Dateline Dispatches: Around the World in Ten Days
DAY TWO Friday, 17 November 2000

UN Receives WCD Report...On Three Continents

NEW YORK: Summit Meeting

l-r Klaus Töpfer, Kader Asmal, Dumisani Khumalo

Two months after UN leaders redefined their approach to decision-making and consensus-building, the WCD today presented its Report as a direct response to the UN's Millennium Conference challenge.

WCD held a press conference, met with Member States, and had a private briefing with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Joining them were UN Environment Program (UNEP) Executive Director Klaus Töpfer and Permanent Representative of South Africa Dumisani Khumalo (South Africa plans to introduce a Resolution early next year calling on the UN to note and consider the Report's findings and recommendations).

Rather than work in parallel, UNEP and WCD forged a tight partnership under a ground breaking project financed by the UN Foundation through the UN Fund for International Partnerships, which succeeded in mobilising an additional $900,000 in matching funds from governments and NGOs and private sector.

Mr Töpfer noted the growing opposition arising from dam impacts on people, river basins and economies and said the issue calls for new directions in energy and water resource policy making.

"Large dam construction, hydroelectric power and irrigation practices all needed a careful examination. This Report will force us all to approach these issues from a more informed perspective."

FRANKFURT: Combining "Cash Flow" with "Flow Requirements"

While the debate over dams often centers on national needs set against social and environmental impacts, the WCD Report assesses economic performance and financial trends of dams as well.

And the UNEP Financial Services Initiative today showed as much interest in WCD findings on the latter as anticipation and mobilization for taking the next step.

Roughly 300 investors, financiers, insurers, bankers and international environmental monitors attended to hear what WCD had to say about the unfolding relationship between currents and currency.

The WCD Thematic Review on Trends in the Financing of Water and Energy Resources Projects, for example, estimates that current annual global investment in dams is around $40 billion per year and that at least $2 trillion has been spent building 45,000 large dams the last century. Today, the donor community appears to be providing only around $2.1 billion a year (on average) for dam related projects (i.e. about 8% of total dam finance), roughly half the 1980 levels.

During the 1990s, dramatic changes occurred in the way infrastructure facilities in the developing world are financed, built and operated. Strapped for financial resources and realising that infrastructure bottlenecks hampered economic growth, governments started to change their roles from service providers to regulators and facilitators of private investments.

Private investments in infrastructure projects increased eightfold from 1990 to reach $120 billion in 1997. For the decade as a whole, private infrastructure investments in developing countries were close to $600 billion.

NAIROBI, KENYA: Turning Words into Action

UNEP brought together 25 experts drawn from around the world to discuss their work on dams, ecosystem impacts and the WCD Report for three days in Nairobi.

The group presented examples of ecosystem impacts from their own countries, reviewed the IUCN/UNEP submission to WCD on this topic, and debated follow-up actions that UNEP can take.

The diverse group noted the need to balance development needs with acceptable ecosystem change and stressed the considerable variation between different country contexts.

Particular emphasis was placed by developing countries on the Commission's recommendations for capacity building. UNEP will compile the workshop conclusions and plan follow-up actions that will be presented at the WCD Forum meeting in February next year.

UNEP plans to organise, in February 2001, a workshop to explore how the UN system might implement the Commission's recommendations in ways that have long term implications on global public policy in this field.