Journey of the World Declaration from Chengdu to Belem.
Once the World Declaration on Dams and Energy Transition had been endorsed by international partners in Chengdu, it entered another stage: making itself known to civil society and other stakeholders, in particular those to whom recommendations are addressed, governments, policy makers, regulators, multilateral financial institutions, and so on.
A key event in this respect was the COP30 in Belem, Brazil, where dams were represented for the very first time in the context of Climate Change Summits. The role of dams in providing the grid security, flexibility to support other renewable sources and the capacity to recover quickly from blackouts was justified as the key infrastructure called to play a key role in the energy transition. The Climate Policy Initiative’s report ‘Global Landscape of Energy Transition Finance 2025’, prepared in collaboration with the COP30 Presidency, mentions dozens of gigawatts of pumped storage under development as part of the energy transition investment portfolio.
The UNDP publication “One Future”, linked to the summit, also points to some countries that are scaling up reversible plants, as a key element of the resilience of their electricity systems and the integration of renewables, in the context of COP30. Dams and hydro finally were pre sent in a COP, since no mention existed at previous climate summits. Pending is the debate of the actions on dams for climate change adaptation, including safety before extreme events, in which the engagement was limited to pledges to cross-finance the cost of measures to be taken.
Now the challenge is to promote the adoption of the entire set of the World Declaration recommendations by policy makers and relevant stake holders, to equip them to face the climate emergency.
Read the article in HYDROPOWER AND DAMS ( Aqua Media International ltd)
https://ewater.es/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/World-Declaration_DKS_EC.pdf
