To dam or not to dam: five years on from the World Commission on Dams

Reviewing the impacts of large scale dam projects

The construction of large dams, particularly hydropower projects, has recently risen back into decision-makers’ and World Bank agendas. This takes place five years after the World Commission on Dams report, which found that whilst dams have contributed to human development, in too many cases an unacceptable and often unnecessary price has been paid, especially in social and environmental terms.

This report from WWF takes stock of what has happened in the five years since the launch of the WCD report, indicating both positive and negative results from around the world, but concluding that t the WCD recommendations are as important today for reducing the social and environmental damage caused by dams as they were five years ago.

Evaluating six large dams in Belize, Turkey, Iceland, Laos, Spain, and Australia, the report finds a particular failure to undertake comprehensive needs and options assessments. Environmental impact assessments are often lacking, especially in terms of basin-wide assessments of the impacts of multiple dams. Project transparency and the promised benefits to local people are not always forthcoming. Despite this, some governments and financial institutions funding dam-building projects are heeding past lessons.

Remaining dam builders and financiers must:

assess needs and options more comprehensively, with particular attention to options for managing the demand for water and power to minimize the need for new dams
consider new dams only after strategic environmental assessment to ensure that whole river basins are sustainably managed
ensure that, wherever feasible, existing dams are retrofitted to increase power generation and other economic benefits while reducing social and environmental impacts.

The review considers that applying the WCD’s strategic priorities framework, adapted to individual country’s situations, will result in better decision-making, deliver intended benefits, and less unacceptable impacts.

Related content

Document
Fictitious commodification and agrarian change: Indigenous peoples and land markets in Highland Ecuador
G. Goodwin / Wiley Online Library, 2020
Creating private property rights and establishing land markets were fundamental to the historical development of capitalism in the Global North and remain at the centre of capitalist development in the Global South. This article contributes to debates about these processes by analysing the relationship between land markets and indigenous peoples in Highland Ecuador.
Document
Resource nationalism: Enabler or spoiler of effectiveness in 'new oil' Tanzania's petroleum sector?
R. Pedersen, T. Jacob, P. Bofin / Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre, 2020
A great deal of attention has been paid to the distributional aspects of resource nationalism in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, but less is known about its effects on the state’s capacity.
Document
Resource warfare, pacification and the spectacle of ‘green’ development: Logics of violence in engineering extraction in Southern Madagascar
A. Huff, Y. Orengo / Elsevier, 2020
Bringing political ecology's concern with the critical politics of nature and resource violence into dialogue with key debates in political geography, critical security studies and research on the geographies and phenomenology of violence and warfare, this paper explores strategies ‘from above’ in relation to the establis
Document
For the community, by the community: building resilience through infrastructure in rural India
A. Jogesh, U. Pal, W. Bugler, L. Messling, G. Wade / Acclimatise, 2019
The Resilience Shift wants to share good work by others, in this case, a technical assistance project supported by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). This case study tells the story of what good practice looks like for resilient infrastructure.
Document
Political ecology and differential vulnerabilities to droughts among livestock farmers in South Africa: A case study of Mpakeni community
E. Ebhuoma, F. Donkor, O.O. Ebhuoma / STEPS Centre, Institute of Development Studies, 2020
Most of South Africa’s black rural population reside in the former homelands or Bantustans, commonly referred to as communal areas by the post-apartheid government (Clark and Luwaya 2017). Amongst a variety of livelihood activities that black rural households engage in, livestock production offers multiple-use value, although its contribution to local livelihood is sometimes underestimated (C.

Eldis

To dam or not to dam: five years on from the World Commission on Dams