Water

Dams and Development E-Paper Contents

p. 39 of 74 BACK | NEXT Home Page of Dams and Development Foreword I. Why an e-paper on dams and development? II. Assessing options III. Participatory processes IV. Social impacts V. Environmental impacts VI. Benefit distribution What benefits can be shared? Distribution analysis Secondary benefits What do ADB polices say? VII. Dam safety and sustainability VIII. Existing projects IX. Improving governance X. What other organizations say XI. ADB, Dams, and Development XII. References Contact Us

Benefits Distribution - Who Gets What?

Dam projects can provide considerable benefits to national economies and the targeted beneficiaries. For example, the Tarbela dam in Pakistan, with an installed capacity of 3,500MW, generates approximately one fifth of the country's electricity and is part of a network of dams, barrages and canals that irrigates 18 million hectares.

Concerns have been raised though over the often inequitable distribution of benefits from dam projects and led to calls for a new emphasis on benefit-sharing in planning and project design. WCD found:

'..large dams in the WCD Knowledge Base tend to produce benefits that accrue to groups other than those who bear the social and environmental cost. Those who bear the costs are quite often poor, vulnerable (such as indigenous peoples), or unrepresented (such as future generations). (p. 120)

This led to WCD's recommendation that:

' adversely affected people are recognised as first among beneficiaries' (p243)

Such an approach is also consistent with ADB's poverty reduction strategy that emphasizes pro-poor sustainable economic growth.

For information on how project benefits can be shared with affected people and analytic tools for determining the nature and distribution of benefits, see:

• What benefits can be shared?
• Distribution analysis - who benefits and who bears the costs?
• Secondary benefits - what are the multiplier effects?
• What do ADB policies say?

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