Infrastructural projects are viewed by the developing countries as strategies for supporting future activities of the individual countries. The developing nations have plans of engaging in extensive agriculture, industrialization and other economic practices that will require a lot of finances to facilitate, but improve the economic output of the individual nations. However, the issue of cost and time overruns stand the most significant challenge faced by the developing nations while trying to complete their various infrastructural projects. The case study Hidden Cost of Infrastructure Projects-The Case of Building Dams reveal that both developing and developed nations have to struggle with cost and time overrun issues when completing the mega infrastructure projects. Cost and time overrun issues faced by the nations result from a variety of courses, some of which are avoidable whereas, others unavoidable based on the conditions of the individual nations completing the projects. Although the cost and time overrun issues make it challenging for the projects to attain break-even, the mega-infrastructural projects, especially construction of dams remain very popular among the developing nations of South America, Asia and Africa. In the meantime, the developing nations are the ones which are more likely to experience the challenges of cost and time overruns. Significant number of the mega infrastructural projects completed or on-going in the developing nations have proved to be a burden and instead of benefiting the economies of the individual countries, they worsen the economic statuses of the countries. There is a need for the nations, especially developing nations, to come up with strategies of setting mega projects such that the time and cost overruns are not realized. Various stakeholders need to adopt the alternatives to the mega projects to minimize on cost of developmental infrastructural projects.
Causes of Cost and Time Overrun
Time and cost overrun challenges experienced by the developing countries working on infrastructural projects result from various causes. The first cause of such overruns is underestimation which results to setting time and financial budgets that is far less than the actual cost and time required to complete the projects ( Akhund et al., 2017) . The experts and consultants suggest financial and time budgets that are way below the time and cost it would take to complete the projects. According to the mega-dams constructing case study, an average overrun of 44% of the scheduled time and 96% of the budgeted cost are experienced for every mega dams constructed in the developing nations. Since this has become a trend in various developing nations of the world, it is clear that the plans for the dams are far underestimated. Another cause of the time and cost overruns is poverty among the developing nations. The high poverty rates in the individual nations put the governments at a position where they cannot raise sufficient amount of money to facilitate the projects within the scheduled time as they have to take care of the basic needs of health and food for their nations. Resultantly, they have to spend time generating the money to facilitate movement of the uncompleted projects to the next level of completion. A lot of time is consumed and the cost overrun result due to increasing demand and cost of materials for construction overtime. Thirdly, lack of sufficient supervision contributes to the cost and time overruns ( Akhund et al., 2017) . The experts responsible for the completion of the projects do not focus enough on resource management. The resources are underutilized and a lot of the allocated resources wasted. The cost substantially increases as a result and the utilization of labour during completion of the projects create room for extended time taken to complete the projects.
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Why Mega Dam Construction Are Popular Among Developing World
Despite the history of large cost and time overruns associated with the mega dam construction, they remain popular among the developing word for various reasons. Some of the key reasons for popularity among the developing countries include, anticipated high energy requirement in the countries in future, urban water supply, need for irrigation farming in future, need for inland transportation and flood control.
Anticipated High Energy Requirement
Developing nations are characterized with increasing population and industrialization rates. Most of the countries focus on creating 24 hour economies for their major cities and investing heavily in various production industries to facilitate economic growth of the various nations. Running the industries and supporting the 24 hour economies require substantial energy supply. Meanwhile, fossil sources of energy are considered harmful and cause substantial harm to the environment ( Vidal, 2017) . The governments of the developing nations consider supplying the citizens and industries with the safe and renewable energy. Hydroelectric power plants are the leading sources of the electricity that the government plan to supply to the nations to facilitate economic development through industrialization. Dams are good for harnessing the power that is required for supporting industrialization in the developing nations. Therefore, despite the challenges history, the developing countries insist on mega dam constructions to help realization of future sufficient power productions.
Urban Water Supply
Urbanization is among the most eminent trends in developing nations with numerous emerging towns around industrialized regions. While urban areas are welcoming more people, water supply remains a challenge and affects the environment and healthcare wellbeing of the residents. The government of the developing nations, however, have the obligation of ensuring clean water supply to the populations in the urban areas ( Vidal, 2017) . Dams have potentials of containing sufficient water to supply to the urban all year round. Water in the dam can also be treated and set ready for supply. Larger dams can contain more water than relatively smaller ones. Since the population increase create need for more water, developing nation prefer constructing mega dams to store enough water for the urban supply.
Need for Irrigation Water
Agriculture contributes to substantial percentages of the developing world’s economies. For developing countries, agriculture remains the biggest economic drivers and contributors to the national revenues. However, unpredictable weather conditions caused threaten this farming activities. The governments of the developing nations intend to maintain agriculture which is threatened by changing climate. Dams are viewed by the developing nations as water storage enough to support irrigation practices ( Cakmak,2001) . The governments therefore, have to construct mega dams to contain enough water for irrigating the crops.
Flood Control
Many developing nations are affected by floods during heavy rains, which compromises on their activities, result to loss of properties and lives ( Asher, 2019) . Mega dam can help diverting substantial volumes of the river water and prevent river vomiting during high rainy seasons. 
(Asher, 2019)
Need for Inland Transportation
Water transportation is relatively cheaper and safer for the environment. Inland water transportation, however, is compromised by the unavailability of inland water bodies capable of containing large ships for transportation. Waterfall and rapids in the course of rivers also make them unsupportive for transportation purposes. Mega dams remain the reliable inland water transport networks which make the developing nations’’ government prioritize constructing more of them despite hidden costs.
Argument for the Construction of Mega Dam
Construction of the mega dams is necessary, especially for the developing nations. The developing nations experience high population growth rate that need to be supplied with sufficient food. Small dams which are suggested to be solution to the cost and time overruns associated with large dams cannot store sufficient water to meet the required supply to irrigate large agricultural farms, which are the primary source of food for the growing populations. Without the mega dams, irrigation of the agricultural farms may be challenging which may disrupt the dream of food security among the developing countries. Secondly, mega dam have the potential of generating sufficient power to be used as energy provision for running the industrial operation and supporting domestic needs that involve energy. The government is therefore, obligated to plan for the future of their individual countries through building mega dams with potential of supporting future energy need in the countries.
Thirdly, floods are major destructors of the environment and hinder development, especially in the rural areas where agricultural production and settlement in flood prone areas is compromised. Flooding also cause adverse health effects through encouraging spread of diseases like cholera. Governments’ responsibility on the other side is to protect the citizens against diseases and destructions that result from the floods and other avoidable disasters. Building the dams is an effective initiative of controlling the floods and supporting the citizen from the dangers. Fourthly, building the mega dams is necessary because it creates huge enough reservoir to facilitate water supply to the developing urban areas and eliminate challenges to urbanization. It is therefore, a tough but necessary call for the governments of developing nations to ignore the history of challenges associated with mega dam construction and proceed to construct them.
Argument against Construction of Mega Dams
Building mega dams is associated with many benefits to both developed and developing nations of the world. However, the side effects of building the mega dams are significant and cannot be ignored. First is the issue of cost and time overrun ( Asher, 2019) . Mega dams constructions have a history of consuming too much of the countries resources and taking too much time till their completion. According to the case study, constructing many but small dams are much easier to plan and the time and resource errors during planning is simpler. The underestimation issue result to consumption of too many resources and forces the government to seek loans from other nations or international organizations to finance the construction processes. Resultantly, the countries, especially developing nations are left struggling with huge debts which in turn compromise on the economic development of the nations as a lot of generated funds in the country are spent on settling the international loans.
The second reason why government should avoid construction of the mega dams is because of the high maintenance costs. Mega dams are meant to support the country. However, the goals of their construction are hardly achieved as they turn to be costly, needing too high amounts to maintain, a factor that make attaining the breakeven level challenging ( Asher, 2019) . Thirdly, most of the mega dams are underutilized and their full potentials are not realised. Resultantly, the value of investment input during their construction becomes a challenge to realize because more input is involved at the expense of realizing economic development due to their presence. Government should therefore, consider alternatives to the mega dams to avoid the negative attributes associated to construction of the mega dams.
Summary
Construction of major dams is advantageous, especially to the developing nations in various ways. The mega dams can supply sufficient water to urban areas, enable generation of enough energy to run the industries, facilitate inland water transport, enable control of flooding and its side effects and encourage agricultural production through supporting irrigations practices. Meanwhile, significant cost and time issues associated to the mega dams raise questions whether they should be constructed by the developing and other nations. Other significant negative attributed associated with large dam construction include, consuming too much resources on maintenance, encouraging underutilization and their inability to meet the specific goals for which they are constructed. Both negative and positive impacts of constructing the mega dams among developing nations of the world are reasonable. The decision to construct or not should be based on strategies to enhance full utilization of the mega dams and ability of the nation to control the side effects.
References
Akhund, M. A., Khoso, A. R., Memon, U., & Khahro, S. H. (2017). Time overrun in construction projects of developing countries. Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research , 3 (5), 124-129. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318635640_Time_Overrun_in_Construction_Projects_of_Developing_Countries
Asher, C. (2019, January 2). Mega-dam costs outweigh benefits, global building spree should end: Experts . Mongabay Environmental News. https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/mega-dam-costs-outweigh-benefits-global-building-spree-should-end-experts/
Cakmak, C. (2001). The role of dams in development. https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/33/009/33009925.pdf?r=1&r=1
Vidal, J. (2018, February 14). Why is Latin America so obsessed with mega dams? | John Vidal . The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/may/23/why-latin-america-obsessed-mega-dams
