Third WCD Forum Meeting
25-27 February 2001 - Cape Town, South Africa

IRN response to the WCD Report
Patrick McCully
Campaigns Director
International Rivers Network

While IRN does not agree with all the contents of the WCD report we welcome it as a major contribution to the debate on dams and to the management of water and energy resources in general. We believe that its recommendations should be implemented by all funders and builders of dams as the minimum criteria necessary before any projects can go ahead.

There has been some confusion regarding the call IRN and our colleagues have made for a moratorium on all dam building until the WCD's recommendations have been adopted. Some have said that we are misrepresenting the WCD's report and calling for an end to all dam building. But a moratorium is by definition conditional. We are not saying end all dam building, but we are saying that now international guidelines for dam building have been proposed that there should be no more dams built unless these guidelines are followed. This is surely only logical and represents a significant concession by anti-dam groups.

IRN welcomes the response to the WCD report from some elements in the dam industry, especially the announcement by Swedish construction company Skanska that they will follow the WCD's recommendations. We also welcome the positive statements on the WCD made by the African and Asian development banks, the US Export-Import Bank and some governments, including those of the UK and Germany. While we are keen to participate in the various multistakeholder processes proposed to discuss how to incorporate the WCD's recommendations into policies at the national and other levels, we also must stress that these must not turn into endless talking shops with little impact on the real world of dam building.

While some industry and government responses have been positive, others have been marked by denial and paranoia. Turkey's General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works have alleged that 'the leading agencies and investors in the sectors of nuclear energy and thermal energy . . . must have influenced the preparation process of the report'. They also insinuated that the WCD was a conspiracy by developed countries who after completing the development of their own water resources are trying to impede progress elsewhere. The Deputy Chairman of Russia's National Commission on Large Dams lambasted the WCD report for having an 'aggressive and offensive format' (did he have a problem with the WCD's lay-out designers?) and repeated the accusation that the WCD was a grand rich-world plot: 'the gentlemen [this ignoring that 4 of the commissioners were women] from WCD . . . are driven not by the care about the native and poor people in Africa or Russia but by the desire to keep the great and well-off countries great and prosperous as long as possible while native tribes should remain in the pristine state'.

The accusation that the WCD was mainly funded by the nuclear and thermal industries is farcical. Anyone can read the list of funders and see who funded the WCD - and that the funders included many of the world's biggest dam construction and engineering companies. The belief that it is an evil First World plot is a little hard to square with the fact that the Chair, Vice-Chair and three other Commissioners came from the South.

My favourite stupid comment on the WCD report comes from Yogendra Prasad, Chairman and Managing Director of India's National Hydroelectric Power Corporation. This eminent gentleman announced that 'Serious doubts arise about credentials and suitability of' the Commissioners who are 'well known to be eristic, acerbic, insouciant and inveterate.' We could play an interesting game and try and guess which adjective applies to which Commissioner. Eristic? Kader Asmal? Lakshmi Jain? (Actually, I'm not sure what it means so I'm sort of taking stabs in the dark). Acerbic? Jose Goldemberg? Insouciant? Judy Henderson? Inveterate (did he mean to say Invertebrate?)? Jan Veltrop?

There is a serious side to this nonsense. This intolerance and irrationality is what communities and activists who question dams are up against on a regular basis.

Some welcome comments on the report have come from the International Hydropower Association, a body that IRN is not used to agreeing with. The IHA says in their response that the WCD 'rightly exposes the plight of the disinherited; those who suffered and were not compensated for their lands, or livelihoods'. We commend the IHA for recognizing the harm caused by dams. And we commend them for stating that 'major past grievances must be addressed through dialogue and negotiation between governments, dam owners and operators and affected parties based on scientific studies and equity principles.'

It is also important that the IHA is in 'basic agreement' on the principles proposed under the WCD's strategic priorities.

The IHA says that 'As an organization committed to promoting the highest standards for the planning and implementation of future projects' they are 'ready to participate with the World Bank in developing realistic guidelines.' We support this goal and are also ready to participate with the World Bank in developing guidelines which are realistic and which incorporate the WCD's recommendations.

There are of course many areas where we disagree with the IHA. One of the key ones is in their assertion that many of the problems with dams are in the past and that things are better now. The IHA and others have criticized the WCD for not recognizing how much things have improved - yet the most recent of the WCD's eight detailed case studies was the Pak Mun Dam in Thailand, completed in 1994, and it was also one of the worst performers in social, environmental, technical and economic terms.

The assertion that the dam industry has cleaned up its house is a fiction. Look at the real world and you see projects that are as bad as anything built in the past: Sardar Sarovar and Maheshwar dams on the Narmada in India, Three Gorges in China, Ilisu in Turkey, and Sondu Miriu in Kenya. These disastrous projects, rife with human rights abuses and other problems, are the reality of the current practices of the dam industry. If the IHA and others are serious about being wanting to be accepted as socially and environmentally responsible organizations they should disown these projects.

If the industry does disown these projects and others like them, IRN and our colleagues will be willing to work with them to promote sustainable and equitable methods of meeting the needs of the world's people for water and energy.

Thank you.