Environment     
Damned If You Do... 3

The controversy over the theory of RIS and the over-reaction of the anti-dam campaigners on this account show how concerned people have become about dams and their adverse impacts. The causal relationship between reservoirs and earthquakes has not been conclusively established and may be a misconception, but other adverse impacts of dams are very much real. They have been conclusively proved by scientific studies and investigations. At first only the directly affected people organized themselves locally in small groups and made feeble protests against a particular dam. Gradually environmentalists and other NGOs joined hands with such protesters and in course of time their campaigns spread throughout the world crossing all national boundaries. They became internationally organized and began to put up stiff resistance. These anti-dam campaign groups have held many international conferences and issued declarations. One such conference was held in India in 1994 at a place called Manibeli which was attended by representatives from as many as 44 countries and the now famous Manibeli Declaration for moratorium on large dams was issued.

The international financial institutions, particularly the World Bank, whose total investment in large dams amounts to billions of dollars, as well as the dam building companies, have high stakes in the dam building industry. At first they faced opposition from the affected people in the economically and technologically highly developed countries of the Northern hemisphere where dam building on massive scales had begun earlier and where people first became aware of and articulate about the adverse impacts of dams. These financiers and dam builders therefore gradually shifted their operations to the economically weak and poor countries of the Southern hemisphere. Here again they began to face similar opposition. Now they found that their business was under great threat and the market for their vast investment was shrinking and their past investment was in danger of becoming 'bad'. To deal with a government is one thing, but dealing with the amorphous body of masses is quite different. In order to get out of this impasse, in April,1997, the World Bank, along with the The World Conservation Union (IUCN), supported and participated in a workshop organized in Gland, Switzerland, which was attended by 39 participants representing governments, the private sector, international financial institutions, NGOs and the people affected by dams. It was resolved in that meeting that a World Commission on Dams (WCD) should be established with a mandate to

1. review the development effectiveness of large dams and assess alternatives for water resources and energy development; and

2. develop internationally acceptable criteria, guidelines and standards, where appropriate, for the planning, design, appraisal, construction, operation, monitoring and decommissioning of dams."

Under the Chairmanship of Prof. Kader Asmal, the then Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry of South Africa, the WCD started its work in May, 1998 with 11 other members chosen to reflect regional diversity, expertise and representation of interested parties like the financiers, the builders and the affected people and the NGOs. Two of the members were from India � Ms Medha Patkar, founder of 'Narmada Bachao Andolan', and Mr. L.C.Jain, who was also the Vice Chairman of the Commission. The members were independent, serving in an individual capacity and representing no institution or country. It conducted the first comprehensive and independent review of the performance and impacts of large dams, and the options available for water and energy development. It held public consultations throughout its work through a Forum consisting of 68 members representing a cross-section of interests, views and institutions. Its costs were funded by 'untied' donations from 53 public, private and voluntary social organizations and foundations. The final report of the World Commission on Dams, Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making, was released in November, 2000. It is a unique document and is the first of its kind. An Independent Assessment of this report made in collaboration by the World Resources Institute, Washington, Lokayan, Delhi and the Lawyers' Environmental Action Team, Dar es Salaam, very rightly calls it 'A Watershed in Global Governance'.

During the life of the Commission it was debated whether it was 'an experiment in global public policymaking' and whether it could be replicated in other areas like trade, industry, environment, food
security, genetic modification of crops etc, all of which have today become matters of great concern for the common man universally. What is most remarkable about this Commission is its impartiality and transparency. Not many international organizations, not excluding even the UNO, can perhaps
boast of these qualifications.

To fulfill its mandate to review the development effectiveness of large dams and assess alternatives for water and energy development, the Commission undertook detailed case studies of 8 large dams � Aslantas dam (Turkey), Glomma-Lagen Basin (Norway), Grand Coulee dam (USA/Canada), Kariba dam (Zambia/Zimbabwe), Pak Mun dam (Thailand), Tarbela dam (Pakistan), Tucurui dam (Brazil) and Gariep and Vanderkloof dams (South Africa). It also prepared country reviews for India and China and a briefing paper on Russia and the Newly Independent States. In addition to these 125 large dams were surveyed and 17 thematic reviews produced on social, environmental and economic issues; on alternatives to dams; and on governance and institutional processes. At 4 regional consultations 947 submissions and presentations were received. From all these the Commission collected a huge mass of data on the issues regarding dams and their alternatives. The objectives were to evaluate the technical, financial and economic performance of large dams, their ecological, climatic and social impacts and the distribution of gains and losses; an assessment of the alternatives to dams, their benefits and the obstacles and opposition they face; and finally, an analysis of their planning, the process of decision making, selection, design, construction, operation and decommissioning.

According to the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD), a large dam is 15 m high from the foundation and includes those which are between 5 � 15 metres and have a reservoir volume of more than 3 million cubic metres. The WCD adopted this definition and found that there are 45,000 such dams around the world. The distribution of these dams are, China � 22,000 (48%), the USA � 6,575 (14%), India � 4,291 (9%), Japan � 2,675 (6%), Spain � 1,196 (3%) and the remaining 7,372 (23%) in other countries like France, Brazil, Turkey, Canada and South Korea with less than 1,000 large dams each.

The economic performance of large dams varies from dam to dam but the Commission found that

1. in irrigation they have fallen short of the target, failed to recover their costs and incurred losses,

2. in generation of hydro-power, their performance was economically better with a number of
   over-achievers as well as underperformers,

3. in supplying water to municipalities and industries they have fallen short of the target in terms
   of quantity and timing,

4. in flood control many areas have greatly benefited from dams but poor operation of dams is one of the reasons why flood damages have increased in vulnerable areas,

5. multipurpose dams have fared worse than single-purpose ones because their targets were
   over-optimistic,

6. construction in cases of many dams surveyed by the Commission could not be completed according to their time schedule resulting in the escalation of their costs,

7. the cost of maintenance of dams is rising due to their aging and changes in the hydrology regime,

8. the reservoirs are losing their live storage capacities because of their sedimentation and

9. for water-logging and salinity, which affect one-fifth of irrigated land globally, dams are equally responsible along with other factors.

The Commission found that the ecological impacts of large dams have been

1. changes in and loss of forests and other wildlife habitats due to inundation by reservoirs which has threatened and caused the extinction of many wild species and plants,

2. the loss of aquatic biodiversity, degeneration and changes in the river's services to the floodplains, wetlands, estuaries and adjacent marine ecosystems,

3. where a number of dams have been built across the same river such impacts have been
   cumulative and there has been great degeneration of water quality,

4. large dams release green house gases which cause global warming, though such releases vary according to climatic variation

5. though there have been a few cases where attempts to mitigate such impacts, by creation of new wetlands for example, have yielded limited positive results, yet the overall ecological impacts of large dams are negative, and the traditional mitigation measures, not being very successful, need to be supplemented by more effective new measures, as is being done in the USA by decommissioning and removal of dams.

The social impacts of large dams have been

1. physical displacement of 40-80 million of people worldwide,

2. loss of and threat to the means of livelihood of downstream fishermen and floodplain dwellers,

3. many displaced people have not been rehabilitated and adequately compensated,

4. resettlement has focused mainly on physical relocation rather than on social and economic restoration and development,

5. larger the scale of displacement poorer has been the resettlement and restoration of livelihoods,

6. both economically and culturally backward indigenous and tribal peoples and vulnerable ethnic minorities have suffered the most by displacement,

7. sometimes people living near dams and reservoirs have faced health hazards,

8. the womenfolk among the displaced have borne a disproportionate share of the social costs and have been discriminated against, and

9. in the calculation of total costs of most large dams such social and environmental costs were not taken into account.

The deficiencies in the planning and decision-making process found by the Commission were

1. lack of transparency and openness and lack of public participation,

2. non-recognition of rights of affected people,

3. non-inclusion of social and environmental costs in the estimates and sole reliance on technical parameters and economic cost-benefit analyses,

4. absence of monitoring and evaluation impeding learning from experience,

5. in cases of dams built by private parties absence of licensing clarifying their responsibilities
   towards the end of the dam's life,

6. failure of dam proponents and financiers to fulfill commitments made by them at the planning stage and non-observance of statutory obligations,

7. distortion of decision-making, planning and implementation because of corruption,

8. non-resolution of conflicts of the planning stage due to litigation and time consuming
   arbitration process.

The findings of the Commission explain why there have been so much resistance to large dams. In fact any development project, however desirable and beneficial, will fail to find public acceptance if it is iniquitous, inefficient, decided upon without open consultation with all the interested parties, environmentally unsustainable and there is no accountability. The WCD noted that the pressures and the driving forces which made us build these dams have enormously intensified. Total annual freshwater withdrawal today is about 3800 cubic kilometres � twice as 50 years ago, population is rapidly growing, economies are expanding, groundwater is depleted, water quality is declining and there are severe limits to surface water extraction. Water is no longer viewed as a free gift of nature but as a limited natural resource, a scarce economic good and a human right. There should be equity in its allocation.

But unfortunately globally water consumption is very unequal. According to the experts per capita daily requirement of water for domestic use should be about 50 litres. In 1990 more than a billion people had less than that, whereas people in wealthy countries and city dwellers everywhere were using 4 � 14 times as much. (What is worse, now water is being increasingly treated as a tradable commodity and there are disturbing talks in certain quarters about leaving its allocation to the free market forces and its privatization). There are forecasts that competition will increase among three largest users in global terms � agriculture (67%), industry (19%) and municipal/residential (9%) uses. By 2025 agriculture alone will require about 15-20% increase in water supplies and about 3.5 billion people will be living in water-stressed countries. For lack of irrigation agriculture will fail to ensure food security for the growing population and more and more countries will experience food shortages.

Two billion people lack electricity, the demand for which is continuing to rise in developing countries. Freshwater species, specially fish, are being increasingly threatened, a significant percentage of wetlands have already been lost, and the capacity of aquatic ecosystems to produce many goods and services on which societies depend is rapidly declining.

To meet these challenges, according to the WCD, we have to

1. manage the demand side by reducing consumption and recycling;

2. make technological innovations and formulate and enforce policies for more efficient end-use of resources that will reduce water stress and environmental hazards like the emission of green house gases;

3. reduce needless loss of water and power by improvement and upgradation of the existing system of their supply, transmission and distribution;

4. manage the river basins and the catchments by afforestation, checking deforestation and building structures to ensure groundwater recharging and control of soil erosion and surface
   water flow;

5. develop alternatives like recycling, rainwater harvesting and wind and solar power.

In cases of existing dams steps should be taken to

1. increase the efficiency of existing assets,

2. avoid and minimize ecological impacts,

3. engage in participatory, multi-criteria analysis of development needs and options,

4. ensure that displaced and project-affected peoples' livelihoods are improved,

5. resolve past inequities and injustices and transform project-affected people into beneficiaries,

6. conduct regular monitoring and periodic reviews, and

7. develop, apply and enforce incentives, sanctions and arbitrations � specially in the area of environmental and social performance. In cases of on-going dam projects past mistakes should not be repeated but be rectified.

Before undertaking new dam projects alternative options should be carefully assessed to see that the dam is the most competitive development option and it will not seriously threaten or endanger the health and integrity of the river system; all deficiencies in planning should be avoided, steps to minimize social and environmental costs should be taken and they should be included in the estimates of total costs of the project and there should be continuous monitoring for efficient design, construction, operation, safety and maintenance and equitable sharing of risks and benefits. For peaceful sharing of river water and to avoid tension and conflicts between countries and within countries users of different parts of the basin should enter into enforceable agreements through negotiations conducted in good faith. The role of each agency should be clearly demarcated. Governments should draw up a national water policy which is environmentally sustainable, just and realistic to avoid disputes and ensure efficient and equitable water use. The Commission has also suggested a set of code of conduct for all concerned � national governments, NGOs, affected peoples' organizations, professional associations, the private sector, bilateral aid agencies and multilateral development banks.

Through its report the World Commission on Dams has offered its criteria and guidelines to help states, developers and owners as well as affected people and their organizations meet the expectations when faced with the complex issues associated with dam projects. Let us hope that in place of ad-hoc or arbitrary decisions this will foster informed and appropriate decisions and thus raise the level of public acceptance and improve the performance of dams as a development tool. For fulfillment of this expectation, however, all concerned in dam building have to do their respective duties 'in good faith' with the sincere conviction that water is the most precious and critical resource and rivers are no less; they are our very life. Saving our rivers and saving our life are one and the same thing.  

�  Kumud Biswas
June 22, 2003

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