18 March 1999
WCD To Study Brazil's Tucurui Dam and Amazon/Tocantins River Basin

The World Commission on Dams is pleased to announce its independent study of Brazil's Tucuruí Dam, located 300 km south of the coastal city of Belem, and related aspects of the Amazon/Tocantins river basin.

This is one of up to 10 case studies of dams in major river basins around the world to be undertaken by the Commission in preparation of its June 2000 final report. The report will provide a framework for future decision-making on dams, which epitomize the many conflicts at the heart of debates over sustainable development. It should be noted that the Commission is not judicial in nature and will not adjudicate on disputes over dams.
The WCD case studies will underpin that final report by illustrating 'lessons learned' in terms of the myriad impacts -- positive and negative -- of dams on people, the environment, and economies.

"No other natural environment has captured the world's imagination this century as has the Amazon," said WCD chair Professor Kader Asmal, who is also South Africa's Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry. "The Amazon is the largest river basin in the world and most of Latin America's assumed hydro potential lies there. The dam experience in the tropical forest has much to teach us for future decision-making on these projects and their alternatives."

The Amazon is the source of 20 per cent of the freshwater discharged into oceans. The fabled waters of the 6,771-kilometer-long river and the forests surrounding it hold unfathomable riches.

Just how those riches are defined depends on the beholder.

For much of this century, Brazil's leaders and its urban poor looked to the Amazon for economic salvation, through exploitation of its hydropower for industrial growth, its timber for export, and its land for cattle-raising. As with many dams the world over, the Tucuruí was part of a national dream of taming the wilds. Ninety per cent of Brazil's energy comes from hydropower without which, it has been argued, the national debt would have been worsened by the cost of importing fossil fuels.

Constructed to fuel the Grande Carajas Programme of mining and other industrial projects, it was the first large dam built in a tropical rainforest and its 2,875 square-km. reservoir is the largest man-made lake ever built in such a zone. It has an installed generating capacity of 4,200 megawatts, enough to fuel energy-hungry aluminum plants which added value to domesticallly-mined bauxite. The recent completion of Brazil's North-South electricity transmission grid means Tucuruí power can be sold nationally rather than just regionally and gives further impetus to the exploitation of Amazonia's hydro potential.

In the last several decades, however, the cost of such exploitation in the delicate Amazonian environment has become a matter of vociferous debate. The dam's impacts are said to occur at several levels: in local terms, in changing the lives of indigenous people and vulnerable ethnic minorities, destroying the habitat of unique fish, animals and plants, and displacing 40,000 people; in regional terms, by affecting downstream water quality and fish populations, by creating a vast reservoir in which disease-bearing mosquitoes breed, and in encouraging migration into the area; and in global terms, by contributing to the production of 'greenhouse gases' and the loss of unique species of flora and fauna of unknowable value to the world.

"Tucuruí also offers the WCD specific lessons in emerging institutional responses to the social and economic consequences of large dams," said WCD Secretary-General Achim Steiner. "Additionally, the Tucuruí study will demonstrate the long road travelled in conducting environmental assessments of dams, and how Brazil's strategy with respect to assessing dams and their alternatives has evolved over time."

Another instructive aspect of the Tucuruí experience is the assessment of the slow decomposition of the forest flooded to create the reservoir. Hydroelectric power production has long been considered 'cleaner' than thermal production through burning coal, but biomass decomposition yields methane, a greenhouse gas. Just how much methane is released is a matter of great conjecture, so the Commission will examine very closely the science underlying this issue.

WCD Senior Advisors Bruce Aylward and Sanjeev Khagram are the WCD focal points for the Tucuruí case study. They can be reached at the WCD in Cape Town, South Africa, at 27-21-426-4000; e-mail baylward@dams.org or skhagram@dams.org

For general information, please consult our website, http://www.dams.org or contact: Kate Dunn, Senior Advisor - WCD Communications, Media and Outreach, Email: kdunn@dams.org

Background To The WCD Process

Dams are a central, flashpoint issue in the sustainable management of our finite water resources. Those resources are subject to increasingly competitive demands as global population growth exacerbates tensions over the water needed to produce energy and to ensure food security. The potential for regional conflict over water resources is very real.

Dams can provide hydropower, irrigation and flood control. These are developmental benefits, but there are also costs in human, environmental and economic terms. The public debate on large dams has been characterised by the increasingly adversarial tone adopted by dam advocates and opponents. The breakdown in constructive dialogue between interested parties in the dams debate has had ramifications in areas ranging from the achievement of civil society consensus on sustainable development, to the availability of financing for dams and their alternatives.

In April 1997, the IUCN-The World Conservation Union and the World Bank brokered an unusual summit of un-likeminded persons in Gland, Switzerland. Representatives of pro- and anti-dam interest groups, many of whom had never met before, surprised even themselves when they achieved rare consensus in their unanimous call for an independent World Commission on Dams.


After much follow-up negotiation between those stakeholders, 12 eminent persons with wide-ranging experience in dams-related issues (see list) were chosen as Commissioners. The Chair is Prof. Kader Asmal, South Africa's Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry. The Commission Secretariat was established in Cape Town, South Africa in June 1998 and consists of an international team of professionals expert in conflict resolution, the environment, sociology, anthropology, engineering, economics, and water and energy management.


The WCD's motto is "Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future." Its two-year mandate calls for in-depth, independent analysis of the effectiveness of existing large-scale dams in meeting a broad range of development goals -- economic, social and environmental. Based on that analysis, the Commissioners will determine policy options to guide future decision-making over dams and their alternatives.


Along with the 8-10 in-depth case studies, the Secretariat will also undertake a more limited analysis of an additional 150 dams, primarily using existing data available from a wide variety of sources. The WCD will also produce 17 in-depth papers by experts in social, economic, environmental and institutional issues related to dams, and the assessment of other options that provide the same services usually provided by dams. Interested parties can contribute to the Commission's deliberations by making submissions to the WCD and through the series of consultations the Commission will hold in the next several months.