Balance of power and conservation

I am currently writing a thesis on water conservation and how water is becoming one of the most valuable resources in the world. The use of dams for power are used all over the world and because it is a renewable resource it has done great job in cutting the use of coal. The World Bank and the IMF have proposed hundreds of dams all over the world many of which would be placed in the Amazon Basin. These dams do have there benefits but do they out weigh the negatives. As world population continues to grow the need for power increases and we cannot continue to use fossil fuels because they are finite so we find alternatives like dams. The amount of damage that these dams cause to the surrounding environment is huge and it destroys habitat and kills wild life. As we dam up these rivers we are cutting water off to people that live further down the river. This water sits behind these huge walls allowing it to evaporate and not allowing us to use it in a fashion that would benefit us in more ways. Power is something that has become a necessity and in many ways we need it to survive. But is it worth the destruction of the environment and the limiting of water to people. Many of the worlds rivers to do not even make it to the ocean any more because people diverting it, damming it or using it for various other reasons. If we were to recharge many of these rivers we would have to destroy the dams and allow the water to flow free again. Unfortunately I do not think that we can have our cake and eat it too, there are sacrifices that are going to have to be made if we are to get away from fossil fuels. I think that we will have to have some dams that destroy habitat but I do not think we need to have the amount of dams that are proposed to be built. I think that if we need wind farms and they destroy the landscape then we are just going to have to deal with it because we only have so many options to choose from. However this does not mean that we should not continue to look and explore other ways because we then may be able to have our cake and eat it too.