Keynote Address

by Professor Kader Asmal
Chair of the Commission and Minister of Education for South Africa

President Mandela,
Your Excellency, Prince of Orange
Your Excellencies,
President, Jim Wolfensohn
Director General, Maritta Von Bieberstein Koch-Weser

Distinguished Guests, friends and comrades from across the world and all sides of the debate

Let us today close one book, on our Commission, to open a new book, on our Report. Best-selling books today seem to involve true tales of adventure, camaraderie and mankind's stoic struggle in the face of adversity. One tells of sword-fishers caught in a hurricane off the Atlantic. A second describes a climbing expedition battling a blizzard atop Everest. My favourite, for some odd reason, is of Mr Shackleton holding his band of intrepid explorers together, improvising creative self-rescue as his vessel is crushed by the jaws of polar ice.

We can admire those protagonists who show grace under pressure. But with all due respect to the authors, I have two words for their material: Child's play.

As Mr Mandela has noted, the World Commission on Dams could have ended in disaster and sunk without a trace. It didn't. It could have remained safe and dry in some calm and shallow harbour. It didn't. Instead the Commission challenged adversity plunging head on into The Perfect Storm of controversy until, today, two years later, it has returned to tell its story.

If politics is the art of the possible, this book is a work of art. It redefines what is possible to all of us, for all of us, at a time when water pressure on governments has never been more intense. One in five people worldwide lacks access to safe drinking water. A third the world lacks sanitation; millions die from waterborne diseases. Farmers compete for water with booming but stressed cities. Towns drain aquifers that took centuries to fill. In a few decades, as we seek a fifth more water for 3 billion new people, one in three of us may struggle to drink or bathe.

The rapid response of the last century to that pressure was to build 45,000 large dams. For parting - or imparting - the waters, dams are our oldest tool. Yet are they our only tool, or our best option? The question is deceptively simple. The Commission has undertaken a rigorous, independent and inclusive global review, testing the waters, to help all answer with authority.

Some may shrug: "easier said than done." Not so. The hard part is what can be ‘said´ with intellectual honesty, vision and understanding. Surprisingly such a statement has rarely been attempted. Unlike every other aspect of our lives, large dams have long escaped deep and clear and impartial scrutiny into the process by which they emerge and are valued. This lapse is especially glaring when set against much smaller scale investments. We daily squeeze and weigh food to ensure we get a fair return at the market. We rigorously test-drive and analyse the performance of motorcars before and after paying a few thousand dollars for one. We conduct thorough due-diligence before purchase of either house or business.

Yet over the last century we collectively bought, on average, one large dam per day, and there have been precious few, if any, comprehensive, independent analyses as to why dams came about, how dams perform over time, whether we are getting a fair return from our $2 trillion investment. Until now, with this Report.

Pioneer efforts are bound to be controversial. And while the World Commission on Dams is, by design, strictly advisory, make no mistake. Our genesis, work process and implications of this Final Report are by nature quite political. Our mandate involves the most precious element on earth, and that, of course, involves power: who wields it, how to share it, which ways the state may better balance it.

Dams fundamentally alter rivers and the use of a natural resource, frequently entailing a reallocation of benefits from local riparian users to new groups of beneficiaries at a regional or national level. They introduce tensions between states when water resources are exploited by one state without the agreement of others.

At the heart of the dams debate are issues of equity, governance, justice and power - issues that underlie the intractable problems faced by humanity.

Easy advice abounds, and that ease is its weakness. Telling me, a harried public official who must answer to 48 million restless, hungry and thirsty people, to ‘Ensure development is sustainable and humane´ is like warning a surgeon, ‘Operate, but don't inflict new wounds´. I know that. What I don´t know is how to do it. To explain how to develop water in ways that do not exhaust either my constituents or the resources we all depend on, we must go beyond platitudes. Healing must emerge not through anecdotes, but through a complex, coherent and cohesive argument that shows clearly where we have been, what happened, why we´re in conflict, and how we can, with proper understanding, heal ourselves.

Slow to speak, our Commission was quick to listen. Both sides of the debate gave their perspectives: from dam officials with an obligation to govern to dam affected people with experiences to share. By airing facts we reached a rapprochement that began in Gland, Switzerland and continued, non-stop, through hearings, consultations, case studies, submissions and reviews covering roughly one thousand large dams.

Through this process a shared understanding and truth began to emerge, and with it the thin thread with which to sew the stitches of reconciliation. On this Commission, the first stitches came, perhaps, as a woman who risks her life opposing a large dam threads the eye of the needle with an engineer who spent his career designing them. Or when the leader of one the world´s most powerful technology companies engaged with the leader of one of the world´s proud but dispossessed peoples. As Seattle, Toronto, Washington, London and Prague came unravelled by turbulent protests over globalisation and development, we quietly continued to apply stitch after stitch to sew a stronger, more resilient and colourful tapestry.

We did more than reach consensus. All twelve Commissioners have read the report and endorsed it with their signatures. As two Commissioners hail from the US, we decided last week, just to be safe, we would do a careful revote and count very carefully before making this announcement. Having done so, the results are the same: Unanimous agreement.

Our report tells a multifaceted story. But we draw from it some straightforward and practical advice to guide future decisions on water and energy resources development. The report sets out to distil more than two years of intense study, dialogue and reflection by the Commission, the WCD Secretariat, the WCD Stakeholders´ Forum and literally hundreds of individual experts and affected people on every aspect of the dams debate. It contains all the significant findings that result from this work and expresses everything that we, the Commissioners, feel is important to communicate to governments, the private sector, civil society actors and affected peoples - in short, to the entire spectrum of participants in the dams debate.

The evidence we present is compelling. We feel confident that the material collected and analysed by the Commission provides overwhelming support for the main messages in the report. And we believe there can no longer be any justifiable doubt about the following:

• Dams have made an important and significant contribution to human development, and the benefits derived from them have been considerable.
• 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.
• Lack of equity in the distribution of benefits has called into question the value of many dams in meeting water and energy development needs when compared with the alternatives.
• By bringing to the table all those whose rights are involved and who bear the risks associated with different options for water and energy resources development, the conditions for a positive resolution of competing interests and conflicts are created.
• Negotiating outcomes will greatly improve the development effectiveness of water and energy projects by eliminating unfavourable projects at an early stage, and by offering as a choice only those options that key stakeholders agree represent the best ones to meet the needs in question.

These conclusions did not come from a vacuum, nor did they come overnight. They emerged directly from the evidence in the Global Review. If we are serious about improving development effectiveness, we must substantially expand the basis for how, and by whom, decisions are made on proposed and existing water and energy projects. We must fundamentally require the full knowledge and understanding of the benefits and risks of large dam projects to all parties. And we must introduce new voices, perspectives and criteria into decision-making, as well as processes that will build consensus around the decisions reached.

Of course, some on both sides may deny the need to change the status quo, or to bring about a cultural revolution within their organisation or institution. One side, no doubt, may ignore the heavy costs paid by people displaced by large dam projects, just as one side may ignore the benefits dams brought to so many others, and may accordingly focus their microscopes on our footnotes about the past, rather than our criteria and guidelines for the future. Vested interests, either financial or ideological, are slow to accept the need to adapt to changed circumstances where the paramount consideration is the need to meet people´s legitimate expectations of life and liberty. But change there has been.

We welcome that, as always. And anticipate it. Accuracy stands foremost in our Report, the credibility of our work rests firmly on our facts and figures, and for this reason we peer-review so much material available to us, and leave nothing hidden. We stand solidly behind the evidence in this Report, and yet, statistics alone have never been our soul. It was, and is, easy to know the cost of everything; the Commission sought value of one thing: a large dam.

Are you, for example, concerned with whether it was 40 million or 80 million people displaced or whether it was 30 or 40% of irrigated land relying on dams? We were. But we cared more about knowing, recording, and listening to the voices and names of those people, and about learning how, why and for whom those hectares were irrigated.

Are you preoccupied with whether the world has spent $2 trillion or $3 trillion on large dams? Likewise. But we were more stunned that, until now, no one thoroughly knew how much power, irrigation or water "bang" we got for every "buck" invested in the average large dam.

Do you favour a blanket moratorium on construction of all large dams, and equate absolute development paralysis, with success? That is your right. Yet we assert that a "broadsword" approach most hurts those billions in countries in need of a "scalpel" like ours, and that your ends could be more productively reached through our 452 page instrument for action.

Do you want this Report to have a measurable impact, and help your goals? We do. But we don't measure success by whether or not a large dam goes forward, or whether our report results in more or fewer large dams. Success, for us, is whether the ultimate development project -- new dam, no dam, improved existing dam or alternative -- reveals the full costs and benefits, names of human and natural species affected, how mitigation was complied with, and why it was the best option chosen by, and for, all parties.

Are you disappointed from findings that large dams tend to benefit some more than others, cities more than rural communities, industry more than the poor? We are. But we also show how to expand the 19 percent of hydroelectricity not just vertically, in supply, but horizontally, by delivery.

Are you impressed that an estimated 12-16 percent of global food production comes from dams? We are. But also show ways to squeeze more crop per drop from systems in place without immediately, hastily, turning to construction of expensive new schemes.

Some anti-dam groups advocate a licence to operate a private hyrodam, some pro-dam groups feel this unfair. We agree with both. Licences are effective means of compliance and improving performance, but we feel all dam projects, public or private, will benefit from an open licence that clearly sets out the obligation of all parties and which can be upgraded through negotiation on a regular basis.

We know some would rather point fingers as enemies, than join hands as partners; we know some feel that the legacy of past injustices is "water under the bridge" and not "water" that will continue to rise deeper over time. Self-interest is reality, and human nature.

But so is enlightened self-interest. The debate about dams is a debate about the very meaning, purpose and pathways for achieving development. This suggests that decision-making on water and energy management will align itself with the emerging global consensus on sustainable human development and on the equitable distribution of costs and benefits. The emergence of a globally accepted framework of norms rests on the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and related covenants and conventions thereafter. These later resolutions include the Declaration on the Right to Development adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1986, and the Rio Principles agreed to at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. The core values that inform the Commission´s shared understanding are aligned with this international consensus and rest on the fundamental human rights accorded to all people by virtue of their humanity. They must not remain dead-letters, invoked whenever it is politically necessary.

The Commission grouped the core values that informed its understanding of these issues under five principal headings:

• equity,
• efficiency,
• participatory decision-making,
• sustainability, and
• accountability.

These five values run through the entire report. They provide the essential tests that must be applied to decisions relating to water and energy development. If the report advances these values significantly, it has succeeded.

The single most important factor in understanding the conflicts associated with development projects and programmes - particularly large-scale interventions such as dams -- is reconciling competing needs and entitlements. The approach developed by the Commission of recognising rights and assessing risks in the planning and project cycles offers a means to apply these core values to decision-making about water and energy resource management. It argues that it is not necessary for one persons loss against another´s gain.

Clarifying the rights context for a proposed project is an essential step in identifying those legitimate claims and entitlements that may be affected by the project or its alternatives. It is also a pre-condition for effective identification of legitimate stakeholder groups that are entitled to a formal role in the consultative process, and eventually in negotiating project-specific agreements.

The assessment of risk adds an important dimension to understanding how, and to what extent, a project may impact on people´s rights. In the past, many groups have not had an opportunity to participate in decisions that imply major risks for their lives and livelihoods, thus denying them a stake in the development decision-making process commensurate with their exposure to risk. Indeed, many have had risks imposed on them involuntarily. Risks must be identified and addressed explicitly. This will require the notion of risk to be extended beyond governments or developers to include both those affected by a project and the environment as a public good. Involuntary risk bearers must engage with risk takers in a transparent process to negotiate equitable outcomes.

Our Final report carries the sub-title <I>‘A New Framework for Decision Making´</I> recognising that values and conceptual approaches must be supported by practical and useable guidance.

1. Gain Public Acceptance.
   Recognise rights, address risks, and safeguard the entitlements of all affected people, particularly indigenous and tribal peoples, women and other vulnerable groups.
2. Assess Comprehensive Options.
   The needs for water, food and energy must be assessed, objectives must be clearly defined and the response must be identified from a range of alternatives.
3. Address Existing Dams.
   To increase benefits, address outstanding social issues and strengthen environmental mitigation and restoration measures, explore old dams first.
4. Sustain Rivers and Livelihoods.
   Rivers and aquatic ecosystems are the basis for life and the livelihoods of local communities. Dams transform watersheds and the risk of irreversible impacts.
5. Recognise Entitlements and Share Benefits.
   Through good faith negotiation, adversely affected people can agree to legally enforceable mitigation and development provisions.
6. Ensure Compliance.
   To restore public trust and confidence, governments, developers, regulators and operators must meet all commitments to plan, implement and operate and decommission dams.
7. Share Rivers for Peace, Development and Security.
   Water scarcity creates stress and tension, but development decisions can be a catalyst for collaboration through mutual self-interest between states and within states.

Taking these forward into daily practice, translating concepts into action, our Criteria and Guidelines root the WCD approach within the wider framework, and focus on five key decision points to reach, and improve, each development outcome.

In short, if nations weigh all options, improve existing systems, and take development decisions based on an inclusive framework of risks and rights among affected interests, then all parties can dramatically increase performance, not only out of moral obligation to others, but to reduce time, money, conflict and impacts for their own self-interest.

The Commission's unique authority comes not only from why, how and what it says, but in who agreed to say it for the first time. If our new framework for consensus strikes anyone as raising the bar too high, one can always set it in contrast against the messy conflicts of the past, the impasse and storms that gave birth to our Commission in the first place.

Why can we so confidently urge governments, NGOs, businesses, trade groups, aid agencies, utilities and affected peoples to practice what we preach? Because we collectively preach only what all those groups have practised, together, sitting in one room, over the past two years. We listened to all sides. We reviewed all options. We balanced the ideal with the possible and made our decision to sign this report with confidence. We exclude only one development option: inaction. The cost of the resulting conflict is too high.

No matter how much you know, or think you know, about dams, you cannot read the following report and keep your assumptions intact. No matter how sceptical, you will, I hope, come away changed, I think, for the better. For the truth is no typical dams exist.

The experience of the Commission demonstrates that common ground can be found without compromising individual values or losing a sense of purpose. But it also demonstrates that all concerned parties must stay together if the issues surrounding water and energy resources development are to be resolved. It is a process with multiple heirs and no clear arbiter. We must move forward together or we will fail. The Commission was given an exceptional opportunity, and it has delivered a result reflecting our collective learning process and understanding. If our report does not win widespread support among participants in the dams debate, it is unlikely that there will be another such opportunity for a long time.

The trust required to enable the different actors to work together must still be consolidated. Early and resolute action to address issues arising from the past will go a long way towards building that trust in the future. So, too, will an assurance to countries still at an early stage of economic development that the dams option will not be foreclosed before they have had a chance to examine their water and energy development choices within the context of their development process.

Ladies and Gentleman, we believe that our report is a milestone in the evolution of dams as a development option. We have:

• conducted the first comprehensive global and independent review of the performance of essential aspects of dams and their contribution to development. We have done this through an inclusive process that has brought all significant players into the debate;
• shifted the centre of gravity in the dams debate to one focused on investing in options assessment, evaluating opportunities to improve performance and address legacies of existing dams, and achieving an equitable sharing of benefits in sustainable water resources development;
• and demonstrated that the future for water and energy resources development lies with participatory decision-making, using a rights-and-risks approach that will raise the importance of the social and environmental dimensions of dams to a level once reserved for the economic dimension.

We are at an important watershed concerning the development of the world’s water resources. We offer this report - not as a blueprint to cover every contingency - but as a charter for the future. Drawing up the record - and to meet the expectations of divergent interests - was only the first part of the battle of ideas.

When the difficulty
Of the mountains is once behind
That's when you'll see
The difficulty of the plains will start.

I have reflected on this as I look back on the two-year adventure story of the World Commission on Dams. The real difficulty of the plains is the manner in which the international community accepts the need for a people-based culture, recognising also the demands of collective decision-making. But looking out, at all of you who have made our work possible, and looking ahead, to the difficult years and hard decisions that made our work necessary, I see that this "book" we wrote may be only a first chapter for each of you. We shall leave it open, with pages blank, for you to write what happens next.

I thank you