26 March 1999
'Meeting of Opposites' in Prague A Success
Forum Accepts Dams Commission Challenge

Prague, Czech Republic Proponents and opponents of large-scale dams have accepted the challenge posed to them this week by the World Commission on Dams in Prague, Czech Republic, to join the WCD Forum and bring their energies and organisation to this partnership initiative to find common ground on the future of dams.

Like the Commission itself, the 55-member Forum is an innovation in global public policy-making. The Forum includes representatives from the broad spectrum of perspectives around the dams debate. These include utilities and indigenous people, economists and social activists, environmentalists and engineers, as well as lending institutions and aid agencies which often are approached to fund dams.

"For anyone genuinely interested in finding better answers to old problems that will not disappear -- the WCD is a rare opportunity!" said WCD Chair, Professor Kader Asmal, who is also South Africa's Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry. "We have discussed how we can give real life and content to the partnership between the Commission and the WCD Forum. I am pleased to report that all Forum members have expressed a sincere willingness to commit to the Forum and contribute to the success of the WCD Process."

The 'old problems' with dams are symptomatic of many large-scale development initiatives. Dams provide electricity and fill irrigation canals to boost industrial and agricultural growth, as well as managing floods and storing waters for times of drought. But these benefits sometimes come at certain costs in social, economic and environmental terms. The adversarial debate over dams illustrates the tensions between nations (over shared waterways) and within nations (as environmentalists, communities displaced by dam reservoirs, and other affected people battle government, utilities and farm interests). It is believed there are 45,000 large dams worldwide.

The WCD has been charged with moving the fractious dams debate beyond rancour and into a more constructive phase. It is doing this by carrying out a global review of dams and their effectiveness in delivering development benefits, plus devising internationally acceptable policies to guide future decision-making on dams and their alternatives.

To be sure the Commission is on the right track with its various dams 'constituencies', the 55-member Forum was created to act as a consultative body.
"You are here because your institutions recognise that the strategies and tactics of the past do not provide the answers for the future," said Prof. Asmal.
In the immediate term, the Forum provides an opportunity to discuss the thinking and directions of the Commission as it moves forward towards making its recommendations in June 2000; to make submissions to the various WCD studies now underway; to publicize the WCD's activities within their own constituencies and provide feedback from those constituencies to the Commission.

Senegalese delegates Mme. Fambodji Fall Gaye, Mme. Loly Diouf, M. Madiodio Niasse (WCD)

Of the Forum's longer-term role, Minister Asmal told the members: "You have taken a bold leap into unknown territory." The WCD is asking the Forum to take part in efforts to promote global adoption of the WCD's report once it is published in June 2000, even though the report could not possibly make every constituency completely happy.

Prof. Asmal said the Forum members' faith will prove to be justified. "At the end of our process we will leave you and the international community with the necessary tools to move forward and be able to work co-operatively in an area crucial to the sustainable development of our planet.

"We want all those involved in some way or another with the dams debate to feed into our own deliberations and to be sufficiently convinced at the end of the process that we have delivered a product that is both just and employable…Will you support us in our endeavour to break out of the self-defeating cycle of argument and counter-argument and counter-accusation that has made the dams debate one of the most passionate but also questionable controversies?"

In plenary sessions and in smaller work groups, the various parties highlighted the main issues they would like the Commission to address in its studies and report. Those include, among many others:

• in-depth analysis of the economics of dams, irrigation and power production


• resettlement and compensation for those displaced by dam reservoirs


• quantification of environmental and social impacts, to give them the same weight as economic issues when decisions are made whether to build dams or adopt their alternatives


• consideration of the costs and benefits of alternatives to dams, such as natural gas and coal generation of power and their impact on the environment;


• improved forecasting of river flows (with particular attention to climate change) and electricity consumption.


• issues of good governance that would ensure all parties affected by dams are included in decision-making about dams and their alternatives


• while the WCD was born out of widespread dissatisfaction with dams due to their negative impacts, that the positive impacts also receive ample consideration, particularly in terms of energy provision and ensuring food security

There was general agreement that the WCD needs a strategy to ensure its final report will be the global reference on dams issues for decision-makers in national governments, international agencies, the private sector and civil society.

"The Commission's work programme is very ambitious," said one Forum member who represents a northern donor agency, "but we also see that it is working out." Others said they appreciated the opportunity to meet, for the first time face-to-face, with their adversaries in the dams debate and to discuss their concerns in a non-adversarial environment.

Speaking directly to the head of his country's national electricity utility, a representative of indigenous people affected by dams said, "We have had 20 years experience with dams. A lot of it has been negative but some of it has been positive as well, and we want to be sure this is taken into account by the WCD."