6. Fifth session: Closure

At the opening of the fifth and final session, the Forum Liaison Group presented a proposal for the structure and content of the follow-up mechanism, which had been agreed by all members of the FLG. This proposal was presented in plenary by Refaat Abdel-Malek of Harza Engineering.

The proposal called for a follow-up Dams and Development Unit (DDU) with a two-year mandate. It would be administratively hosted by UNEP, which would provide human resources, administration and financial management services to it. The unit would be located at a suitable venue, and not necessarily at UNEP Headquarters in Nairobi. Policy, programme and other substantive matters relating to the unit would be under the authority of the unit’s Dams and Development Governance Group made up of the current members of the Forum Liaison Group, supplemented by the Executive Director of UNEP (or his representative). Following comment from the floor, the Dams and Development Governance Group may need to give serious consideration to the suggestion that the group be further strengthened through the presence of a Southern government and the representative of a donor agency.

The Dams and Development Governance Group would also agree the design of a new Dams and Development Forum, based on the current WCD Forum but with a membership amended as appropriate, to follow, guide and support the work of the unit. The new Forum would meet within one year of the DDU starting work. The Dams and Development Unit itself would be light, employing some 3 senior professionals and appropriate support staff. Continuity in staffing with the WCD secretariat would be actively sought. The unit would work to a mandate based on the items set out by the Forum meeting in its third session.

Following presentation of the compromise proposal, it was adopted by the Forum by acclamation. The Liaison Group, in consultation with members of the Forum and assisted energy needs of a population that has suffered too long with insufficient services in these two areas. While welcoming the report and stressing that it offered and important set of guidelines to improve current development practice, his task was to seek the most appropriate trade-offs between thoroughness in implementing the letter and spirit of the guidelines, and the urgency of meeting South Africa’s development needs. He expressed what others had noted before, that the guidelines could not be taken as a set of hard-and-fast rules applicable immediately to all current and planned large dam developments, but instead as something that had to be absorbed and adapted, introduced at an appropriate pace, and always subject to justified exceptions dictated by other pressing requirements.

An opportunity was given for John Briscoe, representing the World Bank, and Ger Bergkamp, representing IUCN, to offer thanks and good wishes from the two “midwives” of the WCD process. Professor Asmal bid the participants a safe return journey (full text: Annex 7), expressing the wish for a world in which, to quote Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “the poor are happy”.