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Looking Beyond Dams to Sustainability by Mark Trahant / Times staff columnist , The Seattle Times - 19 November 2000 Are dams ethical? This is a new public-policy question, something folks never considered decades ago.In 1934, for example, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes visited Eastern Washington and described the construction of Grand Coulee Dam. "The dam to be built here will take six times as much concrete as will be required at Boulder Dam," Ickes wrote. "It is a very important project. The topography of the region calls for a dam." Regional topography aside, the view these days is different. Last week the World Commission on Dams called for changes in the way we talk about dams. "Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making" was released Thursday by the commission. (See www.dams.org.) The commission was born in 1997 when conservation groups and the World Bank starting talking about the costs - economic, environmental and human - of development. "If politics is the art of the possible, this document is a work of art," writes Kader Asmal, the commission's chair. "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." Less than 2.5 percent of Earth's water is fresh; an even tinier fraction runs in streams. Yet we have dammed rivers at a ferocious rate. More than 45,000 dams are more than four stories tall. Asmal is a South African government official who has authorized dam construction in his own country. Clearly he believes some dams should be built. "Dams remove water from the Ganges, Amazon, Danube, Nile or Columbia to sustain cities on their banks," he writes. "For parting - or imparting - the waters, dams are our oldest tool. Yet are they our only tool, or our best option?" There are many reasons to rethink dams. One reason is that building dams has not eased, and in many cases worsened, water shortages. According to the report: - One out of every five people does not have access to safe drinking water. - Half the planet's population lacks adequate sanitation and millions die from waterborne disease. - Farmers compete for water with cities, and towns drain aquifers that took centuries to fill. - And saltwater pollutes groundwater miles from the sea. In decades to come, we will need 20 percent more water to match population growth; soon only one of every three people will have access to clean water. The biggest change we need to make is to move toward sustainability. "The key decisions are not about dams as such," says the report, "but about options for water and energy development. They relate directly to one of the greatest challenges facing the world in this new century - the need to rethink the management of freshwater resources." So how do we get there? How do we create an ethos for water and energy development? The commission says we need to talk more about water, and look for common ground based on a few core values - fairness, efficiency, participatory decision-making, sustainability and accountability. It is these values, the report says, that provide "essential tests" that should be applied to our decisions regarding water and energy development. Already, policymakers and funding sources are re-evaluating dam construction along the Tigris River in Turkey. Critics are asking if the project is sustainable and if there are other options. The international dam commission calls for seven strategic priorities, such as reviewing existing dams as well as measuring rivers' sustainability. But the commission's first priority is to "gain public acceptance" for fair and sustainable water projects. We need to find a way to talk about water - not the most exciting subject - and then get people excited about the possibilities. This is exactly what happened a generation ago. Dams became an exciting part of our community discourse. We built concrete monuments to the possible. We need such monuments again, only using a different ethos. The commission says it sees "water as an instrument, a catalyst for peace, that brings us together, neither to build dams nor tear them down, but to carefully develop resources for the long term." The topography today calls for sustainability.
Copyright © 1999, 2000 The World Commission on Dams | ||||||||||||||||||||||
