ANNEXES

A) The Role of Dams and Reservoirs

There is no life on earth without water, our most important resource apart from air and land. During the past three centuries, the amount of water withdrawn from freshwater resources has increased by a factor of 35, world population by a factor of 8. With the present world population of 5.6 billion still growing at a rate of about 90 million per year, and with their legitimate expectations of higher standards of living, global water demand is expected to rise by a further 2-3 percent annually in the decades ahead.

But freshwater resources are limited and unevenly distributed. We cannot forever try to meet insatiable demands by continuously expanding a supply that has limits. In the high-consumption countries with rich resources and a highly developed technical infrastructure, the many ways of conserving, recycling and re-using water may more or less suffice to curb further growth in supply. In many other regions, however, water availability is critical to any further development above the present unsatisfactorily low level, and even to the mere survival of existing communities or to meet the continuously growing demand originating from the rapid increase of their population. In these regions man cannot forego the contribution to be made by dams and reservoirs to the harnessing of water resources. 

Seasonal variations and climatic irregularities in flow impede the efficient use of river runoff, with flooding and drought causing problems of catastrophic proportions. For almost 5 000 years dams have served to ensure an adequate supply of water by storing water in times of surplus and releasing it in times of scarcity, thus also preventing or mitigating floods. In response to enormously increased demand, more than half of ICOLD's registered 39 000 large dams have been built in the past 35 years. They have become an integral part of our technical infrastructure, and throughout the world they enhance our basis of life by offering many indispensable benefits. Still more dams will be needed in the future for the adequate management of the world's limited, unevenly distributed and in many places acutely scarce water resources. 

This applies in particular to the developing regions of the world, which account for 70 percent of the world population, and for no less than 94 percent of annual population growth. One billion people there are suffering from chronic undernourishment or plain starvation, with between 10 and 15 million children dying of hunger every year. About 1.5 billion people have no access to a reliable source of drinking water, and more than two dozen countries have not enough water to sustain their populations properly. Millions die from water related diseases every year. The result is an exodus of the impoverished rural populations to the even greater inhumanity of the vast shanty towns surrounding the big cities. Of the 22 cities which will have more than 10 million inhabitants by the end of this century, 18 will be in developing countries. 

In many of these countries, increased food production is only possible through improved or increased irrigation. At the present time, about 250 million hectares of land are under irrigation, growing one third of our food on less than one fifth of the world's total cultivated area, and accounting for almost three quarters of world water consumption. In conjunction with great efforts to develop effective ways of saving water by avoiding losses in the distribution systems, and by applying more skillful irrigation techniques, UNDP (the United Nations Development Program) is aiming at a 3 percent compound rate of growth in irrigated agriculture to meet the needs of an extra one billion people in the next ten years. Half of them will be city dwellers with a concentrated drinking water requirement. Since the groundwater reservoirs presently tapped to provide about half of irrigation, drinking and industrial water supply are already heavily overdraw in many parts of the world, the only large-scale solution apart from saving water is to increase the share of surface water from storage reservoirs.
 
Given the foreseeable depletion of fossil fuels, which presently are used to satisfy three quarters of primary energy requirements worldwide, plus the problem of the greenhouse effect and global warming, there is an urgent need to gradually replace them with methods of energy production which do not release CO 2 , (or airborne mercury from coal-fired plants) into the atmosphere and which draw on renewable sources of energy. In the short and medium term, however, the predominant sources of renewable energy that will permit large-scale exploitation will be biomass and hydropower, before new sources like the direct harnessing of the sun's energy by photovoltaics will be ready to make contributions of the same order of magnitude.
 
Hydropower is solar energy in naturally and ideally concentrated form that can be utilized with the help of a mature and familiar technology with unsurpassed rates of efficiency and without depriving future generations in any way of raw materials or burdening them with pollutants or wastes. In many developing countries, it is the only natural energy resource. With a total annual generation of 2.1 million GWh, hydropower accounts today for 20 percent of electricity production and about 7 percent of total energy production worldwide. Even at a conservative estimate, the total exploitable hydropotential in the world amounts to at least six times as much. Very often, hydropower pays for multipurpose benefits, too. When this is taken into account, and when all environmental and social costs are internalized, hydropower compares favorably with other sources of energy. 

Flood control has always been a particularly significant motive for dam construction and frequently its primary purpose. It will continue to be so, as long as about 40 percent of all fatalities from natural catastrophes worldwide are caused by flooding, amounting to a frightening total of nearly 100 000 per year. Compared with the main requirements of irrigation, domestic and industrial water supply, energy production and flood control, the other purposes and benefits of dams such as navigation, fisheries and tourism, improvements to the infrastructure, job creation and on-site training, are of generally minor importance, but must nevertheless not be disregarded or underrated. 

B) Some International Associations related to Water Resources Development and Hydraulic Engineering

CIGR	Commission Internationale du Génie Rural
FIDIC	Fédération Internationale des Ingénieurs-Conseils
AIH	Association Internationale des Hydrogéologues
AIRH	Association Internationale de la Recherche Hydraulique
AISH	Association Internationale des Sciences Hydrologiques
IAWPRC	International Association on Water Pollution, Research and Control
IAWQ	International Association on Water Quality
CIID	Commission Internationale des Irrigations et du Drainage
IHA	International Hydropower Association
IWRA	International Water Resources Association
IWSA	International Water Supply Association
AIPCN	Association Internationale Permanente des Congrès de Navigation http://www.pianc-aipcn.org
SIL	Societas Internationalis Limnologiae (Association Internationale de la Limnologie Théorique et Appliquée)
UNIPEDE	Union Internationale des Producteurs et Distributeurs d'Énergie Electrique
WFEO	Fédération Mondiale des Organisations d'lngénieurs
CME	Conseil Mondial de l'Eau

Some of the above Associations have founded the "World Engineering Partnership for Sustainable Development". 

Detail information on the above Associations can be obtained from the umbrella organizations such as:

CIUS
Conseil International des Unions Scientifiques
51 boulevard Montmorency
F- 75016 Paris
France 

UIAT
Union Internationale des Associations Techniques
1 rue Miollis
F - 75015 Paris
France

C) ICOLD Technical Bulletins related to Environmental Aspects

Bulletin 35 (1980) Dams and the Environment
Bulletin 37 (1981) Dam Projects and Environmental Success
Bulletin 50 (1985) Dams and the Environment - Notes on Regional Influences
Bulletin 65 (1988) Dams and Environment - Cases Histories
Bulletin 66 (1989) Dams and Environment - The Zuiderzee Damming
Bulletin 86 (1992) Dams and Environment - Socio-Economic Impacts
Bulletin 90 (1993) Dams and Environment - Geophysical Impacts
Bulletin 96 (1994) Dams and Environment - Water Quality and Climate
Bulletin 100 (1995) Dams and Environment - Ridracoli: A model achievement
Bulletin 103 (1996) Tailings Dams and Environment - Review and Recommendations

D) Environmental Aspects discussed at ICOLD Congresses and Symposia

1973 The consequences on the environment of building dams (Q.40)
1976 The effects on dams and reservoirs of some environmental factors (Q.47)
1982 Reservoir sedimentation and slope stability - Technical and environmental effects (Q.54)
1988 Reservoirs and the environment - Experience in management and monitoring (Q.60)
1991 Environmental issues in dam projects (Q.64)
1994 Environmental experience gained from reservoirs in operation (Q.69)
1995 Reservoirs in river basin development (Symposium)
1997 Performance of reservoirs (Q.74)