Equity, efficiency, participatory decision-making, sustainability and accountability are the core issues to be addressed in building new large dams, according to a surprisingly refreshing consensus report of the World Commission on Dams.
Investments in large dams over the last century total over USD 2 trillion. But in recent times these investment decisions are increasingly being called into question as the opposition to large dams has grown both in intensity and scale. Today, there exists a global anti-dam community that commands considerable influence and attention. As a consequence, large dams have become controversial almost everywhere in the world.
This mounting challenge prom-pted the formation of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) in 1998 to bring together the various perspectives of the debate to decide if big dams have been really effective as development instruments. The Commission was set up by The World Conservation Union and the World Bank, which has been the single most influential institution responsible for promoting large dams across the world over the last five decades. The WCD report, released in London last November by Nelson Mandela, was expected to trigger negative reactions, as it sought to judge something on which such huge investments have already been made. But surprisingly, barring some exceptions, the responses have been mostly positive.
Even more surprising was the fact that a consensus report did emerge from a 12-member commission that had such a diverse spectrum of opinion vis-a-vis the value of big dams. The Commission consisted of people like Jan Veltrop, former president of International Committee on Large Dams, Goran Lindahl, the then CEO of Asea Brown Baveri, one of the world's largest equipment suppliers for large dams, and Medha Patkar, one of the most vehement activists against big dams. The Commission was chaired by Kader Asmal, who had sanctioned one of the largest dams in South Africa while he was that country's water resources minister.