by Piyaporn Hawiset
25 November 2000
The World Commission on Dams (WCD) launched its final report in Bangkok on November 24, 2000, saying it had finished its mission. However, the global dam group's work was criticised as being half-done - because it failed to press governments to comply with its recommendations. The report concluded that large dams typically fell short of their economic targets. Most had overrun on costs by about 50 percent and had been less profitable than expected. Moreover, many of the projects created irreversible social and ecological destruction and mainly benefited urban populations, wealthy factory owners while damaging or destroying the lives of millions of rural around the world because typically compensaiton was not commensurate with the social damages caused.
The two major dam-building agencies in Thailand - the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) and the Royal Irrigation Department (RID) - understandably rejected results of the report outright.
"We can't accept the report because the findings are not accurate," said Pichet Chaowiang, a senior officer from EGAT. "WCD took only two years to study the dams worldwide. For the Pak Mun dam, it spent only a week conducting field research, while it took us 30 years to plan and build."
Pak Mun is one of WCD's seven detailed case studies. The dam was completed by EGAT in 1992, but protests of villagers whose livelihoods have suffered continue. Pichet alleged that the only section that was accurate concerned the failure of the fish ladder. But he argued that this was due to the protest and occupation of the dam site.
The commission, with a US$9.7 million (423 million Baht) budget from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and a score of major dam-building corporations, reviewed 1,000 dams in 79 countries around the globe.
The process began in 1998 and was completed in November 2000. The final report was launched in London, New York, Bangkok and Tokyo on November 24. The report was the, "most comprehensive global and independent review of dams", from which it would develop recommendations for future decision-making. WCD Commissioner Judy Henderson admitted the group had no authority to pressure individual authorities to comply with its guidelines.
"Of course, we don't want our two year's work to be wasted," she said, adding that this was why they were travelling the world encouraging the public to discuss the report.
According to the commission, the world has 45,000 large dams (more than 15 metres high), with nearly half located in China. They are estimated to have displaced 40 to 80 million people. In Thailand, about 128 large dams have been built across the country's 25 major rivers since the 1960s and some 600,000 people have been resettled, usually with insufficient compensation and in areas that have resulted in a much poorer quality of life than before the dams were built.
A network of NGOs calling themselves Rivers Watch East and Southeast Asia (RWESA), held a press conference the same day welcoming the WCD resolution. Chainarong Sretthachua, director of Chiang Mai's Southeast Asia Rivers Network, said he was 75 percent satisfied with the report. However, he noted the commission had failed to gain recognition from governments and dam-funders.
"The World Bank president did not say anything more than that he had to consult with the bank's shareholders before making any commitment to the report guidelines," he said.
Dam builders ponder their future
The dam-building industry began in earnest with the end of the Second World War, a time when political leaders saw hydro dams as a crucial means to nation building. Since the 1950s, about 45,000 large dams more than 15 metres high have been constructed on rivers around the globe. Today, however, few projects have gone ahead without first being subject to severe scrutiny from environmentalists and communities, and even then few have continued beyond the planning stage.
The launch of the World Bank-sponsored World Commission on Dams (WCD) in 1998 was seen as the first attempt to review the performance of 1,000 dams in 79 countries. Sitting on the commission were both "heroes" and "villains" in the dam controversies. Among the alleged villains was Jan Veltrop, honorary president of the US-based International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD), the grouping of global key players in the dam industry. Veltrop joined other WCD commissioners for the launch of their final report in Bangkok on November 24. He spoke on whether the findings would make any difference in the way dam builders did business.
The WCD concluded that large dams had typically fallen short of economic targets. Most of the projects have 50-per-cent cost overruns. How do you, as a prominent figure from the industry, explain this?
Cost overruns are sometimes due to underestimating geological conditions. Another problem is that a project owner, government and bank tend not to spend a lot of initial money [for the feasibility studies]. They don't want to see the project too expensive or else they won't approve it.
But cost overruns can arise for political reasons. The problem at the Narmada dam [in India] is simply due to the fact that the project construction was halted by protests and objections. Why objections? Because they [local people] were not asked when the project was planned. I would certainly hope the government of India changes its approach.
If opposing communities were initially asked, and still they insisted they did not want the project at all, would their opinion be respected?
Then you have a real national problem. The next question is the national interest. This can only be decided by full participation of the opposing groups and the beneficiary groups. [If the dam is built,] the bottom line is that affected people must be the first to benefit. They must have their livelihood restored. Financial compensation is not enough. That's an old-fashioned [approach] initiated in the 1960s. People must be able to choose their way of life.
How does the ICOLD, as the most prominent grouping of the dam industry, respond to WCD criticism of dam failure and the impact on people and ecology?
We expect the dam industry, manufacturers of equipment and engineering consulting agencies to recognise the recommendation made by WCD. The ICOLD is expected to come up with a position paper by end of 2000, and we are waiting for that.
Is it possible for a dam construction and consulting firm to refuse to build a project if it is not socially and environmentally sound as defied in the WCD new guideline?
This is a bread-and-butter issue. For us in the industry, a project means potential income. The industry has a lot of engineers to feed. They may reject some projects on ethical grounds, but I hesitate to say how many.
Will the industry face more pressure if civil-society groups insist that a project's costs from now on must reflect social and environmental costs?
This is another crucial question we have to face. A lot of social costs are relatively easy. Environmental cost is much more difficult - how to put a monetary value on the environment. There are a lot of interesting tricks involved. The cost for the loss of fish can be estimated from the market value. But the importance of a tree is much more difficult [to quantify]. Several academic institutions are studying this problem.
But wherever costs are not feasible, those issues should be presented along with the final cost estimation of a project. Decision-makers will have to weigh how much they can afford to lose. But I never have to deal with that.
There is an interesting demand to the World Bank that budgets for social and environmental mitigation should be separated from the construction costs. This is to make sure that people working on mitigation know they have money available even though the construction costs increase.
But will hydropower, normally regarded as the cheapest and perhaps cleanest source of energy, become more expensive when social and environmental costs are added?
You have to compare it to the social and environmental costs of, say, a thermal plant as well. The costs to the environment and public health from the emission of CO2 and SO2 are not very well known either.
As to how clean hydropower is, that is hard to say. On the surface it looks clean, however the process of building the dam is not clean and obviously the irreparable environmental damage is not clean.
Then there are all the hydrocarbons that must be burned to produce the construction materials and equipment and the transmission towers and lines, and to actually construct it [the dam]. Although the [dam] site might be pristine, the production of the building materials and equipment has resulted in horrendous levels of pollution being produced at factories elsewhere. So on a global level, hydropower dams are probably as dirty as any other form of electricity production and perhaps even more dirty than using gas turbines. Concrete, for example, is made of cement and the manufacturing of cement results in about 30 percent of all the greenhouse gases produced through human activities and even more than motor vehicles. That is why there has been a tendency to move towards using more fly ash in concrete; it reduces the amount of cement required for the same strength concrete and, moreover, you end up with a higher quality concrete, too.