Dams and Development harnessing collective energies.

• Author: Asmal, Kader
• Position: Notes from the Chair - World Commission on Dams

On 16 November 2000 in London, the World Commission on Dams (WCD) launched "Dams And Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making"--a report which will have a profound impact not only on the future role of the $42-billion dam industry, but on how to develop and manage water and energy resources in the new millennium.

Within 24 hours, WCD Chairman Kader Asmal and Dr. Klaus Toepfer, Director-General of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), met with UN Member States and presented the report to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. That same day, across the Atlantic, others from the Commission presented their key findings to 300 investors, bankers, insurers and international environmental monitors at the UNEP Financial Services Initiative in Frankfurt, Germany. United Nations agencies--especially UNEP, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, the World Health Organization--and the UN Foundation had been "present at the creation" of the WCD, playing distinct and critical supporting roles in its comprehensive, global work programme, while allowing it the independence to establish credibility and legitimacy among all constituents. Some of these UN partners appear ready to be "present at the implementation" to ensure the report makes a difference in institutions and individual lives.

Why? Because so much is at stake, because the model for dams could work for other contentious issues, because the report is a direct response to Mr. Annan's Millennium Conference challenge, and because the United Nations is uniquely positioned to oversee negotiations that come out of the WCD framework. But to understand the nature of those potential negotiations, one must first appreciate the origins of the debate.

Dams have been built for thousands of years-- to manage flood waters, harness water as hydropower, supply water for drinking and the industry, and irrigate fields. Today, there are over 45,000 large dams in the world; one third of all countries rely on hydropower for more than half their electricity supply, and large dams generate 19 per cent of electricity overall. In addition, some 30 to 40 per cent of the 271 million hectares irrigated worldwide rely on dams.

But the last fifty years have also highlighted the performance and the social and environmental impacts of large dams. They have fragmented and transformed the world's rivers, while global estimates suggest that 40 million to 80 million people have been displaced by reservoirs. Dams...