Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Executive summary
This report tells the story of the WCD\'s unique experiment in global public policymaking and assesses its implications for policymaking. It is intended to inform stakeholders in the dams debate and also governments, NGOs, social movements, and private firms looking to advance international understanding in other contentious development areas.
Chapter 1. Introduction
The WCD was formed to address the conflicting viewpoints that have made large dams a flashpoint in the areas of environment, development, and justice.
Chapter 2. Multilateral processes, global commissions, and global governance
For much of the past century, the history of global governance has been the history of intergovernmental processes. At the same time, over the past two decades there has been an unprecedented growth of actors in civil society extending and building alliances and coalitions that transcend national boundaries. In reaction to the increasing number of actors active in shaping public policymaking, national governmental agencies and intergovernmental bodies have become more open to including non-state actors in a more structured manner.
Chapter 3. The origins of the World Commission on Dams
In this chapter, the authors detail the immediate origins of the World Commission on Dams. The authors locate it both in the growth of local struggles against the adverse social, economic, and ecological impacts of dams and in the growing pressure to define global norms for harnessing and managing water.
Chapter 4. From Gland to Cape Town: The making of the WCD
The WCD\'s ability to create and maintain legitimacy depended on whether different stakeholder groups felt adequately represented in its process. In this chapter, the authors examine the role of the Commission, Secretariat, and advisory Forum and how they came to incorporate a range of interests.
Chapter 5. Implementing the work programme: The commissioned studies
In order to "get the process right to ensure legitimacy," the Commission committed to a set of guiding principles for its work programme. These included transparency, inclusiveness, independence, and accessibility. How did the WCD put these principles of good governance into practice? What was the effect of these efforts on stakeholder buy-in to the Commission\'s work?
Chapter 6. Implementing the work programme: Consultations and outreach
In the recent history of global commissions, public consultations have played an important role in helping commissioners to define their problem statement and sustain wider public engagement. For the World Commission on Dams, the regional consultations served both a fact-finding purpose and a way of raising the profile of the Commission and its work around the world. In this chapter, the authors examine the Commission\'s success. Did the Commission gather diverse viewpoints from its consultations? Did it raise the profile of its work with concerned stakeholders? And most important, what aspects of the consultations strengthened or undermined the Commission\'s broader legitimacy?
Chapter 7. Commission dynamics: Narrow versus broad consensus
The authors examine the dynamics within the Commission that led to consensus, and the degree to which these interactions can be planned for and structured into future multi-stakeholder processes. The authors explain how the Commission\'s choices about where to seek consensus led it toward consensus-finding among its own members, rather than consensus-bulding or even the evolution of shared understandings among Forum members and larger networks.
Chapter 8. The Commission\'s final report: The international response
Were the broad representation and credible process sufficient to ensure positive reception of the Commission\'s final report Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-making?. The authors provide an overview of the report and document how it broke new ground in the international development discourse. What were the responses of the main stakeholder groups to the report? To what degree were stakeholders\' responses based upon their perceptions of representation on the Commission, and on their perceptions of the legitimacy of the knowledge-gathering process or the consensus-building process? Based on these responses, the authors reflect on the implications for dissemination, adoption, and implemention of the WCD\'s recommendations.
Chapter 9. Conclusion
The WCD marked a departure from previous global commissions and multi-stakeholder processes in significant ways. A commission with path-breaking elements of structure and good process -- full representation of relevant stakeholder groups, independence from external influence, transparency, and inclusiveness in the work programme -- was meant to create opportunities for broad stakeholder participation and thus, a rich base of common knowledge. Did the Commission succeed in implementing the good process to which it aspired? If so, how important was good process to the commitment of interest groups to promote and implement the WCD\'s recommendations?
Appendices
1. The World Commission on Dams and its origins: A brief chronology of events
2. WCD Forum members
3. Thematic reviews
4. Strategic priorities of the Dams and Development report
5. Events attended by the assessment team
6. Who we are
  • An independent assessment of the World Commission on Dams has additional information about the assessment project and the report.
  • Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making (The Report of the World Commission on Dams, released 16 November 2000)
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