The World Ocean Observatory was created as a recommendation of the 1998 Independent World Commission for the Future of the Ocean.
Boundaries of protected areas used in the figures are from the online 2007 World Database of Protected Areas, developed by UNEP-WCMC and the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas.
The first meeting, held in January 1990 in Königswinter, West Germany, reunited members of the Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, the World Commission of Environment and Development, and the South Commission.
Prominent examples include the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (1961– ), the World Commission on Culture and Development (1992 99), and the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (1998– ).
That is what the World Commission on Dams set out to do when it reported its conclusions in November 2000.
The World Commission on Dams has spent two years gathering data on 1,000 of them, soliciting the views of governments and non-governmental groups.
Since then, the fish catch directly upstream has declined by 60-80%, according to a study by the World Commission on Dams.
As the independent World Commission on Dams found, such big, complex schemes cost far more but produce less energy than expected.
They must adopt the international guidelines of the World Commission on Dams, and make their environmental impact assessments open to public scrutiny".
The bank and big donors such as Britain's Department for International Development scaled back support for dams; in that year, the World Commission on Dams was set up which attempted to impose severe constraints on dam-builders.
