This report, released in 2000 with the inception of the World Commission on Dams, seeks to assess the future of large dam construction, as well as its effects on global freshwater supplies.

Large dams are the focus of efforts to manage both water and energy resources. By 2000, the world had built 45,000. Yet they can also bring huge problems of environmental damage and social dislocation. establishing the role of large dams is vital for the future and for sustainable forms of development.

Dams and Development:
- is the product of an unprecedented global public policy effort to bring governments, the private sector and civil society together in one process;
- provides the first comprehensive global and independent review of the performance and impacts of dams;
- presents a new framework for water and energy resources development; and
- develops an agenda of seven strategic priorities and corresponding criteria and guidelines for future decision-making.

Challenging our assumptions, the Commission sets before us the hard, rigorous and clear-eyed evidence of exactly why nations decide to build dams and how dams can affect human, plant and animal life, for better or for worse. Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making is vital reading on the future of dams as well as the changing development context where new voices, choices and options leave little room for a business-as-usual scenario. (Includes a removable insert discussing the planning of dams. Softcover, hardcover also available.)