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DAM-L LS: FT, Guardian, New Scientist, WSJ on WCD (fwd)



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MORE CLIPPINGS ON WCD REPORT

1) Dams and damnation, Financial Times, 11/16/00
2) Super projects fall short in dam commission report, Guardian Unlimited,
11/16/00
3) The great dam scam, Has half a century of dam building done more harm
than good?, New Scientist magazine, 11/18/00
4) Report finds dam projects cause more misery than benefit, Wall Street
Journal, 11/16/00

------------------------
Dams and damnation
Financial Times
Nov 16, 2000
------------------------
http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?id=001116001680&query=dam

COMMENT & ANALYSIS: Dams and damnation: Controversy over large dam projects
in developing countries is starting to dissuade European governments from
getting involved. But protests are falling on deaf ears in India and China,
write Alan Beattie and Kevin Brown:


Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, once declared that dams
were "the temples of modern India". Thousands of activists, fighting
against the building of the controversial Narmada dam in western India,
this week filled the streets of New Delhi to disagree.

They may gain comfort from the concluding report issued today by a
gathering of experts under the title of the World Commission on Dams (WCD),
set up two years ago by the World Bank. The report expresses strong
reservations about large dam projects, which, it says, frequently fail to
deliver promised benefits and greatly underestimate their cost to humans
and the environment.

Neither the protests nor the report spells the end for big dams. Among
governments of developing countries there is a growing backlash against
interference from environmental activists and international agencies. In
addition, the report goes on to set out principles for the future
development of dams that could help governments to justify their projects
in the face of fierce environmental protests.

As if to prove the point, the concrete mixers once again started up on the
Narmada dam this month after a six-year hiatus caused by legal disputes.
For the Indian national and local state governments, which strongly support
the dam, the resumption of construction was a triumph.

"The people of Gujarat have been waiting for this day for 40 years. Now, no
power in the world will be able to stop us from forging ahead with the
project," says Keshubhai Patel, chief minister of Gujurat. The state
declared a half-day holiday for offices and schools to celebrate the event.

Meanwhile leading activists from the main protest organisation, the Narmada
Bachao Andolan (NBA) - "Save the Narmada" - which has been active in the
Narmada valley for more than a decade, expressed fury and went on hunger
strike. "We are not defeated. It's a long road. There are dead ends but we
have to find a new path," says Medha Patkar, a leading activist.

The fall from grace of large dam projects has been dramatic. For most of
the 20th century they were a potent global symbol of economic development,
a physical manifestation of human mastery over nature. The Hoover Dam and
the Tennessee Valley Authority were the showpieces of Franklin D.
Roosevelt's New Deal, bringing hydroelectric power and employment to
Depression-hit America; the Aswan dam was the pride of Egyptian nationalism
under Colonel Nasser. Dams tamed floods, powered cities and made deserts
bloom.

It was the Narmada dam, more accurately known as the Sardar Sarovar project
after Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, Nehru's political adviser, that helped
turn world opinion against big dams. The multi-billion- dollar dam on the
Narmada river - conceived in 1946, approved in 1979 and begun in the late
1980s - was intended to bring irrigation to more than 1.8m drought-affected
hectares of the western states of Gujurat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.
So far, 88 metres of the planned height of 134 metres have been built.

But opponents say it has ended up as a symbol of oppression for the
estimated 320,000 local people, mainly from lower-caste and "tribal"
backgrounds, who will be displaced when the waters rise in the Narmada
valley. The best-known recent pro tester has been Arundhati Roy, the Indian
novelist, who declared in a polemic called The Greater Common Good that
"Big Dams started well but have ended badly. There was a time when Big Dams
moved men to poetry. Not any longer."

The World Bank has been circumspect about dams since 1993, when it withdrew
from the Narmada project after commissioning an independent report that
criticised the project. Some bank officials say privately that it decided
then not to defy the growing weight of public opposition.

The bank, whose president James Wolfensohn visited New Delhi this week,
today says that it funds less than 1 per cent of the large dam projects
that are under way around the world.

The publication of the WCD report may encourage similar doubts among
industrialised countries' governments, some of which help domestic
companies to build dams abroad with trade credit guarantees. Siemens, the
German construction company, received a setback in its bid to build the
Maheshwar dam - part of the Sardar Sarovar complex - when environmental
activists' pressure on the German government prevented the company from
gaining an export guarantee credit. Such groups are also putting direct
pressure on the companies involved. Ogden Corporation, the US contractor,
has become a target of protests in New York.

European governments and export credit agencies are coming under ferocious
pressure to withdraw support for Turkey's proposed hydroelectric dam at
Ilisu, on the Tigris river.

Officially, the Swiss, Italian and British governments are still
considering applications from the construction and engineering companies
Sulzer Hydro, ABB, Impregilo and Balfour Beatty for more than Dollars 700m
in guarantees. But ministers have been shaken by criticism from a
Europe-wide coalition of human rights and environmental groups predicting
mass deportations, environmental degradation and even a regional war over
water supplies involving Iraq if the project goes ahead.

But governments of developing countries may be less impressed. Those of
China - which is building the Three Gorges Project on the Yangtze river -
and India show little sign of being influenced by environmental pressure
groups. Indian ministers have accused the NBA of acting on behalf of
unspecified "foreign interests" and have talked of investigating the
finances of Indian campaign groups.

Nor is there much prospect of campaigners' being able to rely on local
courts to block projects. The Indian Supreme Court last month lifted an
injunction on Sardar Sarovar construction, saying it was a matter for
national and state governments to decide.
"This is a signal to foreign investors that projects will not be impeded by
local protest," says Chittaroopa Palit, an NBA activist. "On a global
level, there is progress. Locally, the situation is regressing."

------------------------
Super projects fall short in dam commission report
Paul Brown
Guardian Unlimited
Thursday November 16, 2000
------------------------
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4092159,00.html

The report of the World Commission on Dams has revealed the terrible damage
done by big dams to people and the environment, writes Paul Brown

Dam critics have challenged the funders of big dams, the World Bank and the
export credit agencies, to halt all support for new projects until the
recommendations in today's report by the World Commission on Dams have been
implemented.

But nowhere in the Commission's 400-page report was such an idea expressed,
so careful were the members not to upset each other and so reach their goal
of all being able to sign a unanimous report.

However, what is clear from the recommendations is that many of the 42,000
big dams already built in the world would not have existed had proper
planning taken place, and many of the most controversial currently on the
stocks should be abandoned.

Many dams have been examined by the Commission. Very few lived up to claims
made for them in the planning stage: they almost always took longer to
build and cost far more than the original estimates.

People affected by the dams, usually the poorest and indigenous groups
without a voice, always came off worst, got little or no compensation and
had their lives ruined.

Those that benefited were the rich and the dam builders who were usually
contractors from the developed world backed by the World Bank and export
credit agencies with no rules about human rights or proper evaluation of
economics.

In a sense there were no surprises - this is what the campaigners have been
telling us for ages, but often without the proper research data to back it
up. Now it is official - big dams have done terrible damage to people, the
environment and better alternatives have generally not even been considered.

On the other hand Nelson Mandela, who launched the report at Canary Wharf
in London, reminded everyone that the picture is not all bleak and that
dams had brought great benefits too. Although millions have suffered,
millions more have made great gains in terms of water and electricity not
available before.

"The problem is not the dams," he said. "It is the hunger. It is the
thirst. It is the darkness of a township. It is the townships and rural
huts without running water, lights or sanitation."

The point he was making is that dams have often been built for the wrong
people and for the wrong reasons.

If the people who benefit from dams are the poor who would not otherwise
have water to drink and grow crops, or electricity for their homes, then
there is a case for them.

If the environment is safeguarded as much as possible, and those displaced
are properly consulted, compensated and found alternative ways of earning a
living, then there is still a case for them. There can be no absolutes,
each case must be dealt with on its merits.

If the report was backed by authority, governments would never again be
able to back projects on the basis that it will provide jobs because home
country contractors could do with the work.

The UK, which is currently "minded to back" the controversial Ilisu Dam
project in Turkey, needs to read the report carefully before putting up
£200m of export guarantees. The Ilisu would flood the Kurd homelands,
destroy archeological sites of international importance, and give the Turks
control over the water to the downstream states of Syria and Iraq - both of
which object.

The project fails to meet any of the conditions the commission demands as
vital to any dam project. The locals have not been consulted, no plan
exists for proper compensation or resettlement, alternatives have not been
considered, and the downstream states have not been satisfied.

In fact, typical of the disastrous past projects detailed in the report.

[Useful graphic - Dam drawbacks]
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/graphic/0,5812,398733,00.html

------------------------
The great dam scam
Has half a century of dam building done more harm than good?
New Scientist magazine
18 November 2000
Fred Pearce
------------------------
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns22658

MANY dams are failing to live up to expectations. Instead they make
flooding worse, and cause ecological havoc and social conflict, says a
report by the World Commission on Dams due out this week.

The report is the first to assess the world's dams--the biggest drain on
aid budgets for the past 50 years, costing $4 billion a year in the 1980s.
So far dam building has driven up to 80 million people from their homes.

Yet one of the most disturbing findings, the commission says, is that few
dams have ever been looked at to see if the benefits outweigh the costs.

A quarter of dams built to supply water deliver less than half the intended
amount, says the report. In a tenth of old reservoirs, the build-up of silt
has more than halved the storage capacity. What's more, by stopping the
flow of silt downstream, dams reduce the fertility of flood plains and
"invariably" cause erosion of coastal deltas.

It's not all bad news, though. Dams irrigate fields that provide up to a
sixth of world food production, while hydroelectric dams power many homes
and factories. Too often, though, the rural poor don't benefit at all--only
the urban and well-off.

The report also concludes that some dams designed to prevent flooding
actually exacerbate it. Such problems will worsen with climate change, it says.

The commission, which is sponsored by the World Bank, backs warnings that
most reservoirs emit greenhouse gases (New Scientist, 3 June, p 4). And it
says dam construction is one of the major reasons for freshwater fish going
extinct and bird species vanishing from flood plains.

The largest dam project ever--the $20 billion Three Gorges dam on the River
Yangtze in China (above)--is mired in controversy over allegations that
much of the money allocated to resettling a quarter of a million people has
gone missing.

Meanwhile, managers of the $4 billion Xiaolangdi dam on China's Yellow
River, part-funded by the World Bank, reported last month that they could
not find buyers for the electricity in China's newly liberalised market for
power.

------------------------
Report finds dam projects cause more misery than benefit
The Wall Street Journal - US Abstracts
Nov 16, 2000
------------------------
http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?id=001116004596&query=dam

An independent report commissioned by the World Bank has discovered that
large dam projects in the developing world are often responsible for more
misery than benefit for the people that they are supposed to help. The
report, which will be published today by the World Commission on Dams,
recommends far-reaching participatory changes in the way dam proposals are
evaluated. It paints a depressing picture of what has happened to various
communities around the world after large, publicly financed dam projects
led to enormous flooding, population resettlement and other adverse
consequences. The report concludes that the dams have failed to produce
adequate economic returns and have led to the impoverishment and suffering
of millions.

Abstracted from: The Wall St Journal


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