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Lies, Dam Lies by Phil Williams and Patrick McCully , Guardian Society - 22 November 2000 In 1997, when the World Commission on Dams was initiated, anti-dam activists were divided over the wisdom of cooperating with the World Bank. From the 60s on, the bank was the main force that financed and legitimised the big dam building boom that has transformed the world's rivers.Activists participating in the "consultation" processes of the bank felt they were ignored or misrepresented. Others had seen progressive policies adopted on paper, then routinely ignored by bank staff. The World Commission must be used, they agreed, as a "truth commission", to produce a report that would indict the record and rationale of dams. Dam promoters, guilty of 40 years of ecologic and social destruction, were to be held accountable. Reparations for the millions of dispossessed people and restoration of river ecosystems were to be advocated. Most importantly, the report must not become yet another endorsement of the "benefits" of dams, leaving unchallenged the keystone of the dam builders' ideology - that dams are needed for "economic development" that benefits the poor. Last week in London a gathering of the world's great and good marked the release of the commission's final report. Leading anti-dam activists joined Nelson Mandela, James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, and representatives of the dam building industry. As they had expected, the report documented the huge social costs of large dams, with up to 80m people dispossessed and countless millions more impoverished. It acknowledged the shoddy economics and violations of human rights that attended dam construction. It advocated more rigorous standards for planning future projects, including the need for prior informed consent of affected peoples. So shouldn't activists feel vindicated? The answer is no. The commission, evading its main task of adjudicating the "development effectiveness" of dams, emphasises that it is poor planning of past dams that has caused unnecessary harm. This contradicts critics' charges that it is the dams themselves, no matter how well planned, that inevitably create unmitigated social and ecologic impacts. Critics also charge that dams are the very antithesis of development for the poor because they enable the expropriation of the resources of a river valley, placing the livelihood of people who depend on rivers at the disposal of those who have the power to exploit them. Did the commission prove these critics wrong? Not at all. The World Commission on Dams was no "truth commission", but more of a "peace process". The text of the final report is the product of a settlement negotiated among human rights activists, water policy experts and dam builders; not a scientific inquiry. Those activists who have facilitated the commission's process are pleased with the outcome. They believe much of the evidence will support their future campaigns, and they argue the commission's recommendations for transparent planning process and "prior informed consent", if enacted, would virtually preclude future dam projects. Others will be less satisfied. They see failure to challenge the rationale for dam building to be a major setback, and the failure of the commission clearly to advocate reparations for affected people to be a disap pointment. Environmentalists too will disagree with the commission's view of the impact of dams on river ecosystems - that, with better planning, new dams can be built that will mitigate their adverse impacts or even enhance the river environment. The pressure for consensus blinded the commission to what could have been its most important and original contribution: to address the global cumulative impacts of dams. Except for global warming, there is no more drastic human alteration of the physical and ecologic landscape in the last 40 years than the damming, regulation and diversion of the world's rivers. To say that dams affect 60% of the world's rivers greatly understates their affect on the transformation of river valleys, estuaries, coastlines and coastal seas in temperate and tropical zones. The decline and destruction of species dependent on floodplains, wetlands, and natural river flows is not just an environmental tragedy but affects the food supply and livelihood of millions. Cities, river valleys and whole countries are now economically linked, held hostage for their water supply and flood protection to the operation of big dams upstream, dams that are silting up, ageing and growing more dangerous every year; dams we now acknowledge were poorly planned, in ignorance or disdain for their true long-term costs. The real question in the big dams debate is similar to that posed by nuclear power plants: not how to improve their planning, but how to get rid of them. Over the last three years, while activists have been lobbying the commission, dam building has continued. Plans for new projects like Ilusu in Turkey, Wloslawek on the Vistula, resurrected projects like Arun in Nepal, or Bakun in the rainforest of Sarawak have moved ahead. Construction of Itoitz in Spain, Boguchany in Siberia and the Three Gorges in China has continued. Most poignant of all, last month the Indian Supreme Court approved completion of the World Bank-initiated Sardar Sarovar dam. It was the argument of presumed development benefits, not the vigorous prior informed dissent of 500,000 citizens of the Narmada valley, that the court found most persuasive. • Dr Philip Williams, a consulting engineer in San Francisco, is founder and former president of the International Rivers Network. He resigned because of disagreements over the organisation's support of the WCD process Guidelines give protesters hope The World Commission on Dams recommends that dams should only be built if developers can gain the "demonstrable public acceptance" of affected communities at each of the key stages of the decision-making process. This requirement has huge implications for the global dam industry, which has in the past largely ignored the protests of those it would deprive of their lands and livelihoods. If affected people agree that projects can go ahead, the commission recommends that developers should negotiate binding agreements, enabling communities to hold developers accountable to their promises of resettlement and compensation. Community participation in negotiations should be enabled through "timely access to information and legal and other necessary support". Booker Prize-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy, a high-profile opponent of the dams on India's Narmada River, says that the controversial Sardar Sarovar and Maheshwar projects could never be built if their promoters had to gain the acceptance of the hundreds of thousands of people who would be displaced by the projects' reservoirs and canals. "There is no land available to resettle these people, the great majority are bitterly opposed to the projects, so it is inconceivable they would ever freely agree to give up their homes," says Roy. It is also difficult to believe that the nearly two million people being evicted to make way for China's gargantuan Three Gorges dam would ever freely agree to the project. While it is just as unlikely that the Chinese government would give these people the chance to be heard, the WCD report could hinder China's efforts to raise hard currency from foreign export credit agencies and Wall Street banks for a project which is so blatantly in breach of what is the only set of international standards on dam building. The Ilisu Dam, on the Tigris River in Turkey, under consideration for export credits from the British government, also clearly fails the test of community consent and information disclosure. The Kurdish areas affected by the project have been devastated by armed conflict and remain under emergency rule. The UK and other European export credit agencies proposing to fund Ilisu would also fall foul of the commission's recommendation that there be no foreign funding for dams if countries downstream have not been properly consulted. Syria and Iraq, downstream on the Tigris, are both strongly opposed to Ilisu fearing it will increase Turkey's ability to cut off their water supply. And the Bujugali Falls dam, on the Nile in Uganda, which the World Bank is currently evaluating for funding, would break the recommendation that "risks must be identified, articulated and addressed". The power purchase agreement for Bujugali, which allocates the financial risks of the project between the developer - US multinational AES - and the Ugandan government, is a state secret.
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