The greatest challenge now is to start a genuine and fruitful debate on finding the most suitable ways and means to meet energy needs, water requirements and food production, while conserving biodiversity.
Dams have to be seen as a means to an end, rather than an end in themselves.
The conservation of natural resources and an improvement in the quality of human life should be at the heart of this issue. The issues and debates over large dams have not changed significantly since the 1940s and 1950s. What has changed is that dam construction has shifted geographically from developed to developing countries. Several developing countries that are now building similar, or even larger, dams than those in the west emphasise the same arguments of the benefits of dams. WWF, in principle, does not favour the construction of any new large dam as they all lead to environmental damage.