 There are countries that need energy which are really hard pressed and where the West has abandoned support for hydroelectric power development. They definitely look towards the East and to China. The world face is two main problems in terms of energy production. The first one is the fact that 1.3 billion people all over the world do not have energy access. And the other problem is that we need to provide them with clean energy to mitigate the climate. Hydro power is experiencing a renaissance in many parts of the world. Seen as a possible answer to the question how to supply the developing world with sustainable energy. Chinese investors, energy and construction companies have in recent years emerged as the biggest dam builders in the world. For many decades the World Bank and OECD funders and dam builders were building dams all over the world. Because of the huge environmental and social implications there has been a slowdown of global hydropower investments. And this has changed very recently when the Chinese came in as major dam builders. What does China's investment in hydropower mean? Is it an opportunity for low and middle income countries to benefit from China's bold overseas expansion policy? Or is it a program that mostly aims to serve a Chinese agenda? To address this question researchers and organisations from around the world have come together to work on the China Goes Global Study led by the School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS, from the University of London. This is the first comparative analysis of Chinese hydropower dams across Africa and Asia that looks at the effects of these projects on the societies of the host countries. To find out the positive and negative impacts of large dam construction in the case studies we went to visit the indigenous communities in their villages. Researchers conducted over 150 interviews across five countries talking to communities affected by dam projects in Cambodia, Ghana, Malaysia and Nigeria, firms and financiers in China as well as policymakers and industry members. In addition they hosted 40 group discussions and analysed 150 household surveys. There are two main types of contracts that Chinese companies use in large dam projects. One is called an engineering, procurement and construction contract. A turnkey type agreement which means that upon completion of the construction project dam builders hand management and operation of the installation over to a local authority. Researchers look at an example of a turnkey contract in Ghana. Completed in 2013 the Buidam jointly funded by the Ghanaian government and the Chinese Exxon Bank was built by Chinese state-owned construction company Sino Hydro. The Buidam has been on the drawing board since the 1920s but the West was not interested and yet Ghana was hard pressed. The Buidam project brought better infrastructure, opportunities for new jobs and skills in construction and above all greater access to energy for millions of people but this came at a cost. The Buidam sits in a protected area, the Bui National Park up to quarter of which was destroyed. Six villages with over 1200 people had to find a new home and a new livelihood. They moved to a new area where they have had to encounter severe shortage of land and the poor nature of the soils that has affected their livelihood activities in terms of farming. Fishing also the communities directly affected have suffered in terms of where they are and it becomes difficult for them to assess the lake. Since the construction of the dam, illegal mining deep in the heart of the National Park and logging and fishing has increased and this is a major environmental issue. The local communities are criticising the government for their poor oversight. The project calls for a shift away from big one-off payments to people affected by large dam construction towards long-term compensation as well as supplying farmers with pre-planted plots to replace their former lands to avoid delaying their crop yields. The other type of arrangement that Chinese firms frequently use is a build, operate and transfer contract which sees Chinese engineers build the dam and then run and manage it for a number of years, sometimes decades before transferring control to the host country. Researchers look at an example of such a contract in Cambodia in the case of the Kamchai Dam which was likewise co-financed by the Chinese Exim Bank and built by Sino Hydro. As with the Ghanaian example, the Kamchai Dam improves supply of energy but while the cost of electricity has gone down, many communities closest to the dam remain cut off from the grid unable to afford even the connection fee while most of the electricity is used to serve the energy demands of the capital Penong Pen. Even though nobody was resettled, the livelihood was immensely impacted that it's because they lived on the forest. They go to the forest and harvest the products to sell in the markets and because a huge area was caught off from about four of them and as a result they can no longer enter into those areas to harvest those products. The fact that this dam is built at the Boko National Park, there are certain species that were endangered as a result. The Environmental Impact Assessment Report was not released until seven months after the commencement of the project. The late submission of the Environmental Impact Assessment exposes a weak enforcement of Cambodian law and highlights a need for strong cooperation between host countries and Chinese partners. It's really important to understand that in the end it doesn't matter whether the dam builders are Chinese or they're Italian or they're Brazilian or they're Thai or from any other country but what really matters is that the outcome of a dam building is quite similar, never minding who's building the dam. But what we're really seeing is that the role of the national host government in Asia and Africa and elsewhere in the world is really important. Some of the environmental and the social implications can really be mitigated by having a strong local government. For many governments and local authorities a large dam construction is a first and the experience can be demanding and overbearing. What would be really useful is to have an international ranking system not only for Chinese dam builders but also for any other kind of dam builders and to compare who the best firms are that are continuously performing at a very high level that is in line with the World Bank standards for example. And this could really help to build up the accountability and the sustainability of the global hydropower sector. Large hydropower dams are not going to go away because it is a sustainable source of energy because it is a renewable source and because it can mitigate climate change. So the best way that we need to ensure that we can build renewable energy sources is to make sure we assess all impacts. Despite the benefits of hydropower for reducing energy poverty, local people often lose their homes, their livelihoods and their environment suffers in ways that are often ignored. Despite the benefits, host governments and investors may need to find more sustainable alternatives for better or worse.