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and strategy meeting on future campaigns against destructive large dams Bratislava, Slovakia January 16-19 - 2000 |
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3 Feb 2000 Letter from European
Hearing to WCD Prof. Kader Asmal, President World Commission on Dams
19 th January 2000 Subject:
European NGO hearing on WCD related issues Dear Mr. President and Commissioners
of the World Commission on Dams, At the conclusion of the European NGO-hearing
on World Commission on Dams related issues held in Bratislava on 17th
and 18th January 2000, representatives of NGOs working on river and
human rights issues met to review the progress of WCD. We wish to convey
to you the following concerns: 1. We find it regrettable that the Commission
was unwilling to sponsor a European hearing and that despite the efforts
of Friend of the Earth Slovakia in organising this meeting in consultation
with WCD staff, only one member of the Commission was able to attend
the hearing despite the fact that the meeting was convened on the date
set by the Secretariat. 2. We are concerned that the lack of attention
that the WCD has paid to European dam issues and the destructive role
of European dam industry world-wide could lead to important failings
in the WCD report. 3. We believe that it is essential that the WCD counters
the myth that dam building in Europe has not been associated with the
same environmental destruction, social disruption, violation of human
rights and economic waste that is occurring world-wide. We also believe
that it is essential for WCD to address the role and responsibility
of European dam building industry, which is now largely obsolete in
its home countries, but encouraged to perpetrate the destruction elsewhere
in the world with the connivance export credit agencies, multilateral
development banks and European private financial institutions. 4. We
have now had an opportunity to review the first drafts of certain work
products produced by the WCD. We have to convey to you our deep disappointment
on the quality and objectivity of certain of these reports. Specific
comments on their content will be sent to the WCD separately, but an
underlying concern is that wherever there is limited information on
a particular issue, it appears that the WCD is requiring NGOs to provide
the burden of proof in addressing these issues. This tendency implicitly
and unfairly accepts the unsubstantiated arguments of the dam building
industry as legitimate, and its critics arguments as speculation. Another
concern is that few if any of the draft work products are referencing
NGO submissions. 5. We are concerned that key questions are being ignored
or misrepresented in the WCD work products. These questions include:
- Will the WCD assess the financial and economic record of dams built
to date? Will it compare planned costs against actual costs? Will it
document the extent of cost and time overruns? Will it mention names
where consultants underestimated the costs? - Will the Commission be
examining the full impacts of dams on climate? Will it look into the
evidence that silt trapped by dams could disrupt a vitally important
mechanism for locking away carbon? - Will the Commission examine the
links between aid agencies and the use of development aid to bail out
failing European dam building companies under the pretence of helping
the South? - Will the WCD consider the moral and financial obligations
that European companies have to the communities whose lives have been
so violently disrupted by the projects from which they have benefited?
- Will the Commission be proposing mechanisms that would oblige Northern
countries to behave abroad as they would be expected to behave at home?
Or legislative proposals which would prevent the dumping of outdated
and outmoded technologies on the South? - In fulfilling its mandate
to examine the development effectiveness of dam, will the Commission
document how companies, consultants, bureaucrats, richer farmers and
the like have benefited from dam-based development strategies, how those
strategies have proved effective for them, and the extent to which they
have benefited? Will it, for example, document the sums that have been
returned to Northern countries in the form of contracts? Will it examine
the profits made by shareholders in European dam companies? - Will it
examine the role that dam-based development strategies - and the political
infrastructure underpinning them - have privileged certain forms of
expertise and institutional power over others? Will it document how
this may have closed off alternative (and possibly more equitable) means
of achieving various development goals? - Will it examine the role that
dam-based development strategies have played in increasing the indebtedness
of countries, in encouraging corruption and patronage politics? And
will it examine who has benefited from these trends at whose expense?
- Will it investigate the full range of long-term impacts of dams on
riverine, floodplain wetlands, estuarine, and coastal ecosystems, identifying
whether these impacts can be reasonably mitigated? - Will it examine
the true impacts of dams on flood hazards and the discrepancy between
the claims of flood control by dam proponents and the actual record
of flood damages downstream of dams? - Will the Commission address costs
and liability of decommissioning of dams at the end of their life cycle?
- Will it address the important question of dam safety, downstream emergency
preparedness, liability for dam safety? - Will it address how dams have
altered key physical processes that sustain river ecosystem, particularly
in large lowland rivers typical of central and eastern Europe? Will
it examine how sediment captured in reservoirs depletes floodplains,
and erodes river banks and shorelines. We hope that you will direct
your staff to fully address these concerns.
Dammed at home, damming abroad NGOs from 22 European countries at the regional NGO-hearing
on World Commission on Dams related issues held in Bratislava on 17th
and 18th January 2000, warmly welcomed the presence of Commissioner
Joji Carino from the Philippines and two staff members of the Secretariat
of the World Commission on Dams. The meeting represented a unique opportunity for dam affected people throughout Slovakia - who held a separate session during the two-days hearing - to make links with other dam affected communities around the world and to share information about anti-dam campaigns currently in progress in several countries, both in Europe and abroad. Meeting participants endorsed the call for a moratorium on new dams in Slovakia promoted by 60 Slovakian civil society organisations. The meeting concluded that there is no evidence that
large scale dams have to have a future in energy and water management
strategies. The meeting raised a series of specific issues which
should be fully addressed by the World Commission on Dams: Finally, meeting participants urged the World Commission
on Dams to fairly and fully analyse what has been the politics of dam
building in the 20th century and not to let those who have benefited
from dams escape their responsibilities to those who have suffered at
their expense. ___________________________________________________________________________________
INVITATION As European NGOs working on dams in Europe and European
involvement in dam-building abroad, particularly in the South, we would
like to invite you to take part in a meeting planned for January 16th-19th
in Bratislava. All accomodation and meals will be paid for by the conference organisers. Travel expenses will be paid for speakers from the South and from Eastern Europe. A small budget is being raised for smaller European NGOs wishing to attend the meeting but unable to do so due to shortage of funds. For those who are willing to participate, please contact
us as soon as possible at the following e-mail address: zamkovsky@changenet.sk
or at phone/fax number: +421 88 4193324. With the best wishes,
In the original work programme of the WCD, a European
consultation - dealing with issues unique to the European experience
At the first "European wide strategy meeting on dams,
water and people" hosted by Klub Gaja in Bielsko-Biela,
This meeting is totally independent of the WCD in terms
of selection of speakers, themes, invitees etc. However, several commissioners of the WCD has been invited
to take part in the hearing as observers THE PURPOSE OF THE HEARING AND FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES We believe that it is very important that a strong "European
voice" is heard in the WCD process. In particular, we believe it
The panels are chosen so as to provide a framework in
order to present some of the most important experiences of
successful mitigation measures contribution to WCD's knowledge base and hopefully strongly influence the commissions final report. „Dammed at Home, Damming Abroad: for more information : |
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