[Newsletter Contents]

War Journalist Casts His Eye On Peace Process

"When I was a war correspondent twenty-five years ago, I paid more attention to blood than to water," began Jacques Leslie in a July 2000 Harpers magazine article, in which he shows why his, and perhaps the world's, priorities have changed. As an LA Times reporter covering the battle lines of Vietnam and Cambodia, Leslie saw rivers like the Mekong mostly as physical obstacles. More recently, he writes, the pendulum began to swing.

"Now when I envision the globe, I try to see beyond political boundaries to the world as it really is: a collection of watersheds, lakes, rivers, and aquifers that together maintain the earth's biota ­ which is to say, us. Now the world's quotidian skirmishes and conflagrations are mere background noise. Now it is water that scares me."

The article, chosen by Ecco Press as the "best American science writing 2001," and a finalist for the John B Oakes for distinguished environmental reporting. marked just the beginning of his interest. In the tensions between water competition and resistance to dams, Leslie saw drama. He saw a fresh angle. He planned a book.

What he needed was a vehicle, a human face, a voice to help him tell a story too often lost in facts, figures and dry policy jargon.

Leslie witnessed the WCD launch and dissemination. He observed the Forum. He set up his laptop at the WCD office, interviewing Commissioners, Secretariat, Forum members, and others. His curiosity hinges on the WCD process as much as its Report. How did this group manage to find common ground? What made participants come out from behind their trenches to establish a process for peace?

"I'm interested in using the process that the WCD went through as a framework for talking about dams," said Leslie. "It's a fascinating narrative, and it allows side trips down all sorts of colourful alleys."