River Basin Development: A Few Lessons to be Learned from History

Abstract

"The topic of this presentation, as given by the organizers, may sound overambitious. It is obviously not my intention to attempt here an examination of the long history of river basin development in the world. I will limit myself to reviewing four important and distinctive features of the development of water resources: I will first comment on water resources development as a manifestation of human desire to subdue nature; then examine why and how river basins tend to get overbuilt and water scarcity generated; further discuss the danger of meta-justifications in water resources development; and finally reflect on past governance patterns and how they might be changed. Obviously, there are many other important lessons to be drawn from the history of river basin development, not least the environmental and human costs that have been addressed by numerous studies, but they cannot be discussed in such a short paper as this."