Thank you for this opportunity to address you tonight. Before I begin I would like to welcome all those who have travelled from outside of Cape Town to our beautiful city. I also want to thank the Environmental Monitoring Group for organising this most useful workshop, and also Joji Cariņo, one of our World Commission on Dams Commissioners, for making it a priority in her busy schedule.

I'm sorry I could not attend more of your meetings today - my more recent obligations as South Africa's Minister of Education have kept me very busy - however the Commission secretariat has kept me informed and I am encouraged by the calibre of discussion here. We consider this meeting sufficiently important that we're taping all these proceedings, for immediate reference by those who could not attend and for our video/audio archive, as part of the WCD's legacy to the global community.

One of the major benefits of consultations such as these together with the work style of the Commission is that we are doing things about the South in the South. To our knowledge the World Commission on Dams is the only international organisation with headquarters in Southern Africa. For once we do not to have to fly away from this continent, to Geneva or to New York, to discuss the challenges in Africa.

As many of you know I'm very familiar with the dilemmas posed by dams and other water resource management issues, having been Water Affairs and Forestry Minister in South Africa's first post-apartheid government. We have made the issues of human rights and safeguarding the environment the cornerstones of our new water legislation in this country. I appreciate the degree to which those concerns have informed your discussions here today.

The World Commission on Dams has a important two-year mandate, a long road to travel in a relatively short time. We will complete our global review of dams by March 2000, then write our final report by August 2000. We want to know how effective large dams have been in delivering a range of development benefits including: · the benefits anticipated when a project was conceived 10, 20, even 50 years ago; and · the benefits one would expect of a dam built today, with an emphasis on the need for those benefits to be economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable over the long term, and equitably shared.

We can only assess those benefits through in-depth consultation with people and organisations such as those that you represent. It is the degree to which the WCD consults with the various interests in the dams debate that sets it apart from other world commissions which have cost a great deal but often have left barely a ripple in their wake.

People often ask me, "If the WCD is not part of the UN, and it's not part of the World Bank, then who gave you your mandate and who will listen to you?" This again is what sets us apart. Our mandate is based in the changing global context in which governments no longer make public policy single-handedly, be it in national parliament or at the United Nations. It recognises that civil society and the private sector also play a vital role and thus must also be part of the process.

Our mandate comes from the recognised leaders in the dams debate. That means, governments; anti-dam campaigners active on social and environmental issues; financiers and donors; academics, utilities, engineering firms, and irrigation interests. Those most closely involved are listed as WCD Forum members in our brochure, which is available here.

The fact that the WCD engages with all these sides, at all levels, and not just with the 'usual suspects' in the elite of the international development sector, has encouraged widespread 'buy in' to the WCD process. Consultation is a key element of our work programme and lends to the WCD process a high degree of legitimacy with stakeholders. We anticipate that the inclusiveness of our process also will encourage serious consideration and acceptance of our final report and therefore widespread adoption of our recommendations. So there is method to what some consider the 'madness' of the WCD's exhaustive global consultation programme. Let me describe how progress in terms of our four-part work programme.

We embarked on 10 WCD sponsored case studies of individual dams and their respective river basins across the globe. In Africa we've studied the Gariep and Van der Kloof Dams on the Orange River, as a pilot study to establish methodology for the rest of our case studies. Our main African study is of the Kariba Dam and the Zambezi river basin. The dam straddles Zambia and Zimbabwe and its history offers unique lessons regarding transnational water-sharing and water resource development; in environmental and ecological impacts; and in resettlement issues. The scope of the Kariba study, like all case studies, was developed through a stakeholder meeting in the immediate vicinity of the dam, to ensure grassroots participation. The consultants, who are Zambian and Zimbabwean nationals, are conducting the study through broad-based consultation in the field. Their draft report will be submitted to the original stakeholder group for discussion in January.

Secondly there are 17 thematic review studies involving over 500 people grouped under five themes: social, environmental, economic, and institutional issues related to dams and an assessment of options in delivering services usually provided by dams. Each review is being systematically developed by a group of experts from across the globe and from across the spectrum of opinion, and then will be subjected to peer review by a similarly representative group of experts and stakeholders. In the case of displacement and resettlement issues a workshop was convened so that indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities gathered in Geneva in July for a major UN meeting could contribute directly to our draft paper on those issues.

Thirdly, we have a submissions and consultation process. We accept submissions from anyone, on any topic related to dams, although we would prefer submissions that were geared toward the various aspects of our work programme. So far we have received over 400 submissions from across the globe. The single most dominant theme is the environmental impact of dams. Overall, most submissions have been made in relation to our regional consultations, held thus far in South Asia and Latin America. Our Africa/Middle East consultation will be held in Cairo December 8 and 9. For that meeting we've received or been promised over 60 submissions from across the two regions. Some of the emergent themes are: food security and social impacts of irrigation; shared river basin management; ecosystem impacts of dams; and demand management as a water conservation approach.

Out of this huge body of research will come our final report. Of course, I can't pre-judge or pre-empt that final report by telling you what we'll say. I don't know as yet what we'll say. But everywhere we go, with everyone we meet, we are hearing a few messages, themes, principles repeated.

One is that there is a place for dams in development, particularly in Africa [referring here to the WWF paper, Maurice Strong's statement & Orange River stakeholder meeting]. They just have to be conceived of and developed in the right way. What's the right way?

Firstly, the debate should not begin with a politician or engineer saying, "We need a dam and it will deliver the following services: flood control, irrigation, hydropower, urban water supply." Instead, the discussion should start with the statement, "We need XYZ services, now what is the best means of realising those needs?" Often a dam is only one of the options. Others may include effective management of water demand, an issue close to my own heart. One of the roles of interested organisations is to make sure that governments first decide on the desired ends, rather than the means.

Secondly, the errors of the past must be acknowledged so they are not repeated. In South Africa, forced removals to make way for the Gariep and Vanderkloof dams were just another aspect of apartheid. When we held our final stakeholder meeting in relation to our Orange River pilot study, displaced black and coloured farmworkers remembered how they were told, at very short notice, to pack up and leave farms, many having to live by the roadside for weeks. They lost their livestock, sold for nothing when grazing became unavailable. Some displaced people recognised the value of the dams to the regional economy, while pointing out how much they suffered so that part of society could enjoy the benefits from the dam.

The benefits must be shared more equitably and dams must be designed to reduce negative impacts to the greatest extent possible. Displacement and resettlement must be viewed as a development opportunity, improving the lives of those who have had to make way for a dam. This can only be done effectively if those negatively affected by dams have a strong say in resettlement/development programmes organised in their name. You may be surprised to hear that dam developers and planners increasingly recognise the logic of these objectives. The financial cost of coping with negative social and environmental impacts of dams has become a branch of dam economics, a make-or-break factor for many projects.

Inherent in all the above is the need for broad-based consultation on dam projects. This is where many of you come in. Civil society must be involved in and monitor every level of a proposed dam project, or any major development project for that matter: · to be sure all options are assessed, not just the dam option; · to ensure the economics of a project are solid and that the country is not saddled with unsustainable debt loads or water tariffs to pay for a dam; · to ensure that costs to cover dam operation, monitoring, and, ultimately, decommissioning are factored into initial decision-making; · to ensure the benefits from a dam are shared equitably; · and to ensure the whole process is transparent, particularly the bidding and contracting process.

On that last point I'd like mention that we are in a partnership with Transparency International, an anti-corruption NGO that just held its global congress in Durban. We have invited their help in addressing corruption in large infrastructure projects such as dams. Transparency International is eager that its ideas on eliminating corruption be given life through WCD's final report.

In conclusion our final report will offer the world the first set of criteria, guidelines, and standards against which dam projects, and their alternatives, can be assessed. With little modification they should be able to do the same for other major development projects.

As a former Water Affairs Minister, I can assure you that this is what we need because we have no standard against which to judge hugely expensive dam proposals. All we have had is the clamouring of those who wanted to build dams and those who wanted to stop them. Most parties in the dams debate, from the World Bank to NGOs to national governments to private sector financiers, want a level playing field on which the quality of a project, rather than the influence of those for it or against it, becomes the basis of its acceptance or rejection.

The challenge for civil society is to be both a watchdog on projects, and also to propose solutions with regard to the difficult choices we face in the very arid southern African region. Water is precious, scarce, and in many countries, inequitably divided. It is a potential source of conflict. The WCD is an example of how, working together, we can develop better local and regional approaches to water management, be it via dams or other options.

I invite you to stay tuned to the WCD. Watch out for our final report. And we hope you will be among those who make it a 'living document' that will influence policy-making and delivery on this essential aspect of water resource management, for years to come.

Thank you.