Notes from the Chair

Dams and Development
Harnessing Collective Energies
By Kader Asmal

On 16 November 2000 in London, the World Commission on Dams (WCD) launched “Dams And Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making” - a report which will have a profound impact not only on the future role of the $42 billion dam industry, but on how to develop and manage water and energy resources in the new millennium.

Within 24 hours, WCD Chairman Kader Asmal and Dr. Klaus Toepfer, Director-General of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), met with UN Member States and presented the report to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. That same day, across the Atlantic, others from the Commission presented their key findings to 300 investors, bankers, insurers and international environmental monitors at the UNEP Financial Services Initiative in Frankfurt, Germany. United Nations agencies - especially UNEP, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, the World Health Organization - and the UN Foundation had been “present at the creation” of the WCD, playing distinct and critical supporting roles in its comprehensive, global work programme, while allowing it the independence to establish credibility and legitimacy among all constituents. Some of these UN partners appear ready to be “present at the implementation” to ensure the report makes a difference in institutions and individual lives.

Why? Because so much is at stake, because the model for dams could work for other contentious issues, because the report is a direct response to Mr. Annan’s Millennium Conference challenge, and because the United Nations is uniquely positioned to oversee negotiations that come out of the WCD framework. But to understand the nature of those potential negotiations, one must first appreciate the origins of the debate.

FAO Photo

Dams have been built for thousands of years - to manage flood waters, harness water as hydropower, supply water for drinking and the industry, and irrigate fields. Today, there are over 45,000 large dams in the world; one third of all countries rely on hydropower for more than half their electricity supply, and large dams generate 19 per cent of electricity overall. In addition, some 30 to 40 per cent of the 271 million hectares irrigated worldwide rely on dams.

But the last fifty years have also highlighted the performance and the social and environmental impacts of large dams. They have fragmented and transformed the world’s rivers, while global estimates suggest that 40 million to 80 million people have been displaced by reservoirs. Dams have become one of the most hotly contested issues in sustainable development today. The report is the culmination of an unprecedented global public policy process over a two-year period to provide consensus to what had become an increasingly bitter and divisive debate.

In developing the report, the WCS, made up of twelve very diverse commissioners from all sides of the debate, from engineering company executives to anti-dam activists, received 947 submissions and conducted detailed reviews of eight large dams and country reviews in India and China. A survey of 125 large dams was also undertaken, along with 17 thematic reviews on social, environmental and economic issues, alternatives to dams, and governance and institutional processes. On the day of the launch, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson spoke of the great service the WCD has done for the international community “through the compilation of closely argued analysis and concrete recommendations (providing) us all with a road map for moving forward in our shared responsibility to make all human rights a reality for all people”.

Based on this extensive knowledge and compelling evidence, the Commission found that:

• Dams have made an important and significant contribution to human development, and the benefits derived from them have been considerable;
• Large dams have, however, demonstrated a marked tendency towards schedule delays and cost overruns, as well as often falling short of physical and economic targets, such as predicted water and electricity services;
• Large dams have led to the loss of forests and wildlife habitat and of aquatic biodiversity of upstream and downstream fisheries. The Commission found that efforts to counter the ecosystem impact of large dams had met with limited success;
• Large dams have also resulted in negative social impacts, which reflect a failure to assess and account for displaced and resettled people, as well as downstream communities. Mitigation, compensation or resettlement programmes were often inadequate.

The report argues that it is not necessary to trade off one person’s gain against another’s loss. Rather, by negotiating outcomes through multi-criteria analysis - technical, environmental, economic, social and financial - the development effectiveness of water and energy projects would be improved, with unfavourable projects being eliminated at an early stage. The Commission recommended:

• A set of five core values for future decision-making - equity, sustainability, efficiency, participatory decision-making and accountability.
• A rights and risks approach for identifying all legitimate stakeholders in negotiating development choices and agreements. “Dams and Development” builds its fundamental rights-based approach to decision-making on a range of UN declarations, notably the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1949), the UN Declaration on the Right to Development (1986), and the UN Conference on Environment and Development’s Rio Declaration(1992), promoting environmentally sustainable development. It uses this framework as a basis for developing strategic priorities, criteria and guidelines that can help those developing water and energy resources to not only meet development needs but also reflect the letter and spirit of these declarations in the process.
• Seven strategy priorities for water and energy resources development: gaining public acceptance; comprehensive options assessment; addressing existing dams; sustaining rivers and livelihoods; recognizing entitlements and sharing benefits; ensuring compliance; and sharing rivers for peace, development and security.

Although just launched, initial reactions to the report have been largely positive, showing a real will and determination from all sides of the debate to ensure that the guidelines become an active component of water and energy policy-making in the future. Not all reactions have been glowing; indeed, some from the dam industry have criticized the tone as well as the rigour of the criteria and guidelines, but the diversity, range and profile of voices reveal a report that must be absorbed and taken seriously.

But there has also been positive response from the private sector. Skanska Group issued a statement saying that it intends to apply the WCD guidelines for all future hydropower projects. Axel Wenblad, Vice-President of Environmental Affairs at the Skanska Group, said that the report “represents a major stride for sustainable development” and “can serve as a model for dealing with other types of controversial infrastructure projects”. In addition, James Wolfensohn, World Bank President, praised the report and its relevance to dam-building in the future, saying that “no country constructing a dam will want to ignore a report of this weight, the most complete that has ever been done”.

Other organizations which have already said that they will seek to use the Commission’s guidelines include: the Export-Import Bank of the United States, which has supported many large dams built by American firms in developing countries; the Department for International Development of the British Government; and the African Development Bank.

No one is under the illusion that implementing the WCD report will be easy, and many agencies and institutions will take a huge amount of persuading to review their water and energy development policies. The report is an important start, however, in ushering in an era where constructive dialogue and consensus overrides division, polarization and inertia. Already, the reactions to the report show a clear dichotomy between those who believe that business as usual will prevail and those ready to engage and debate a better way of doing business.

UN agencies are uniquely placed to take the debate forward towards implementation, and the Commission has called on them to review their technical guidelines in the light of the report and to support capacity-building for comprehensive “options assessment” in developing countries. A range of opportunities exists for doing so, and WCD partners are exploring the linkages with ongoing UN activities, such as the Rio + 10 review, planned for Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002.

The WCD report is a milestone in the evolution of dams as a development option and offers a clear charter for the future. In the words of Nelson Mandela, comparing the Commission’s work to his own experiences: “It is one thing to find fault with an existing system. It is another thing altogether, a more difficult task, to replace it with an approach that is better.”

The World Commission on Dams, the most comprehensive, independent and inclusive global review of dams ever undertaken, has succeeded in doing just that.

Prof. Kader Asmal is the Minister of Education of South Africa and Chairman of the World Commission on Dams.