Privatization, efficiency, gender, development, and inequality—transnational conflicts over access to water and sanitation

Human Rights & Human Welfare, Annual, 2008 by Srini Sitaraman

Principally, Khagram's argument emphasizes the emergence of global norms against construction of dams motivated by collective concerns for the environment, human rights, and the rights of indigenous people that are disseminated through transnationally-linked activist networks. According to Khagram (2004: 178-179), the foundation for the anti-dam movement was laid by environmentalists and academics in the United States and Western Europe from the mid-1950s onwards, and this movement gradually gained momentum and became a transnational force in the 1970s. Construction of large dams galvanized significant opposition because of its enormous social, political, economic, and environmental costs. According to the World Commission on Dams (2000: 16), large dams are responsible for the displacement of forty to eighty million people worldwide. One of the central arguments of Dams and Development is that transnational advocacy networks and social mobilization are more likely to succeed in democracies than in authoritarian countries because democracies are more vulnerable to external norm-penetration and internal grassroots social-mobilization. Relying on six case studies, which include four countries with high degrees of social mobilization--South Africa, Lesotho, India, and Brazil--and two countries--China and Indonesia--with relatively low degrees of social mobilization, Khagram argues that democracy and grassroots activism is decidedly correlated with the slowing down of dam building worldwide.

Data on dam construction and planning is highly fragmented; in addition, significant methodological and data collection differences persist (Schelle, Collier and Pittock 2003). Nevertheless, the estimates on dam building made available up to the end of the twentieth century by the World Commission on Dams (WCD), International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD), International Rivers Network (IRN), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) converge in identifying board patterns. Available data from WCD, ICOLD, IRN, and WWF suggest that dam construction has decreased since the 1970s, when nearly eight thousand dams came into operation. Publicly available data indicate that dam building has steadily declined since it hit the peak in the seventies; a point also asserted by Khagram. However, fascination with large development projects has not subsided in the global south where dam construction continues despite various hurdles including enduring citizen protests and legal challenges. According to Khagram, who draws his data from WCD and ICOLD, in the early 1900s there were only six hundred dams worldwide. By 1950 the number had increased to 5,000, and by the turn of century 45,000 big dams higher than fifteen meters, including 300 major dams had been built all around the world to facilitate hydroelectricity generation, water delivery, flood control and irrigation costing an estimated two trillion U.S. dollars (Khagram: 5; IRN 2003a: 3). Measured using the river basin data, the highest number of dams are concentrated on the Yangtze in China, La Plata basin in South America, Tigris and Euphrates in the Middle East, Salween in South-East Asia, Kizilirmak in Turkey, and the Ganges basin in India (WWF 2004: 4). Many of these river basins traverse national boundaries and contested territorial lines. Ninety percent of the dams constructed during the twentieth century were built during the last forty years. China, United States, India, Japan, and Spain are the top five dam-building countries that account for eighty percent of the dams built worldwide (WCD 2000: 9). More than 7,500 dams became operational between 1970-1979, but the figure tapered-off to 3,354 in the 1990s (ICOLD 2007: 28). Although dam building declined significantly during the 1990s, more than 1500 dams are presently in various stages of construction and they are expected to become functional in the next fifteen years. Since the gestation period for the construction of new dams is extensive, plans for the construction of dams that are currently underway in parts of Asia were laid in the 1950s and 1960s. For example, the building plans for the Narmada Dam project were conceived by Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, in the 1950s and they have yet to be completed.