ABSTRACT
Contests between notions of ‘development’ and ‘environment’ have constantly been fought in the international arena since at least 1992 when the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, attempted to reconcile the two concepts. The outcome of the conference – neatly and presciently summed up by Wolfgang Sachs (Sachs, 1995, p. 4) – was the recognition by governments of the ‘declining state of the environment, but the insistence of the re-launching of development’. Eight years later, the World Commission on Dams (WCD), backed by a host of international agencies including the United Nations and the World Bank, stated in its final report, ‘Dams and Development’, that there is no ‘justifiable doubt that [large] dams have made an important contribution to human development’ creating considerable benefits’, but in ‘too many cases an unacceptable and often unnecessary’ social and environmental price has been paid to secure those benefits. Furthermore, it added the lack of equity in the distribution of benefits has called into question the value of many dams in meeting water and energy development needs when compared with the alternatives (World Commission on Dams, 2000, p. xxvii). Since the publication of the report, large hydropower dam projects have developed into a multi-billion dollar market (Hill, 2013).
