IN A development having far-reachingimplications, dam critics and proponents from all over the world agreedto work together to set up an independent commission to review the world'sdams at a workshop in Gland, Switzerland, on April 10- 11. The top-levelcommission will review the social,economic and environmental costsand benefits of the world's dams,recommend international standardson dam construction and assess sustainable and equitable methods of landand water management and energyproduction.
The review commission will alsomake recommendations on repairingthe environmental damage done byexisting dams and on compensatingpeople whose livelihoods have sufferedbecause of dams.
Co-sponsored by the World Bank(WB) and the World ConservationUnion (IUCN), the 35 participants atthe workshop included senior WBofficials, critics of large dams fromadvocacy groups and academia,representatives from dam-buildingcompanies and agencies and dam-affected people.
The Gland meeting itself was aresult of sustained campaign by dam-critics from all over the world demanding the rejection of a review of 50 WB-funded dams by the bank's operation evaluation department (OED) inAugust 1996. Forty-nine NGOs from 21countries, including the Centre forScience and Environment, New Delhi,had urged the commissioning of "acomprehensive, unbiased and authoritative review of past WB lending forlarge dams".
This demand thus seems to havebeen accepted at the subsequent Glandmeeting. However, the demand for amoratorium on the provision of loans,credits, guarantees and other forms ofsupport for large dams until the reviewcommission is established, remainsunaddressed.
Participants denounced the conclusion of the OED report whichstates that the benefits of large dams"far outweighed" their costs. TheInternational Rivers Network, a US based NGO, has found that figuresused in the review "appear systematically to exaggerate actual project benefits". OED's figures for hydropower production from individual dams, forexample, appear to exaggerate actualelectricity production by as much as100 per cent.
Over the next six months, IUCN willwork with the WB to find fundingsources for the independent reviewinitiative, establish its terms of referenceand select five to eight commissioners.Once established, the review will havetwo years to receive submissions, holdhearings, commission studies andpublish its conclusions.
Shripad Dharmadhikary, who represented India's Narmada BachaoAndolan (Save the Narmada Movement), welcomed the decision to set upan independent review commission butadded that it would not lessen the intensity of the campaigns against dams, tobring justice for dam-affected peopleand for the implementation of equitableand sustainable alternatives.
Peter Bosshard, secretary of theSwitzerland advocacy group BernDeclaration, said, "We are aware thatwe will need to be constantly vigilantto ensure that the review is truly independent and that its terms of referenceare as comprehensive as agreed inGland."