Synopsis

分析世界大坝委员会（WCD）是关于环境，发展和正义问题的全球公共政策制定典范。追溯WCD在全球委员会和民间社会组织历史上的根源。

Executive Summary

"Will governments be running the world in the next century? In this era of globalization, who will make the rules on investment, human rights and environment? How can citizens participate?"

These are some of the questions a team of researchers from World Resources Institute (WRI, Washington, D.C.), Lawyers' Environmental Action Team (LEAT, Dar Es Salaam) and South Asia address in an independent assessment of the World Commission on Dams (WCD).

The WCD was a self-styled "experiment" in global public policy-making. It was set up to produce a set of international guidelines for the design, construction, operation and decommissioning of large dams and options on their alternatives.

WCD在两年内执行了这项任务，并承诺是独立，透明，包容的，并且代表了各种利益相关者。该过程的参与者包括大坝建设公司，多边发展银行，受影响的人群和其他非政府组织，私人顾问以及整个公众。

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p>The high aspirations on which the process was founded mean that the Commission's experience with putting these good governance principles into practice will have significance for the future global policy-making efforts.

The central aim of the Assessment team's research was to assess the World Commission on Dams' experience as an example of global public policy-making at the contentious intersection of environment and development.

评估团队研究了全球公共政策制定的最新演变，包括在里约地球峰会期间和之后出现的其他全球过程的经验。在这个更广泛的背景下，评估团队问：

  • How successful has the World Commission on Dams been in putting into practice its guiding principles: independence, transparency, inclusivity, and consensus-driven process?
  • What have been the challenges to doing so?

The most valuable impact of this research is to staff of international organizations, national governments, civil society organizations and the private sectorwho are grappling with questions of global public policy in the face of changing forms of accountability, representation and decision-making structures such as:

  • What were the characteristics of the international large dams debate that did or did not lend it to this type of multi-stakeholder approach?
  • Who had to be at the table?
  • 这种努力应该如何在其他问题领域进行构建？
  • How might such efforts derive or undermine their own legitimacy through their chosen funding, data gathering, communications strategies?

For this group, the assessment report provides a useful guide on ways forward, and also further stimulates a debate on the local, national and global future of democratic governance.