المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

Comments on the report “Water and Food Security”

The description of the work of the World Commission on Dams is accurate.

What is inaccurate is the paragraph that followed.

“The World Bank, which was a founding member of the WCD, rejected its conclusions alongside key dam-building nations such as India, China and Turkey as well as the International Commission on Large Dams and the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage”.

and particularly the statement “In recent years dams have made a comeback”. In reality only China and Turkey ignored the recommendations of CDM.

The World Bank reacted to some recommendations but followed others and never abandoned financing of dam construction. In any case the WB loans where only part of the money needed and the rest comes from local resources.

The paragraph referring to Ansar et al clearly misrepresents the reality

“A recent study by Ansar et al (2014) draws upon cost statistics for 245 large dams built between 1934 20 and 2007. Without even taking into account social and environmental impacts, the study finds that "the 21 actual construction costs of large dams are too high to yield a positive return" (Ansar et al., 2014: 44). This study also found that dam construction costs were on average more than 90% higher than initial budgets, while 8 out of 10 suffered a schedule over-run, thus seriously questioning their economic/financial viability (ibid)”.

The evidence that the WCD amassed shows that some projects costed more than anticipated but this is a common characteristic of large infrastructure projects over the world.

The fact that 40-80 million people have been displaced by large dams has to be weighted by the fact that at least 1 billion people have been greatly benefited from the electricity supplied by large dams as shown clearly in the WCD Report.

Sao Paulo, 21 October 2014

Jose Goldemberg