With regards Mike Muller's recent article "Getting priorities right is a must" (http://www.bday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,1686809-6096-0,00.html) We agree with DWAF director-general Mike Muller on Africa's great needs for investment in infrastructure. We also very much agree that Southern countries should not be forced into accepting a Northern development agenda. But Muller's willful mischaracterization of International Rivers Network (IRN)'s position on World Bank involvement in African dams deserves a reply.

Muller states that IRN has "pressed the US to oppose funding of important water projects in Africa because they do not like their effect on natural rivers." Wrong. Our primary work is to amplify the voices of Southern colleagues who wield little influence on Northern-dominated institutions such as the World Bank, which have become so critical in determining Southern policies and projects in the water and energy sectors. Most often our work prioritizes the grave social problems caused by large dams, and does not focus solely on their environmental impacts. Some 40-80 million people worldwide have been displaced by large dams; many were left worse off, and most were left out of discussions about their futures and their role in furthering national development. This is changing because of groups like IRN and our colleagues around the world, and we are surprised that Muller thinks this is a bad thing.

Muller also fails to acknowledge that homegrown opposition to large dams is what brings groups like IRN to the debate. In a globalized world, where water ministries frequently rely on outside consultants, multinational companies and funders such as the World Bank to build and operate national water systems, it is unfair and unrealistic to insist that civil society and dam-affected communities should work without external partners on complex issues such as those surrounding big dams.

Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), including IRN, have long pressed the World Bank to both address the outstanding social and environmental impacts of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), and to punish the corrupt companies involved in it. NGOs have been key in keeping this issue alive at the Bank. Contrary to what Muller implies, IRN never advocated that the LWHP should not be built, only that it should be planned and executed in ways that benefit local communities and cause the least social, environmental and economic harm. The LHWP as planned did not meet these criteria. As for protecting "natural rivers," Muller must know that local scientific researchers (not IRN) have warned that, if fully built, the LHWP would turn Lesotho's rivers into "something akin to waste-water drains"-a preventable situation we doubt DWAF would like to claim credit for. This is not an issue of preserving natural beauty: downstream communities who depend on healthy ecosystems supported by now-diverted rivers are finding themselves poorer because of the LHWP. South Africa's ongoing work to integrate the guidelines of the World Commission on Dams into national policies could help prevent future tradeoffs from being placed almost entirely on the backs of the poor.