for China's power sector, Energy Pulse, February 22, 2006.
China’s Three Gorges developer switches to coal, Energy Pulse (www.energypulse.net), January 18, 2006.
Chinese dam benefits ‘impossible to quantify, says financier World Bank, Probe International, 16 January 2006.
Applying BC Hydro water use planning experience in the transboundary Se San River Basin. [PDF] Proceedings of the International Symposium on Role of Water Sciences in Transboundary River Basin Management, Ubon Ratchatani, Thailand, March 10-12, 2005.
International Conference Presentations
10th International Riversymposium and Environmental Flows Conference, Brisbane, Australia, National Water Commission of Australia and Nature Conservancy (USA), September 3 – 6, 2007.
Stakeholder Meeting on the Environmental Impact Assessment Report of Srepok River, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, January 12, 2007.
Global Perspectives on Large Dams, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, US, November 2006.
Mekong Region Waters Dialogue, Vientiane, Lao PDR, hosted by World Conservation Union, Thailand Environment Institute, International Water Management Institute and M-Power Network, July 6-7, 2006.
Forum on Western Water, the Environment, and Economic Growth, Saskatchewan Environment Society, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, March 29-30, 2006.
International Symposium on Role of Water Sciences in Transboundary River Basin Management, organized by the United Nations University, Asian Insitute of Technology, and Thammasat University Faculty of Engineering, March 10-12, 2005, Ubon Ratchatani, Thailand.
1/3 of Our Planet: What Can Asia and Europe Do For Sustainable Development, Hosted by UNEP, Hans-Seidel Foundation (Europe), Asia-Europe Foundation, and Institue for Global Environmental Strategies (Japan), Jakarta, Indonesia, November 23-25, 2005.
Nam Theun 2 Technical Workshop, World Bank, Washington DC, September 20, 2004.
Forum on Belize's Chalillo dam controversy, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, March 13, 2003.
The Changing Face of Electricity Markets in the Mekong River Basin Workshop, Mekong River Commission and WWF, Thailand, Phnom Penh, January 28-29, 2003.
Power, Privatization and Public Benefits Workshop, Transnational Institute, Prayas Energy Group and Focus on the Global South, Bangkok, Thailand, Oct. 7-11, 2002.
Oxfam Mekong Initiative Partners Forum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, October 31, 2002.
National Se San River Protection Network Workshop, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, November 27, 2002.
International Conference on Energy Sector Transition: Asian Perspective for Sustainable Energy Development, Thailand, 2000.
Regional Consultation of the World Commission on Dams, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2000.
Japan Center for a Sustainable Environment and Society, Tokyo, Japan, 1999.
No-Nukes Asia Forum, Bangkok, Thailand, 1998.
Meeting of the U.S. Working Group on Environment in U.S.-China Relations, Woodrow Wilson Centre, Washington, D.C., U.S., 1998.
New Directions Workshop, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Virginia, U.S., 1997.
Bilateral Aid Workshop, Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Uppsala, Sweden, 1996.
7th Annual Conference of the Forum on Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, American University, Washington D.C., U.S., 1996.
International Workshop for Sustainable Development through Cooperation, Washington, D.C., U.S., 1995.
Both Sides of the Dam Conference, Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Delft, the Netherlands, 1995.
Nordic Dam-Building in the South Conference, Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, Stockholm, Sweden, 1994.
International Association for Impact Assessment, Beijing, China, 1993.
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