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The World Bank has been the largest
single source of funds for large dam construction worldwide. Under its
stated aim of alleviating poverty, it has promoted and funded dams that
have displaced more than 10 million people from their homes and land,
caused severe environmental damage, and pushed borrowers further into
debt. Never hesitant to exact loan repayment in perpetuity for projects it
has funded (even failed projects), the World Bank has never been forced to
pay for the destruction it has caused to millions of people’s lives and
the environment.
Large dams, whether built for
hydropower, flood control or irrigation, epitomize the huge infrastructure
development projects which have been the staple of World Bank lending
throughout its history. The World Commission on Dams (WCD) estimates that
the Bank has provided almost $75 billion (in 1998 dollars) for 538 large
dams in 92 countries, including many of the world’s largest and most
controversial projects.
The WCD’s final report recognizes the
World Bank’s important role in supporting dams for the past 50 years:
"Both the multilateral and
bilateral development banks played a significant facilitating role in
getting Asia, Africa and Latin America started in the dam business....
[They] have helped finance studies needed for dam construction, and lent
money for the construction of the dams themselves. They identified
development goals through strategic sectoral planning documents, provided
resources and technological capacity and created basin-wide institutional
frameworks to plan and implement dams. Although the proportion of
investment in dams directly financed by bilaterals and multilaterals was
perhaps less than 15%, these institutions played a key strategic role
globally in spreading the technology, lending legitimacy to emerging dam
projects, training future engineers and government agencies, and leading
financing arrangements."
The Bank’s portfolio of large dams is
like a primer on the folly of damming rivers. In case after case the
benefits have been far less than promised, and the costs – in terms of
money spent, debts incurred, communities uprooted, fisheries and forests
destroyed, and opportunities lost – have been far greater than imagined.
While the Bank claims that its operations have improved in recent years,
proposed projects such as Bujagali Falls Dam in Uganda and Nam Theun 2 Dam
in Laos reveal it still has much to learn. These dams, if they proceed
according to current plans, would not comply with the WCD’s new
guidelines. (See case studies in this packet for further details)
"We Shall Not Be Moved"
World Bank lending for dams peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s at a
level of more than $2 billion a year (1993 dollars). Since the mid-1990s
the World Bank’s lending for large dams has declined significantly.
A major reason for decline in Bank
funding has been the struggle by anti-dam movements across the world. This
is a partial victory for the anti-dam movement. But the communities who
have been affected by Bank-funded dams have nothing to celebrate. Neither
do those whose lives will be destroyed by future Bank projects. A growing
movement of dam-affected communities from all over the world is demanding
reparations, or retroactive compensation, for the continuing damage to
their lives because of dams which have already been completed.
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