To the Friends of the Mekong Group “Water has become expensive,
and it will be even more expensive in the future, which will
make it the ‘Blue Gold’ of the 21st century”. Ricardo Petrella,
3/2000_ The New “Conquest of Water” HALF A BILLION PEOPLE ON
THIS PLANET A decade ago, the World Commission on Dams (WCD)
published a research on the impacts of big dams on human
development for worldwide distribution. This year (2010), Water
Alternatives, an independent academic on-line journal staffed
with researchers and editors, has conducted an evaluation of the
works done by WCD. Its aim is to determine the extents of the
impacts the big dams have exerted on the ecology, socio-economic
milieu, and living conditions of the inhabitants along the banks
of the rivers in question. The scope of this study is not
limited to the people who resided in the vicinity of the dams
and became victims of forced relocation. It also covers the
communities that dwelled downstream the 120 rivers that flow
through 70 countries of the Acco