HEADLINE NEWS THE RISING NEPAL (DAILY)

Dam report dominates international hydel meet

BY NAVIN SINGH KHADKA

Bergen, Norway, June 22: World Commission on Dam's (WCD) latest report significantly dominated the opening session of an international hydropower conference that kicked off in this Norwegian city here Wednesday.

The three-day ongoing conference -- stressing on hydropower as environmentally friendly and sustainable than any other energy sources -- was just the right forum spurring discussion on the report entitled 'Dams and Development' released last November.

The report had trigerred heated international debates -- for and against dams -- emanating from different interpretations on the report's findings. The international media had dubbed the report as anti-dam.

That, however, was not what the World Bank echoed during the meeting -- Hydropower 2001-- here. 'We will use the report,' said A Palmieri, a senior official of the Bank participating in the conference, fourth of its type. 'The bank will use the report as a valuable reference while funding any dam-related projects.'

The multilateral agency pumped in US Dollars two million of the US Dollars 15 million spent for the WCD's report on dams.

Unlike the way the report has been generally read, WB, according to the official, will continue supporting dams 'environmentally justified and economically and socially sound.'

Interestingly, if not ironically, WB's lending for new dams has declined of late and what has gone up is its portfolio for old dams' rehabilitation and safety, according to the WB official.

Stressing on the report's conclusion -- that there cannot be a blanket rule for dam building for all the countries around the world -- Palmieri said that WB had held last-hour meetings with seven different countries to discuss the dam-related issues. Nepal was one of them.

The bank had then noted that for countries like Nepal, Ethiopia and Laos, hydropower was the route to economic benefits.

Commenting on the final report of the WCD, R. Taylor Executive Director of International Hydropower Association said that the commission's recommendations can best be implemented by focusing on the key stages in decision-making on projects that influence the final outcome and where compliance with regulatory requirements can be verified. 'Among the multitude of decisions to be taken, the commission has identified five key decision points.'

The first two relate to water and energy planning, leading to decisions on a preferred development plan while others deal with project's preparation, implementation and operation.

Speaking to the press after the opening session of the conference, Norwegian Minister of Petroleum and Energy, O Akselsen said that his country would not have attained its present economic status without hydropower development. 'We believe hydropower development is a must for the economic growth. But, that does not mean we will blindly support all kinds of hydropower development around the world.'

It was during the same conference, the host country's (Norway's) comments on the report of the WCD were handed out to participants. 'One weakness of the report is that it gives little weight to a description of the socio-economic and welfare advantages of a dam for the population it is intended to serve.'

The comment futher stated: In our opinion, the commission has gone rather too far in the direction of consensus based decisioin making system. A dam may be built to serve several purposes, for example flood control, irrigation hydropower, drinking water supplies, etc, and a number of conflicting interests will generally be involved. The decision making process can be very time consuming and costly and can often end in disagreement.

Understandably, for countries like Norway that so much depend on hydropower and that in turn has to bank on dams , the on-going three-day conference could be the right forum to amplify their voice for hydropower development. Organised by International Centre for Hydropower and sponsored by 19 Norwegian and Nordic official and non-official agencies, the meeting has around 200 hydropower related personalities as participants from around the globe.

The sixth largest hydropower producer in the world, Norway has almost 100 per cent of its electricity generated through hydro-plants. That accounts to almost 30 per cent of the total hydropower generation in Europe.

'Hydropower is wordlwide presently considered to be the only large scale renewable alternative to fossil fuel generation,' said Kjetil Arne Vaskinn of StatkraftGroner AS, one of the subsidiary companies of Norwegian state run Statkraft Company.

Its success stories in its territory abound with fords and glacial-lakes apart, Norway has been steadily involved in hydropower development abroad including Nepal for quite sometime now. Having played a catalytic role to develop the Butwal Power Company more than one and a half decade ago, Norway now has increasing number of its public and private companies investing in Nepal's power sector. Norwegian official organisations like Statkraft holds 75 per cent of the share of Khimti Hydropower Project -- one of the private sector projects in the country. While Norad (the Norwegian official aid agency) is chipping in above US Dollars 24 million for the tunnel construction of the around US Dollars 400 million Melamchi Water Supply Project (MWSP).

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