(September 5, 2002) ‘Bad dams and bad economics are apparently still alive and kicking five years after the World Commission on Dams,’ says Ute Collier, author of a new report on dams from the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

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Dam projects around the world continue to cause social and environmental damage, campaigners said, despite guidelines for better practice having been in place for five years. “This is not the engineering heyday of the 1950s when dams were seen as the hallmark of development,” said Robert Napier, chief executive of the World Wildlife Fund in Britain. “We know dams cause damage and we must put this knowledge to work. Governments and the World Bank must insist that the WCD (World Commission on Dams) are applied to all dam projects now,” he said. More than 400 large dams are currently being built worldwide with hundreds more planned, with China, Iran and Turkey leading the construction field, closely followed by Japan.

New Sunday Times (Malaysia), September 5, 2002