A stranger to a consideration may sue on the contract but not a stranger to the contract.Explain
Answers
Dams have been a part of the economic development model of almost all nations of the world. At some stage of their development, most countries with water resources that can be economically exploited have built dams for energy, irrigation, and drinking water. Hydropower provides a non-polluting source of energy that may be generated in increasing amounts for the growing needs of growing populations. Once built, dams entail relatively low costs and maintenance compared to the costs associated with other forms of energy generation.
Dams however, are not built without a significant cost. In addition to substantial adverse impacts on the physical environment, they can disrupt the lives and lifestyles of people living in the reservoir area and of those dependent on this area. Even when thorough surveys of people adversely affected by dams are conducted, which is not always the case, it is not easy to recognize all the adverse impacts of dam construction on the affected people. Impacts that are not fully identified are difficult to fully mitigate. Poorly planned and implemented dams can devastate local socioeconomic systems without replacing them with comparable and acceptable alternative systems.
The adverse impacts of dam construction are compounded when the affected people belong to indigenous groups with a close or special relationship to the lands on which they live. The land likely to be submerged behind a dam could be supporting a distinct culture, with a language, and customs and traditions that are unique to the location. Resettlement of people from such locations is a much more difficult process, and can be successful only if the affected people themselves determine that acceptable alternatives exist, and those alternatives are actually offered to them.
Efforts to select the best dams to build and then build them well need to focus on refining the methodologies that would help answer the following questions: 1) is the particular dam being proposed the best means to fulfill the identified current or future needs of the population, and 2) once a dam is selected for construction, what are the processes that need to be followed to successfully plan, design, and implement associated resettlement. If the international, multi-institutional effort currently underway under the auspices of the International Commission on Large Dams could help forge an agreement on the processes and criteria for finding answers to the above questions, the development impact of dams would increase significantly. However, the underlying assumption here is that the above questions are technical in nature and that answers to them can be found by improving processes and refining methodologies. According to some commentators on the dams debate, this may not always be the case. Dams, according to them, are sometimes used as political instruments to further the interests of entrenched groups in society. It is hoped that an agreement on a process for assessing the relevance of specific dams and the steps that should be taken in building them, would help make the process less political.
Selection of Dams for Construction
Aparticular dam should be selected for construction only after a careful analysis of all other options -- options that not only compare different dams but also compare dam building to other feasible alternatives to fulfill the same demand for water or energy. A methodology for screening and ranking dam investments has been developed in recent years and applied in a number of countries. In the case of power projects, the process starts with an estimate of total energy demand that needs to be met and a list of all potential dams that can be built in the country/region to fulfill that demand. The next step is for the experts from various disciplines to meet and agree on the technical, economic, environmental, and social criteria on which the potential dams would be assessed. The criteria are verified through consultations with government agencies, NGOs, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders in the process. The potential dam sites are then evaluated on the agreed criteria, and plotted on a matrix in which the technical-economic criteria are measured along one axis and social-environmental criteria along the other. Though local communities are consulted during this exercise and the feasibility of broad resettlement alternatives is an important criteria, the locus of participation remains at the national level. Dams which end up in the most favorable zone of the matrix -- those with high technical-economic advantages and the least environmental-social impacts -- are selected as potential candidates for