Large hydroelectric dams have been constructed at a rapid rate throughout the Global South in recent years. This dam boom has led to the resettlement of millions of people who are removed from their ancestral land and are often not compensated adequately for their lost resources. Post-resettlement, households and communities experience a host of changes, often negative, which lead to a decreased standard of living and wellbeing. In this research, I am interested in the changes to livelihoods and losses to social capital that resettled communities face. I conducted a meta-analysis of peer-reviewed articles of large hydroelectric dam-induced resettlement cases in the Global South published from 1980 to 2019. To do so, I, along with three other students, developed a codebook to analyze the implications of dam-induced resettlement across 101 cases that covered 50 dams in 21 countries. The results show changes in 90 cases in at least one of the five categories (natural, physical, human, financial, and social) that I use to define livelihoods. The most common ways livelihoods decline include the loss of natural capital such as land, decreases in soil quality, changes to food access, decreases in income, and the abandonment of fishing and farming. In 23 cases, social capital decreased which was often the cause of a litany of compounding issues including: increases in conflict and ethnic tension, decreases in income, declines in mental health, and loss of culture heritage. As large dam construction continues to boom, it is imperative to think about ways in which this process can be more sustainable. By improving the resettlement process, we can help to help mitigate the negative changes to livelihoods that the resettled face.
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