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The WCD Work Programme
Distilling a World of Knowledge on Dams
This is a supplement to the 6th WCD Newsletter April 2000
Contents:
Dams Commission Completes Global Work Programme
In 1998 when it set out to study large dams, the World Commission on Dams faced a daunting task. Not only are there more than 45 000 such dams in the world, but analysis and record keeping have been spotty with regard to dams’ various and
The WCD Latin American regional consultation, Brazil, 1999
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interconnected impacts: economic, social, environmental, and institutional. Additionally, the Commission was determined to distinguish itself by canvassing opinions from across the spectrum of interests in the dams debate – from the peasant farmer to the national water minister to the dam engineer to experts on bio-diversity and, of course, the millions displaced to make way for dams. Reaching all these interest groups proved a daunting but rewarding task.
In its short two-year life span the Commission could not attempt to study all 45 000 dams. So it designed a work programme to yield several different slices of information adding up to a reliable cross-section of knowledge on the global experience with dams. The case studies would provide in-depth ‘portraits’ of individual dams while the cross-check survey of 150 dams would provide a ‘family picture’ – a broader but less detailed view of a larger group of dams. The 17 thematic reviews would examine the key themes common to debates about dams the world over while the regional consultations and submissions programme would give voice to thousands in that debate.
The work programme is now complete and forms the knowledge base underpinning the WCD Final Report which the Commission is now writing. Here are some of the results:
Newsletter Contents 
The Case Studies
The WCD put seven dams under the lens of its microscope. These dams are in Europe, Asia, Africa, North America and Latin America, and were commissioned between 1941-1994. The WCD study teams examined the dams’ economic impacts, their environmental consequences, their social implications, and decision-making processes and institutional structures underpinning the projects. But we didn’t examine them in a vacuum. Rather, we studied each dam in the context of its respective river basin, the goals of those who authorised it, and the changes endured over time.
The case studies offer the first integrated look at dams from the perspective of all interest groups and in terms of their foreseen and unforeseen impacts, be it from the point of view of government agencies, local economists, the riparian habitat, or impacts on the diets of indigenous peoples.
Total investments in these dams was $16 billion in 1998 dollars; the total number of people resettled was 200 000.
We selected a study team and a group of stakeholders to tell the story of each dam by answering six questions:
- What were the projected versus actual benefits, costs and impacts of the dam?
- What were the unexpected benefits, costs and impacts?
- What was the distribution of costs and benefits – who gained and who lost?
- How were decisions made?
- Did the project comply with the criteria and guidelines of the day? What were the lessons learned?
So what did they find? That each dam, as envisioned, was seldom the dam that emerged. All dams delivered
substantial benefits – irrigation, power supply, flood management – but the needs for these benefits changed
dramatically both during and after construction of the dam. For example, the US study team found it unlikely that the Grand Coulee, the largest single source of electricity in the US, would be built today, despite its enormous benefits.
Also, all seven dams exceeded their projected development costs by a range of 90-289%, highlighting the
difficulties in predicting costs and sticking to budgets.
The studies showed that dams can have unanticipated and lingering negative impacts on resettled people, on
fisheries, and on wider riparian communities in the basin. That alone is no surprise; you can’t predict everything. Far more important is that no one comprehensively monitored, assessed, or adapted dams to take into account those unforeseen impacts, despite the scale of the investments.
One revealing aspect of the studies was how, and to whom, dams distributed cost and benefits, and how these were weighted by each interest group.
The seven large dams studied:
The WCD Country Studies
- Aslantas Dam, Ceyhan river basin, Turkey
- 1984. 78m high dam, 1 150mcm reservoir. Irrigates 97 000 hectares and provides flood control and hydropower
Resettlement:1 000 families (5 000 people).
Cost: $1.3 billion.
- Kariba Dam, Zambezi River, Zambia/Zimbabwe.
- 1960. 128m dam,
5 577 square kilometer reservoir, largest man-made lake in the world. Produces
1 266 megawatts of power.
Led to resettlement of 57 000 people. Cost: $1.2 billion.
- Grand Coulee, Columbia River, USA/Canada.
- 1941. 170m high dam, 260 square kilometer reservoir. Irrigates 200 000 hectares, produces over
6 809 megawatts of power and provides flood management.
Six thousand people resettled, including indigenous people.
Cost for two stages of construction:
$3.6 billlion in 1998 dollars.
- Glomma and Laagen basin, Norway.
- 40 dams in the basin. Produces 2 165 megawatts of power, with flood
management.
No resettlement in the four dams studied. Cost: $800 million.
- Pak Mun Dam, Mun-Mekong river basin, Thailand.
- 1994. 17m run-of-river dam, 1 190mcm reservoir. Generates 136 megawatts of power. 84 000 ha irrigated.
1 700 households resettled.
Cost $240 million.
- Tucuruí Dam, Tocantins River, Brazil.
- 1986. 78m dam, 2 430 square kilometer reservoir. Produces 4 000 megawatts of power.
Resettlement: 24 000. Cost: $5.5 billion.
- Tarbela Dam, Indus River Basin, Pakistan.
- 1976. 148m dam, 240 square kilometer reservoir. Irrigates 18 million hectares (largest irrigation system in the world).
Produces 3 478 megawatts of power and provides some flood management.
Resettlement: 96 000 people. Cost: $2.3 billion.
Finally, as the study participants will attest, a comprehensive, multi-stakeholder-driven planning and assessment process is hard, slow, and tedious. But over the life of the dam, such a process saves millions of dollars, months of time, buckets in lawyers fees, and reams of paperwork by flagging existing and potential pitfalls early on. The lessons learned can then be applied to future decisions in planning and assessing dams and their alternatives, and the design, operation, refurbishment, and decommissioning of dams.
Newsletter Contents
Cross-Check Survey
The WCD cross-check survey is the most comprehensive global survey on large dams to date. It is a
statistical survey of 150 dams around the world, drawing on information from a variety of sources including existing databases. The cross-check survey is broader than the case studies in that it is global in nature, but it is focussed on a smaller set of questions. Not only does the survey provide a way of ‘cross-checking’ the findings from the individual dams in the case studies; it also provides a systematic set of data regarding trends and findings for use in analysing the findings in the thematic reviews.
The survey will describe broad trends and patterns in the global experience with dams, particularly with regard to:
- performance
- impacts
- and decision making.
It does not offer an assessment of each individual dam in the survey.
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Manning the global listening posts
Consultations & Submissions
For most of its two-year mandate the WCD followed the old adage of being “quick to listen, and slow to speak”. Rather than planting its opinions before it had harvested its research, the WCD busied itself with canvassing, from a vast array of stakeholders, views and knowledge on the costs and benefits of dams. In addition to its work programme studies, the WCD manned the global listening posts through its submissions programme and its regional consultations.
Regional consultations
In total 1 400 individuals from 59 countries took part in the WCD regional consultations held for South Asia, East & South-East Asia, Latin America, and Africa and the Middle East. The meetings
Commissioners Scudder and Veltrop hearing the views of people in remote rural areas
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were carefully organised to ensure broad-based participation by NGOs, governments, industry/utilities, irrigation interests, academics, financiers, and other interested parties. The WCD also participated in two hearings organised for its benefit by NGOs in Southern Africa and Europe.
The key issues to emerge via the consultations were:
- participation and transparency in planning and decision-making on dams
- displacement, resettlement and reparation for those negatively affected by dams
- dams as a way to satisfy demands for food, energy, drinking water, and flood control
- assessing the costs and benefits of alternatives in providing irrigation, flood control,
electricity and water supply
- the importance of environmental sustainability
- regional/transboundary approaches to sharing water resources, and conflict resolution
- how to ensure those engaged in dam building comply with regulations, laws, and policies.
Submissions
The WCD has received to date 804 submissions from 79 countries. Of those, 400 papers were submitted in relation to the regional consultations. All submissions are entered into a central database. They are catalogued by subjects along the lines of the thematic reviews: social, environmental, economic, and institutional issues, and options assessment. The cataloguing system permits sorting by issue, region, and country.
The submissions have been reviewed by the Secretariat and, where relevant, have been
shared with lead writers and external reviewers involved in compiling the case studies, thematic reviews,
and the cross-check survey. A full list of submissions is published on the WCD website. All submissions will be published on the CD-ROM that will part of the WCD Final Report.
Newsletter Contents
Country Studies
India & china
China
The world’s most populous country owns and operates over 80 000 dams. China has the most large dams of any country – about 22 000, most built after 1949. By a conservative estimate, that translates into one large dam per day, every day since the emergence of modern China. Yet in doing so, 12 million people, or 650 people per day, every day, have been displaced from their homes. Why?
Flood control is part of China’s rationale for building large dams, including the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtse and the Xiaolangdi Dam on the Yellow River. Irrigation and power supply are also primary purposes. With food security in mind, China has doubled its irrigated area to over 50% of cultivated land; this helped to augment rainfall in the semi-arid/arid north and west.
Key findings in the case study:
- 80% of China’s electricity supply is from coal-fired generation and as the
country begins to address air quality problems the government anticipates
doubling hydropower’s output to 40% of national production.
- Water demands in the north of China are depleting groundwater sources.
Water from dams on the Yellow River has been diverted to replace the
groundwater but this has dried river flows in the lower reaches of the Yellow
since 1992, for periods of up to 180 days during the dry season. This
increases pressure for massive inter-basin transfer proposals from the Yangtse
basin to the North China Plain.
- Since 1949 China has initiated flood control works, including dams, that
have been among the largest construction efforts in the world. They have
succeeded in limiting the ravages of seasonal floods, but have encouraged
development in vulnerable flood plains. This means that the potential costs
of economically-damaging floods are escalating rapidly.
- Per capita water use in cities is high and urban utilities
and industries have now begun to explore the potential
for demand management.
- Because of poor practices in earlier years, China has,
since the early 1980s, established a much stronger
policy on resettlement, and laws now require
assessment of dams’ environmental impacts. How
rigorously those laws are observed remains open to
interpretation as China struggles with the many
enforcement issues and the development of skills and
manpower to work in these new areas.
- China’s rush to construct so many – and such large –
dams in so short a time has also led to serious dam
safety concerns and a costly programme to address
these issues.
India
India is second only to China in terms of population (one billion) and dam
building, with 4 291 dams. Irrigation is the primary or only function of 96% of the dams; only 4.2% were built for hydropower generation. Estimates of the
number of people displaced by large dams in India range from 21-40 million.
Ensuring food security is one of the main objectives of India’s development policy. Its irrigation potential increased from 22.6 million hectares in 1951 to
89.6 million ha by 1997 and food production grew four-fold to 200 million tonnes, two-thirds of the increase coming from irrigated land. Analysis of the costs and benefits of dams
in India was hampered by a lack of post-construction assessment. The country study found:
- India is now self-sufficient in food, due in
part to the extension of irrigation.
- Nearly 38% of total irrigation potential
created was through medium-to-major
irrigation projects while 63% was through
minor irrigation programmes (i.e. those not
involving large dams). Large-scale projects
built between 1951-97 accounted for about
11% of the growth in food production.
- The gap between irrigation potential created
and utilised is approximately 8.8 million ha,
more than half of it related to major and
medium schemes.
- Most drinking water needs are from groundwater sources that are depleting
rapidly, opening up the possibility of building small and/or large dams to
meet growing urban demand.
- Dam project proposals do not usually reflect costs of social and
environmental mitigation, which later contribute to cost overruns of more
than 100%.
- Annual expenditure on operation and maintenance of dams decreased in the
1970s. Leaking irrigation canals, weeds in those canals and other problems
have seriously compromised efficient use of water resources. Water logging
and salinity are also major problems.
- Progress toward a national resettlement policy is slow. The decision-making
process is fraught with arbitrariness, a lack of participation by those
negatively affected, ignorance of non-dam alternatives, and no recourse for
displaced persons unhappy with rehabilitation programmes.
Newsletter Contents
Common issues, multifarious views:
WCD's 17 Thematic Reviews
A number of globally important issues criss-cross the heart of the dams debate, common to the many
controversies surrounding these and other major infrastructure projects around the world. The
Anti-Dam protest, Norway
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WCD’s thematic reviews consist of 17 main papers grouped under five themes: social, environmental, economic, and institutional issues related to dams, and questions regarding decision makers’ assessment of options in planning and delivering services often provided by dams.
These and related papers were produced by 130 writers from across the world, with an even broader group of peer reviewers making comments on draft texts. The writers drew heavily on the 804 submissions sent to WCD.
It would be impossible to summarise in a brief article the treasure trove of information, findings, and
subtleties in the thematic reviews. In presenting here a sampler of the thematic reviews we hope that readers
will be encouraged to delve deeper into our knowledge base; most of it is available at the above website.
It is important to note that these findings do not represent the Commission’s conclusions. They reflect both the knowledge and perceptions of the various role players who have contributed to the reviews. Each thematic is a gem – yet also has its limitations and blind spots.
Below we have listed a small sample of the findings under the five headings under which the 17 thematics were grouped.
Social issues related to large dams:
- A World Bank review of 192 projects world wide
for the period 1986-1993 estimated that four
million people were displaced annually by the
300 large dams (on an average) that entered into construction every year.
- In many cases, displacement as a result of land acquisition is legally sanctioned while there is often no legal framework that governs the rights of the displaced and commitments may therefore not be respected. Organisations with legislative back-up, adequate funds and good human resources
have done well in implementing well-defined
resettlement and rehabilitation programmes. But in too many cases insufficient funds means
inadequate resettlement.
- The emerging definition of ‘good practice’ in
resettlement includes: a focus on the means of maintaining livelihood rather than on compensating affected peoples for lost assets; accepts a
negotiated definition of what constitutes ‘just’
compensation; and wherever possible turns
displaced people into project beneficiaries.
- Indigenous peoples have suffered disproportionately from the negative impacts of large dams, while often being among those excluded from sharing the benefits.
- The notion of free, prior, and informed consent has emerged as a key issue open to interpretation. For indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, it would imply that projects should proceed only when affected communities are assured they will benefit from the projects, and they are convinced that adequate mechanisms will be in place to secure their development, compensation, resettlement, rehabilitation and their full involvement in legally-enforceable monitoring procedures to ensure compliance.
- Dams raise major issues related to equity – the
distribution of gains and losses within
communities, between regions, and between local and national interests.
Environmental issues
- Dams have important impacts on both terrestrial and aquatic systems during construction, operation and decommissioning, as well as secondary
consequences due to improved access to formerly pristine areas, population growth around dams in isolated places, transmission lines across mountains and forests, etc.
- Natural aquatic ecosystems provide free functions, goods and services to society and support rural livelihoods in many countries. Many of these are not recognised and water and land are still
frequently assumed in project planning to carry a zero opportunity cost. Therefore dams may have hidden costs (eg the value of water to floodplain economies in Nigeria can be $50-75/m3 if left to flow naturally in the river).
- All options in providing services often associated with dams have impacts that require trade-offs in terms of their associated development opportunities. The key challenge in the environment debate is to define the nature of the impacts and to allow each society to assess the value(s) to be placed on the identified impacts.
- Successful mitigation of negative environmental impacts is possible but in many cases, particularly in countries with weak environmental institutions and regulations, insufficient priority is given to ensuring effective mitigation and compliance with
environmental mitigation plans, and environmental outcomes are often unsatisfactory
- The principal tool used in mitigating the negative downstream impacts of dams is the Environmental Flow Requirements (EFR). EFRs establish the amount of water to be released from dams to maintain ecosystem function (eg to encourage seasonal fish migration or maintenance of floodplains downstream). EFR is used in 25 countries world-wide. Using EFRs requires a good understanding of a particular ecosystem’s responses to changes in river flows and water quality. As dam releases for ecosystem benefits may reduce hydropower production, for example, there must be a willingness to reduce such direct project benefits for the greater indirect social and environmental good.
Economic issues:
- During the 1990s, annual investments in dams
in developing countries were in the order of
$25-30 billion, or slightly less than half of the total investments in water related infrastructure. About US$15 billion was devoted to constructing hydropower plants, US$10 billion to irrigation reservoirs, and around $2 billion to water supply
dams. Government and
state-owned agencies
Electricity from hydropower can bring fundamental economic and social development
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contributed 76-84% of
investment; private
sector 3-5 %, and the
donor community 13-19 %.
- Multilateral and bilateral
development agencies
traditionally have been a
major source of dam
financing. Over the last
decade, however, overall aid
flows have declined in real
terms and most donors have
expanded the share of their
assistance devoted to social
sectors and quick disbursing
non-project lending. Greater
awareness of the social and
environmental consequences
of large dams has made most
donors reluctant to finance
projects that involve dam
construction and resettlement.
- In terms of economic analysis of dams, the traditional approach of using cost-benefit analysis (CBA)
generally deals adequately with a project’s internal financial and economic impacts, and with certain externalities that lend themselves to being monetised in a generally acceptable way. However, CBA has rarely incorporated environmental and social impacts of dams as they are difficult to monetise. CBA also tends to underestimate both project construction costs and the effects of uncertainty and the
irreversibility of most project impacts.
- In relation to the above, multi-criteria analysis has evolved to encourage integration of those less
quantifiable values. Using a system of relative weighting factors, MCA can also effectively
incorporate distributional and macro-economic effects of projects in a flexible and transparent way, alongside the results from basic CBAs.
- The economic and financial environment within which dam projects are planned is in a constant state of flux. Dam projects are often planned many years before they are actually built and good
practice increasingly involves using sophisticated risk analysis, instead of simple sensitivity analysis, to test the robustness of the results to changes in key economic and financial parameters.
Assessing options:
- World wide, dams provide 20% of electricity
generation and supply approximately 36% of
irrigation. Within these global figures, there is
considerable variability.
- There exists an array of options in providing
services associated with dams. Among many others these include, for electricity production: natural gas, coal, and other fossil-fuels, wind power, and
promoting more efficient end-use equipment; for irrigation: groundwater extraction, sprinkler and drip systems and making existing systems more productive; for water supply, demand management through targeted water pricing and improvement in leaky infrastructure; for flood alleviation, integrated strategies required to cover all eventualities,
not just the peak floods which dams are designed to withstand.
- Non-dam options are currently considered in the planning and design of dam projects, but frequently their assessment has been limited in scope and lacked participatory processes that could broaden the range of alternatives considered. In some cases, options assessment came too late in the project cycle and has been used to justify decisions
already taken.
- In assessing options, multi-objective planning approaches are needed to give due prominence to social and environmental concerns. A broader range of policy, institutional, managerial, and technical options needs to be considered early in the process prior to taking a decision on whether to proceed with a dam project.
Institutional issues
- Over the last half-century there has been a significant shift in the way public interest is defined from one which placed a premium on techno-economic interests (such as provision of more megawatts of electric power) to one which places a greater weight on the rights and interests of people and communities affected by development activities.
- The role of civil society organisations has expanded. Their legitimacy in representing and defending interests, in participating in decision-making on development, and in monitoring compliance is increasing, although not unchallenged. The private sector has also considerably expanded its role, undertaking functions that were, until recently,
the exclusive remit of government. Good
governance increasingly emphasises transparent and participatory decision-making.
- In many countries project outcomes are affected
by the lack of laws, regulations, and guidelines to govern projects. Compliance with the laws etc. that do exist often is compromised by weak institutional structures and legal frameworks.
- Contemporary thinking regarding integrated water resources management strongly supports the river basin as the logical basic unit for water planning and management.
- Analysis of the operations of the world’s existing 45 000 large dams and their associated infrastructure (eg irrigation/water supply systems) shows that operational efficiencies can be improved by upgrading and modifying operations. Countries
also are exercising the option to de-commission some dams when they have reached the end of their useful lives, or their environmental impacts have been judged unacceptable.
Newsletter Contents
Extra! Extra!
Some of the 100 contributing papers written in addition to the 28 main WCD Studies:
Social issues
- Social Impacts of an African Dam: Equity and Distributional Issues in the Senegal River Valley
- Social Impacts of Large Dams: The China Case
- Gender and Large Dams
- Dams and Benefit Sharing
- Downstream Impacts of Dams
- The Ibaloy People and the Agno River Basin, Province of Benguet, Philippines
- Land Acquisition Act and Impact on Tribal Development in India
- The Experience with Dams and Resettlement in Argentina
- The Experience with Dams and Resettlement in India
- Displacement, Resettlement, Rehabilitation, Reparation and Development – China
Environment issues
- The Influence of Dams on River Fisheries
- Biodiversity Impacts of Large Dams
- Managed Flood Releases from Reservoirs
- Guidance and Criteria for Managing Reservoirs and Associated Riverine Environments to Benefit Fish and Fisheries
- Certainty and Uncertainty in the Science of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from
- Hydroelectric Reservoirs
- Implications of Climate Change for Large Dams and their Management
Economic and financing issues
- Best Practice Methods for Valuing Irrigation Benefits
- Best Practice Methods for Valuing Energy Benefits
- Methodological Approach for the Distributional Effectiveness of Large Dams
- Hydropower Dams
- Financing Statistics, Trends and Policies of International Financial Institutions
Options assessment
- Life Cycle Analysis
- Demand Management
- Isolated and Rural Settings
- Irrigation and Agriculture Experience and Options in Israel
- Traditional Irrigation Systems
- Assessment of Flood Management Options
- Ex Post Evaluation of Dams and Related
- Water Projects
- Flushing of Sediments from Reservoirs
- Operation, Monitoring, and Rehabilitation of Dams/Reservoirs in Japan
Institutional issues
- Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis
- Regional Integrated Resource Planning
- Social Impact Assessment
- River Basins: Institutional Framework and Management Options for Latin America
- Water Resources National Policy In Brazil
- Transparency and Corruption Prevention in Building Large Dams
- Implementing WCD Guidelines Within an International Certification System
- Report on International and Comparative Water Law Applicable to Large Dam Construction
- World Bank Inspection Panel
Newsletter Contents
Copyright © 1998-2001 The World Commission on Dams
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