1. Conflicts are inherent to the development process, given that the diversity of needs, goals and values of the various social groups, their interests, aspirations and priorities are not always reconcilable. Approaches to prevent, manage and resolve social conflicts have ranged from convincing (bargaining, persuasion) to negotiating (mediation, adjudication, arbitration) to the use of force (coercion, direct confrontation, threats, violence).

2. Over recent years, the controversies, disputes, and violent confrontations seem to have amplified around development infrastructure, in particular around large dams. There are several reasons that could explain why large dams are so prone to conflicts. First, they are generally justified by national or regional macro-economic benefits while their physical impacts mostly affect the confines of the dammed river valleys. The mismatch of interests at these scales translates easily into confrontational attitudes. Second, large dams affect the quality and allocation of freshwater, an increasingly scarce and coveted resource. Third, the increased awareness of the social and environmental costs of large dams has resulted in strengthening of civil society organisation around these emerging issues.

3. Highly publicised conflicts around large dams have recently attracted international attention, and been simplistically described as a polarisation between dam proponents (i.e builders, owners, and beneficiaries of dams) and dam opponents (environmentalists, affected populations, minority groups, etc.). However, these conflicts involve a larger and more complex range of interests. For example, at the local level, conflicts may arise among affected communities due to competition over expanded or reduced resources as a result of a dam project. The development of irrigation in traditional pastoral lands may lead to conflicts between herders and farmers. Displaced populations from reservoir sites may increase population pressure in their new settlements, thus fostering tensions with host communities. Decommissioning of old dams may affect downstream settlements. Resettlement might represent an opportunity for access to titled land, etc.

4. Transboundary disputes involving water may arise over the threat of loss of access to a crucial and scarce resource. The sharing of the costs, benefits and impacts of dams is another source of conflicts among provinces in the same country or between riparian countries. Examples of the former are the Sardar Sarovar project in India and the proposed Kalabagh dam project in Pakistan. In both cases, some sectors of the public opinion believe that costs and benefits of the dam projects are unfairly distributed. Disputes between Mauritania and Senegal around the Manantali dam, between Slovakia and Hungary around the Gabcikovo dam, and among the riparian states of the Nile and of the Euphrates are but a few examples at the international level.

5. Participatory approaches to decision making have been actively promoted as means to prevent and resolve conflicts. "Systematic consultation" with interested parties, and "popular participation" in decision-making processes are widespread as a standard demand by international donors. A 1998 OED review of World Bank funded resettlement programs found that:"…beneficiary participation in some aspects of project design and a broader set of implementation decisions was a common feature across the sample reviewed". Participation is presented as a process through which stakeholders could influence or even share control over development decisions and resources.

6. Participation has additional dimensions relevant to development, beyond its contribution to conflict avoidance and resolution. It contributes to achieve sustainable development objectives, to ensure that the voices of the disadvantaged groups are heard and that their needs and priorities are adequately addressed, to empower project beneficiaries through capacity building and institutional strengthening, to raise public awareness, and to develop stakeholders' project ownership.

7. Participatory approaches vary depending on the specific objectives defined. They can be limited to information sharing, or active listening of beneficiaries. They can be conceived as broad-based consultations with interested parties, or even include intensive negotiations among stakeholders. Participatory approaches may also involve institutional building or strengthening.

8. Most dam promoters (financiers, borrowers, dam builders and operators) have currently adopted participatory policies and developed their own tools, with mixed results. Classic rapid appraisal methods, stakeholder analysis, poverty assessment, client consultation, customer service/survey, beneficiaries survey, etc. are some of the approaches being promoted to foster stakeholder involvement in project activities related to large dams. However, while all of these methods involve the stakeholders’ input, the extent to which they allowed for direct, meaningful input at core decisions has been questioned.

1.2 Main issues

9. Large dams represent heavy investments for society. In some contexts they also constitute and impose a radical technological leap to which some groups are more prepared than others. Because of the magnitude of changes and interests at stake, large dam projects require complex negotiations within society. Therefore, large dams can favor the emergence of new political forces or weaken the establishment and bring changes in power relationships and in the political configuration of targeted communities. Even if they are not explicitly formulated, these risks and the way they are perceived by various stakeholders are at the core of the large dams debate, and in most large dam controversies. Another political dimension to be considered is the asymmetry of power between those who can make or affect decisions (because they have the political influence, information, money, connections, etc.) and those who are affected by them.

Who is a stakeholder?

10. One of the most frequent sources of conflict around dams is the non-recognition of some of the stakeholders as such by the other parties. The exclusion or neglect of some of the stakeholders’ concerns may reflect deeper societal conflicts that may not be overcome in an isolated decision-making exercise. Moreover, some of the potential stakeholders might not be able to express their concerns - the classic example of this being future generations. This has also impaired disadvantaged social groups, which might not have the political strength to influence decisions that affect directly their livelihoods. Groups left out of the decision-making process have often struggled to voice their concerns and to have them accepted as legitimate by other stakeholders.

11. Another sensitive issue is how social interests are represented in conflicts around dams. Who speaks on behalf of whom? There is always a large number of social actors and institutions intervening on the decision-making process around large dams, These include both formal and informal institutions: government sectors and branches, elected officials, the private sector, political parties, civil society organizations (community-based groups, customary institutions, specific interest- or belief-oriented associations, etc). Institutions that may have a great vitality in some contexts, are absent or may have almost no influence in others. Competition among these institutions for primacy and/or legitimacy as the sole interlocutor to represent specific interests are not unusual, thus contributing to multiply contentions and making negotiations more complex.

Participation as a means, participation as an end

12. The principle of stakeholders' participation in decision-making processes around dams has become widely accepted, to the extent that it may appear as an end by itself, becoming a ritual rather than a tool. On the one hand, consultation and participation are key to prevention of some of the more intractable disputes around dams. They foster transparency and accountability. They facilitate the consideration of the multiple and often contradictory societal needs and priorities. They contribute to build public awareness and ownership of the option finally selected. On the other hand, critics point to the limited range of the decisions taken through these approaches, which are often confined to secondary issues at later stages of the project cycle once key decisions have already been made. Participatory approaches are suspected by some of being means for lowering project costs (through unpaid or cheap community labour force, for example), as ways of gaining public acceptance for inadequate, ill-conceived, or poorly implemented projects, or as means of pressure to gain acceptance of an unfair sharing of impacts or inadequate compensations. It is therefore necessary to examine the effectiveness of these techniques and approaches as means for conflict prevention and negotiation, and the moral and ethical dimensions involved in their implementation.

13. The possibility for social groups to input in the decision-making process does not eliminate conflicts generated by differences of competing views of society and development. Conflicts over water resource development and dams in particular involve deeply held values and human needs. In addition cases where large populations of usually poor and marginalised people lose their land and often their livelihood, represent fundamental conflicts over the distribution of power.

14. Some conflicts may arise long after the completion of the dam construction. Because large dams sometimes provoke social fragmentation, the traditional mechanisms for conflicts prevention and resolution could be weaker among affected communities. In such cases, it is therefore important that institutional building and strengthening be part of dam projects. Conflict prevention and management should be one of the areas of emphasis of such institutional building efforts. But the task is not easy. It might be easier to build a dam and develop related infrastructures (new settlements, irrigation schemes, etc.) than to build or strengthen the institutions to maintain them. Long-term sustainability of large dam projects requires that the right institutions be set in place capable of perpetuating short-term gains, responding to unplanned contexts and addressing conflicts which may arise in time.

15. This thematic review has four interrelated objectives. The first objective is to improve the understanding of conflicts around large dam projects, their typical patterns and their root causes. The second objective is to identify ways of decision-making on dams and their alternatives that prevent conflicts and/ or minimise their intensity; this requires the identification of critical decisions requiring conflict resolution/negotiation throughout the project cycle. The third objective is to propose key principles and approaches for negotiating choices within society and for preventing conflicts and settling them if they occur. The fourth objective is to review the potential contribution of, and current practices for, participatory approaches for decision-making on large dams and alternative. This thematic review will be built on and illustrated by a series of specific cases, including both good and bad examples.

16. Specific aspects to be examined include:

• How the legitimacy of stakeholders as parties to decision-making is (or not) socially established? How decisions are made which affect a broad range of interests, including those of future generations?

• What has typically been the scope and limits to negotiations around dam projects? What kind of decisions have they supported? (e.g: to identify development needs, to choose among dam and non-dam options, to build or not the dam, to improve the project design, to set better deals for resettlees, to buy out local communities, etc.)

• How to deal with the asymmetry of power among the various interest groups in the negotiations around dam projects and their alternatives? To what extent majority and minority rights and concerns can be balanced? What is meant by "local consent"?

• Whether it is realistic to expect that dam projects – or other development projects, for that matter - should only be built if they constitute win-win situations? If a consensus is not attainable, how to reconcile the rights of potential beneficiaries with the rights of affected populations? What should be compensated and how to determine fair compensation?

• What are the available instances of mediation and recourse at various levels of decision-making, in case of non-agreement? Is there a need to establish a broad - national or supra-national - mediation, regulation and incentives framework to support the negotiations around dams (at the example of the International Tribunal in Hague, or the Montreal Protocol)? What could be the main elements of such a framework?

• How to ensure compliance and commitment of the parties with negotiated results (e.g. enforcement of treaties, implementation of negotiated compensation and mitigation measures, etc.)? What could be the incentive/control framework for enforcement? What are the rules for investors and host countries? How to better mobilize resources and capacities (human, financial, managerial, etc.) to ensure enforcement of agreements reached?

• Using lessons and good practices regarding dispute settlement and conflict resolution practices and mechanisms, identify how to increase the level of avoidance of disputes and conflicts around dams and improve the effectiveness of conflict management.

• Identify best practices in conflict management approaches, and suggest a framework for the prevention and resolution of conflicts around large dams.

17. Issues specifically related to consultation and participatory decision making include:

• On the basis of selected experiences, map out how consultation and partnership with communities and interest groups affect the results of large dams projects, and in particular successes and failures of project components such as the mitigation of environmental and social costs, and the management of conflicts between interest groups.

• What are the critical phases where systematic consultation leads to improved short-term and long-term performance?

• Identify best practices regarding institutional building and strengthening for participatory approaches around large dam projects, and analyse the extent to which they could be promoted more systematically in the future.

• Identify the current and desirable role of civil society in consultation processes regarding large dams. How to ensure a more effective role of advocacy and technical support to NGOs? Document best practices regarding partnerships between civil society and dam promoters;

• Identify participatory approaches that empower disadvantaged groups (women, indigenous communities, and others);

• Review existing procedures/guidelines and prevailing practices in engaging stakeholders in large dam projects; and recommend a framework for improved stakeholder consultation throughout the planning and project cycles.

18. The WCD case studies will offer an opportunity to document number of examples of good and bad practices in conflict management and participatory approaches. Towards the end of this review process, the initial findings of a number of case studies will be available. Such findings will be used to illustrate and support analyses and policy recommendations for this thematic review.

19. This thematic review is closely linked to many other thematic reviews. The thematic reviews on Displacement and Resettlement, on Social Impacts and on Indigenous Communities analyze some of the root causes of disputes and conflicts addressed in this thematic review. It also overlaps with the theme on River Basins—Institutional Frameworks and Management options, which treats in a more systematic way consultations and decision-making processes regarding shared water courses. Each of the other themes on institutional processes (Planning Approaches, Environmental and Social Assessment; and Regulation, Compliance and Implementation) include some aspects of consultation and participatory decision-making processes. All social themes (Social Impacts of Large Dams; Dams, Indigenous People and Vulnerable Ethnic Minorities; Displacement, Resettlement, Reparation and Rehabilitation) assess the extent to which women, ethnic minorities, etc. participated in decision-making processes, and examine the extent to which their views and aspirations have been taken into account in large dam project. The theme on Participation, Negotiation and Conflict Management cuts across disciplines at looks into procedures for managing conflicts and disputes around large dams and for promoting participation and institutional building and strengthening at all stages of the project cycle.

20. This review theme supports more directly Output 2 (Options Assessment and Decision-Making Processes) and Output 3 (Criteria and Guidelines) as its end-product will be a set of recommendations and good practice regarding the prevention and resolution of conflicts through negotiated choices at all stages of the planning and implementation stages.

21. The first stage will be to commission a review paper, which will address issues outlined in the scope of work. A team of experts in the areas of conflict management and participatory approaches is being identified. Key parameters being considered for composition of the team include broad coverage of geographical regions and diversity of institutional affiliation.

22. The review panel members are being identified and will comprise of renown experts on conflict management and participatory approaches from around the world.

23. The review exercise will be carried out from mid-August to December 1999, according to the following schedule:

Contracts signed mid-August

Annotated outline early September

First draft review paper end October .

Panel review early November.

Final review paper mid-December