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DAM-L News stories on WCD Launch/LS (fwd)
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Wire Stories on the launch of the World Commission on Dams report (Nov. 16
in London).
1) Report criticises dams for human, environmental cost, Reuters, 11/16/00
2) Report Criticizes World's Dams, Associated Press, 11/16/00
3) World Commission on Dams Condemns Past Projects, Proposes New Approach,
InterPress Service, 11/16/00
4) World Bank Urged to Halt All Big Dam Projects, InterPress Service, 11/16/00
5) New Scientist magazine 18 November 2000
------------------------------------
Report criticises dams for human, environmental cost
Reuters - Patricia Reaney
11/16/00
------------------------------------
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=world&Repository=WORLD_REP&Re
positoryStoryID=%2Fnews%2FIDS%2FWorld%2FOUKWD-ENVIRONMENT-DAMS_NEW.XML
LONDON (Reuters) - Dams have delivered major benefits to more than 140
countries but have exacted a high price in human hardship and environmental
damage, experts said on Thursday.
A new report by the World Commission on Dams, an independent body sponsored
by the World Bank and the World Conservation Union (IUCN), calls for a new
approach to planning and building dams that takes into account the needs
and desires of people.
"This report provides answers and solutions," former South African
president Nelson Mandela, invited to unveil the document, said at the
launch in London.
At 400 pages and two years in the making, the report is the first
independent, systematic assessment of large dams around the world.
While extolling their power, water and farming benefits, the report
concludes that in many cases fewer people might have been displaced, more
livelihoods salvaged and the loss of fish and birds might have been avoided
if large dams had been better planned.
"The report is vigorous without being rigorous," Kader Asmal, the chairman
of the commission, told a news conference.
"It shows how nations can make the best development decisions every time."
Achim Steiner, the secretary general of the World Commission on Dams (WCD),
said the most fundamental negative finding was the systematic failure to
account fully for the social impact dams have had on communities they
displaced and on those downstream from them.
"We estimate there are about 40-80 million people that have been displaced
by dams. You are talking about a very significant number of people,"
Steiner said in an interview.
The 12-member commission which includes representatives from industry, dam
owners, governments and environmentalists, also found that many dams are
run inefficiently, involve cost overruns and have led to accidents and the
loss of flood plains, forests, fisheries and wildlife.
The commission recommends that large dam projects should only be approved
if they meet a framework and guidelines, set out in the report, that
recognise the rights of and assess the risks to all interested parties.
The World Bank welcomed the report and said it firmly believes in the
process of reaching out and encouraging dialogue.
"Dams offer huge benefits but sometimes at a large cost. The Bank is
currently funding less than one percent of dam projects worldwide within
strict environmental and social guidelines," World Bank President James
Wolfensohn said in a statement.
ACTIVISTS SEIZE ON REPORT
Critics of dams immediately seized on the report as a vindication. They
challenged the funders of the $42 billion per year dam industry, including
the World Bank and export credit agencies, to stop supporting all dam
projects unless they meet the report's criteria. They also called for
compensation for the social and environmental damage caused by dams.
"Had the planning process proposed by the WCD been followed in the past,
many dams would not have been built," Patrick McCully of the
California-based International Rivers Network said in a statement.
The report could influence the future of China's Three Gorges dam, the dams
on India's Narmada river, the Ilisu dam in Turkey, San Roque in the
Philippines, Bujagali in Uganda and Ralco in Chile among others.
Asmal said the report drew no unilateral conclusions, adding that
governments must decide what reviews should take place.
The report said China and India had half the world's 45,000 dams. Dams
account for 19 percent of electricity generated worldwide, and 24 countries
generate more than 90 percent of their power from dams.
------------------------------------
Report Criticizes World's Dams
By Ian Phillips
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, Nov. 16, 2000; 2:14 p.m. EST
------------------------------------
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20001116/aponline141415_000.htm
LONDON -- Tens of millions of people displaced. Livelihoods wrecked.
Fragile ecosystems destroyed. Animal species made extinct.
Large dams have brought much-needed power and water to the world, but their
toll on the environment has been unacceptable, according to a report
released Thursday by the World Commission on Dams. The report proposed
strict new guidelines for future projects.
After two years of research focused mainly on nine major dams - including
Grand Coulee in Washington state - the commission said previous evaluations
of the possible damaging side effects of dams were "few in number, narrow
in scope ... and inadequately linked to decisions on operations."
Among its findings: 40-80 million people displaced worldwide and rarely
compensated by governments; an irreversible loss of fish and aquatic
species; and huge losses of forests and wetlands.
In a speech to environmentalists in London to mark the report's release,
Former South African President Nelson Mandela said Thursday that he wished
the findings had been available when he sanctioned the construction of some
of his country's 539 dams.
"There is a part of me that resented having to choose the lesser of two
evils - relocate some so that all may have water, or forgo a dam, thus
slowing human development," he said.
The 12-member commission was set up in 1998 by the World Bank and World
Conservation Union.
The body, which includes representatives from industry, dam owners,
governments and environmentalists, called for dam projects to sustain
rivers and livelihoods and for greater efficiency and accountability.
It also said alternative methods should be studied, that more effort was
needed to gain public approval, and that in-depth environmental impact
studies should be mandatory.
It proposed reviews of all existing large dams.
James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, which in recent years has
markedly scaled back its financing of dams, said he would present the
findings to the bank's 180 member nations. A decision on whether to
implement the guidelines when financing future projects is expected in
February.
"This report gives us a basis upon which we can move toward trying to deal
with the healing of the wounds," Wolfensohn said.
Half the world's dams were built for irrigation purposes and account for 12
to 16 percent of the world's food production, while others act as flood
defenses and to produce hydropower and water supply.
Dams account for 19 percent of electricity generated worldwide, and 24
countries generate more than 90 percent of their power from dams.
More than 100 non-governmental organizations called Thursday for a
suspension of all dam projects until they are reviewed in accordance with
the committee's report.
"If the builders and funders of dams follow the recommendations ... the era
of destructive dams should come to an end," said Patrick McCully of the
California-based International Rivers Network.
There are 45,000 large dams in the world, most built in the 1970s, when an
average of two to three new large projects were commissioned each day to
help meet escalating demands for water. China and India have half the
world's dams.
Construction has tailed off in recent years, but projects such as the
Sardar Sarovar Dam across India's Narmada River are still a source of
controversy. India's Supreme Court recently gave the go-ahead for work to
continue, dismissing widespread concerns the dam will flood villages and
displace hundreds of thousands of people.
In China, 10,000 villagers were recently moved away from the massive Three
Gorges Dam - a figure expected to climb to more than 1 million.
The best documented examples of disrupted fish migrations are from the
Columbia River in Washington state, where an estimated 5-14 percent of the
adult salmon population are killed "at each of the eight large dams they
pass while swimming up the river," the commission said.
In addition to Grand Coulee, the other dams studied by the committee were
Pak Mun in Thailand, Aslantas in Turkey, Glomma-Laagen Basin in Norway,
Kariba in Zambia and Zimbabwe, Tarbela in Pakistan, Tucurui in Brazil, and
Gariep and Vanderkloof in South Africa.
------------------------------------
DEVELOPMENT: World Commission on Dams Condemns Past Projects, Proposes New
Approach
By Danielle Knight
InterPress Service
Nov. 16, 2000
------------------------------------
http://www.oneworld.net/anydoc2.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eoneworld%2Eorg%2F
ips2%2Fnov00%2F02%5F24%5F003%2Ehtml
WASHINGTON, Nov 16 (IPS) - Confirming what dam critics have long argued, a
report by the World Commission on Dams (WCD), released Thursday, says dams
often fail to deliver promised benefits while devastating the lives of
millions of poor people in developing countries and degrading the environment.
The precedent-setting and much-anticipated report, which outlines
guidelines and standards for future development projects, was unanimously
endorsed by the WCD's 12 commissioners, whose membership includes affected
communities in developing countries as well as dam builders and governments.
The report, officially launched in London by Nelson Mandela, the former
South African president, acknowledges the benefits of large dams, including
electricity, flood control, water storage, and irrigation.
But it says ''in too many cases an unacceptable and often unnecessary price
has been paid to secure those benefits, especially in social and
environmental terms, by people displaced, by communities downstream, by
taxpayers and by the natural environment''.
The WCD report also provides evidence that large dams have failed to
produce as much electricity, provide as much water or control as much flood
damage as their backers have claimed.
The lack of equity in the distribution of the promised benefits of dams has
''called into question the value of many dams in meeting water and energy
development needs when compared with alternatives,'' says the report.
In terms of the social impacts of dams, the Commission found that the
negative effects were frequently neither adequately assessed nor accounted
for, it says.
Some 40 to 80 million people have been physically displaced by dams
worldwide, it says.
''Those who were resettled rarely had their livelihoods restored, as
resettlement programmes have focused on physical relocation rather than the
economic and social development of the displaced,'' it says.
Millions of people living downstream from dams - particularly those reliant
on natural flood-plain function and fisheries - have also suffered serious
harm to their livelihoods and the future productivity of their resources
has been put at risk, says the Commission.
The report also said efforts to counter the environmental impacts of large
dams, such as extinction of fish species and losses of forest and wetlands,
have ''met with limited success due to the lack of attention to
anticipating and avoiding such impacts, the poor quality and uncertainty of
predictions, the difficulty of coping with all impacts, and the only
partial implementation and success of mitigation measures''.
The WCD came to these conclusions after a two year process of assessing the
impacts of dams worldwide which included research, consultations with
experts, and public hearings.
Case studies were compiled on specific dams in Brazil, Norway, Thailand,
Turkey, the United States and Zambia, with special attention paid to dams
in China and India, two countries building hydroelectric projects at a
rapid pace. At least 45,000 large dams have been built worldwide, according
to the report.
Based on these findings, the commission recommends that decision makers,
including governments and financial institutions, like the World Bank, take
a completely different approach to water and energy development.
''We have to bring new voices, perspectives and criteria into
decision-making, and we need to develop an approach that will build
consensus around the decisions reached,'' says the report.
The Commission recommends that no dam be built without the agreement of
affected people. It also suggests that comprehensive and participatory
assessments of the needs to be met, and alternatives for meeting these
needs should be developed before proceeding with any new project.
The report recommends that periodic reviews that involve all stakeholders
should be done for existing dams to assess the impact, and possible
decommissioning. Mechanisms should also be developed to provide social
reparations for those who are suffering the impacts of dams, and to restore
damaged ecosystems, the report said.
Immediately upon release of the report, environmental and human rights
organisations challenged the main financiers of dams, especially the World
Bank and government export credit lending agencies, to halt all support for
dams until the Commission's recommendations are fully implemented.
''Had the planning process proposed by the WCD been followed in the past,
many dams would not have been built,'' says Patrick McCully, campaigns
director for the California-based International Rivers Network, an advocacy
organisation.
A statement released on Thursday by more than 100 civil society groups
worldwide listed ongoing and planned projects which they said are ''clearly
in breach'' of the WCD guidelines, including China's Three Gorges dam, the
dams on India's Narmada river, the Ilisu dam in Turkey, dams in the
Brazilian Amazon and the Uruguay River Basin, the Bujagali dam in Uganda
and the Lesotho Highlands Water Project in southern Africa.
Environmental and rights groups are putting immediate pressure on British,
Swiss and Italian governments, which are considering requests for export
credit guarantees amounting to more than 700 million dollars from companies
that want to build the Ilisu, the largest dam ever planned for Turkey.
The project would dam the Tigris River near the Iraqi and Syrian border,
enabling Turkey to block flows of the river to Iraq. It would force the
resettlement of tens of thousands of Kurds, who strongly oppose the dam,
and inundate some revered archaeological sites.
German, Swiss and Canadian export credit lending agencies are supporting
China's Three Gorges Dam, scheduled to be completed between 2009 and 2013.
The project would create a gigantic reservoir in the middle of the Yangtze
- China's longest river - evicting more than 1 million people.
Water will rise throughout most of the Three Gorges area, permanently
flooding about 32,000 hectares of prime farmland, 13 cities, 140 towns, 657
factories, and hundreds of archaeological sites - some more than 6,000
years old.
''It is time for the iron triangle of governments, dam industry and funders
to cease building dams until they have incorporated the WCD's
recommendations into their policies and practices,'' says Liane Greeff of
Environmental Monitoring Group, an organisation based in Cape Town, South
Africa that has been acting as a liaison between the WCD secretariat and
communities impacted by dams.
While all 12 Commissioners have endorsed the report, Commissioner Medha
Patkar, leader of the Narmada Bachao Andolan movement against large dams in
India, included a separate opinion statement in the report that expressed
concerns she felt were not given a prominent focus. Patkar says that the
inclusive, transparent process of decision-making promoted in the report
would be a ''great advance'', but does not go far enough.
''Even with rights recognised, risks assessed and stakeholders identified,
existing iniquitous power relations would too easily allow developers to
dominate and distort such processes,'' writes Patkar. (END/IPS/EN/DV/dk/da/00)
------------------------------------
FINANCE: World Bank Urged to Halt All Big Dam Projects
By Gumisai Mutume
InterPress Service
Nov. 16, 2000
------------------------------------
http://www.oneworld.net/anydoc2.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eoneworld%2Eorg%2F
ips2%2Fnov00%2F04%5F11%5F006%2Ehtml
WASHINGTON, Nov 16 (IPS) _ Non-governmental organisations say the World
Bank should halt activities on all new big dam projects until it meets
recommendations carried in the World Commission on Dams report released
Thursday.
The World Bank has been the largest single source of finance for large dam
projects since the 1950s, funding more than 500 large dams in 92 countries.
An array of these projects have displaced 10 million people, caused
environmental damage and pushed borrowers further into debt.
''Never hesitant to exact loan repayment in perpetuity for projects it has
funded - even failed projects - the World Bank has never been forced to pay
for the destruction it has caused to millions of people's lives and the
environment,'' notes a statement endorsed by more than 100 NGOs including
the International Rivers Network, Brazil's Movement of People Affected by
Dams and India's Save the Narmada Movement.
Now it is time to pay up, the NGOs say. They want the Bank to establish an
independent, open and participatory review of all planned and ongoing dam
projects and pay reparations to all communities who have been harmed.
The WCD report is the first independent review of big dam projects and
comes out of a two-year consultative process. The report notes that big
dams have largely failed to provide as much electricity or water as
predicted, but have regularly incurred huge cost-overruns, have benefited
the well- off, disrupted the lives of indigenous communities and caused the
loss of natural resources.
The WCD comprised 12 commissioners from various backgrounds and was chaired
by South Africa's education minister, Kader Asmal. It was initially set up
with support from the World Bank and the World Conservation Union (IUCN) in
response to mounting resistance to big dams.
WCD estimates that the Bank has provided almost 75 billion dollars (in 1998
dollars) for 538 large dams across the world, including some of the world's
most controversial ones. The Bank was forced out of the Narmada Dam project
in India in the early 1990s.
By 1997 there were an estimated 800,000 dams around the world of which
approximately 45,000 are categorised as large dams - more than 15 metres
high. Today nearly half of the world's rivers have at least one large dam.
WCD recommends that no big dam should be built without the agreement of the
affected people, and the priority should be to maximise existing water and
energy systems before embarking on new projects.
It calls for periodic, participatory reviews on existing dams for possible
decommissioning where projects fail to meet set standards. Projects should
only be carried out if no feasible alternatives exist.
The Bank currently has five dam-related projects in the pipeline: two large
dams in China, an energy sector loan promoting hydropower development in
Nepal, the Bujugali Falls Dam in Uganda and the Nam Theun 2 Dam in Laos.
''Our involvement in large dams has been decreasing and is focusing more on
financing dam rehabilitation and safety and much less on financing new
dams,'' says Bank president James Wolfensohn.
''This report will help guide our work in the future and I will immediately
pass it to the Bank's shareholders. The critical test for us will be
whether our borrowing countries and project financiers accept the
recommendations of the Commission and want to build on them.''
The decline in financing was not a Bank initiative. Rather it has been in
response to growing social protests across the globe, which saw the
collapse of a number of prominent projects.
The Bank began funding large dams during the 1950s. At its peak, between
1970 and 1985 it was putting 2 billion dollars annually into dam building.
The figure rises to 4.5 billion dollars between 1980 and 1984 if funding
from the Asian, Inter-American, and African Development Banks is included.
Collectively, the multilateral and regional development banks have
committed more than 125 billion dollars to the funding of big dams.
The decline in financing only came in the early 1990s, but big dams are
still being built thanks to Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) public finance
institutions, which have taken over the Bank's funding role in this area.
These largely unaccountable institutions have part-financed numerous large
dams such as Chixoy (Guatemala), Ghazi Barota and Tarbela (Pakistan),
Kedung Ombo (Indonesia), the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (Lesotho) and
Pangue Dam (Chile).
Unlike the multilateral development banks, most ECAs ''generally lack
policies on environmental and social issues and do not necessarily adhere
to internationally accepted standards and guidelines'', notes the WCD report.
While the Bank claims that its operations have improved in recent years,
proposed projects such as Bujugali Falls Dam in Uganda and Nam Theun 2 Dam
in Laos reveal it still has much to learn, notes Aviva Imhof of the
International Rivers Network (IRN).
Imhof says these projects would not conform to WCD guidelines, if they
continue according to their current plans.
Allegations of corruption have dogged the Bujugali dam project - it was not
subject to competitive bidding, it will be built within a few miles of two
other dams, and the cumulative impacts on the river are unknown.
The 50-metre-high Nam Theun 2 Dam, planned for the fourth largest tributary
of the Mekong, is the largest and most controversial hydropower project
planned for Laos. It is located only 50 kilometres upstream from the
already completed Nam Theun-Hinboun Dam.
A 1997 Bank study on Alternatives to Nam Theun 2 instead, focused on how
Laos could meet its commitments to provide electricity to Thailand, rather
than on other options by which water and other resources could be utilised
to provide revenue and alternative livelihoods to affected communities.
No studies have been done on how the resources of the area could be managed
to balance watershed protection and avoid the serious environmental harm
expected.
''For planners and engineers of big dams their past mistakes have served
only to add to the majestic arc of their learning curve,'' says Arundhati
Roy, the Booker Prize-winning author from India and supporter of the Save
the Narmada Movement.
''It is time for them to get off their learning curve, which has devastated
the lives of millions of people, and actually learn,'' Roy says in a statement.
Sceptics fear that the World Bank will not be moved by any of the findings
in the report having in the past ignored reports produced even by its own
internal watchdogs on other lending activities such as resettlement.
In 1994 the pleas of some 2,154 organisations for the Bank to place a
moratorium on large dams fell on deaf ears. The Bank has never conducted an
internal review of actual performance of large dams according to the World
Commission on Dams
But Imhof says activists are hopeful, and the new reports vindicates what
they have been saying for two decades _ large dams harm poor communities
and generally are not cost-effective.
''The commission has no power to enforce its recommendations to the Bank,''
says says Imhof. ''However, the Bank has been involved in this process from
the beginning and we believe that because of this commitment to the
process, there is a big onus on them to follow the guidelines.''
(END/IPS/EN/IF/gm/da/00)
------------------------
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.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
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