The International Anti-Dam Movement
Zed Books, London, 1996.
We Will Not Move: The International Anti-Dam MovementKoi nahi hatega, bandh nahi banega
(No one will move, the dam will not be built)
Doobenge par hatenge nahin
(We will drown but we will not move)
Slogans of the Narmada Bachao Andolan
The decade since the mid-1980s has
seen the emergence of an international movement against current
dam-building practices. The movement is comprised of thousands of
environmental, human rights, and social activist groups on all the world’s
continents except Antarctica. It coalesced from a multitude of local,
regional and national anti-dam campaigns and a smaller number of support
groups working at an international level. Dam builders recognize and
bemoan its effectiveness. ICOLD President Wolfgang Pircher warned the
British Dam Society in 1992 that the industry faced ’a serious general
counter-movement that has already succeeded in reducing the prestige of
dam engineering in the public eye, and it is starting to make work
difficult for our profession.’
The earliest successful anti-dam campaigns were mostly led by
conservationists trying to preserve wilderness areas. Until recently,
resistance from those directly impacted by dams was usually defeated.
Since the 1970s, however, directly affected people have gained the power
to stop dams, mostly because they have built alliances with sympathetic
outsiders - environmentalists, human rights and democracy activists,
peasants’ and indigenous peoples’ organizations, fishers and
recreationists. The rise of environmentalism has greatly helped the
opponents of dams - and anti-dam campaigns have in many countries played
an important role in the growth of national environmental movements. Other
factors contributing to the emergence of the international movement have
been the overthrow of authoritarian regimes and the spread of modern
communication technologies.
Dam opponents are not just ’antis’, but are advocates for what they see as
more sustainable, equitable and efficient technologies and management
practices. Political changes which would best encourage the preservation
or adoption of these technologies and practices have been a central demand
of many anti-dam campaigns. Struggles that have started with the aim of
improving resettlement terms or of stopping an individual dam have matured
into movements advocating an entirely different model of political and
economic development. That decision making be transparent and democratic
is now seen by many dam opponents as being as important as the decisions
themselves. The clearest illustration of the wider political importance of
anti-dam movements is the crucial role that dam struggles played in the
pro-democracy movements of the 1980s in Eastern Europe and South
America...
Activists working at the local, national and international levels have
together managed to seriously tarnish the lure of large dams as icons of
progress and plenty. To many people, large dams have instead become
symbols of the destruction of the natural world and of the corruption and
arrogance of over-powerful and secretive corporations, bureaucracies and
governments. Although hundreds of large dams are still under construction
and many more are on the engineers’ drawing boards, aid funds and other
public sector sources of financing are drying up, and public protests are
provoked by just about every large dam that is now proposed in a
democratic country. The international dam industry appears to be entering
a recession from which it may never escape.
For further information, please contact:
Day of Action Coordinator
International Rivers
1847 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, CA 94703 USA
Phone: +1 510-848-1155
Fax: +1 510-848-1008
E-mail: dayofaction@internationalrivers.org'