There is no better sign of the mainland's realisation that its 'development at all costs' attitude has to change than acknowledgement by senior officials that the Three Gorges Dam could cause an environmental catastrophe. Just as the project symbolises the nation's economic and technological development, efforts to repair the damage caused by its construction highlight the need for a more sustainable approach to growth.

No one could doubt that the dam across China's mightiest river, the Yangtze, is an engineering marvel. The hydroelectricity it is producing and the floods and droughts that it prevents arguably justify the US$25 billion cost. But there have been other prices to pay for building the world's biggest dam. More than 1.3 million people have been moved, thousands of years of history and culture submerged and one of the river's most scenic stretches has disappeared.

As a forum in Beijing has been told, there are also a number of worrying environmental threats: erosion and landslides on steep hills around the dam, conflicts over land shortages and 'ecological deterioration caused by irrational development'. Then, there are the uncertainties of what the damming of the Yangtze could mean long-term for people living along its banks. Such concerns were expressed by environmentalists during the planning and construction of the dam, but shunned by authorities in the name of politics and progress. On the completion of the dam's wall in 1997, then president Jiang Zemin hailed the event as 'a remarkable feat in the history of mankind to reshape and exploit natural resources'.