Like alcoholics who have announced that they are going on the wagon,
the World Bank couldn’t resist sneaking one last nip of top-down
dambuilding, while promising not to do it again. As a result, the upper
Nile River will never be the same again, thanks to the 200-Mw Bujagali
Dam in Uganda. In spring 1997, the World Bank and its frequent enemy,
World Conservation Network, joined hands in an attempt to find a way
through the conflict that has halted dam construction in many developed
countries and has made it a hated symbol of technological imperialism
in developing lands. They co-sponsored the World Commission on Dams, a
body whose membership covered the full range of opinion on dam
construction. WCD’s mission was to produce in two years a consensus on
how societies can continue to realize the benefits of dam construction
while taking due account of the interests of people directly affected
by the projects. Amazingly, the commission’s report was issued in
November 2000 with 100% consensus, and was greeted by cautious optimism
by companies, governments and other organizations (ENR 11/27/ 00 p.
12). But in the first test of its shiny-new guidelines, the World Bank
has decided to back the Bujagali Dam even though it acknowledges that
the project is “unacceptable from environmental and social
perspectives.” The bank rationalizes that the WCD guidelines “offer
guidance, not a regulatory framework.” The bank also promises that no
more such dams will be built on the upper Nile. How can a co-sponsor of
this groundbreaking achievement justify ignoring WCD’s findings? Any
mother of a teenager knows the reason: “Everybody does it,” or, in the
bureaucratic language of the World Bank’s statement, “To the best of
its knowledge [the] process proposed by the WCD has never been
implemented in a major dam project.” What deplorable hypocrisy. In the
WCD guidelines, ENR sees the best hope for balancing what have long
been seen as irreconcilable conflicts among stakeholders over dam
construction. If the study’s own sponsors refuse to be guided by them,
all we can anticipate is continued sclerosis in dambuilding. Dams are
not the villains. They can provide immense economic and social benefits
to a nation that can continue for decades, if not centuries. It is the
duty of the planners to make sure that the good from these projects is
not outweighed by the negatives from thoughtlessness.