ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to offer a critical perspective on a set of questions related to changes in water infrastructure planning, and their potential implications for the prosperity and security of the diverse interests that depend on water resources. Water resources infrastructure has high up-front costs, and then generates a time series of costs and benefits that extends over decades or even centuries. The work World Commission on Dams led to crystallization of a new set of international norms and safeguards related to dams and other similar projects. Developed countries and multilateral organizations should perhaps work to identify and implement policies that will close the gap between current investment in the sector and global norms for best practice. Violations of accepted global norms can perhaps be punished through connections to the global trade agenda; much has been learned, for example, in the past decade about how trade and environmental compliance instruments should and should not be linked.
