Struggles Over Dams as Struggles for Justice: The World Commission on Dams (WCD) and Anti-Dam Campaigns in Thailand and Mozambique

Abstract

Publication of the World Commissions on Dams (WCD) final report in November 2000 prompted a series of divergent responses. The global anti-dam movement applauded the report's call for fastidious screening of large dam projects and increased levels of transparency and participation in dam-related decisions, while the dam industry argued the document was irrevocably biased against large dams. Several anti-dam campaigns in specific localities almost immediately employed the WCD recommendations as a means of arguing against contentious projects. This article examines two of these struggles, one in northeast Thailand and one in the lower Zambezi Valley of Mozambique, to shed light on the impacts of the transnational WCD process and the variegated ways it intersects with conflicts in specific locales.