/* Written 5:51 pm Feb 1, 1994 by [EMAIL PROTECTED] in
igc:rainfor.worldb */
/* ---------- "resettlement rates up six times" ---------- */
From: Pratap Chatterjee <pchatterjee>
Subject: resettlement rates up six times
DEVELOPMENT: Dramatic rise in people forced off lands by World Bank
An Inter Press Service Feature
By Pratap Chatterjee
AMSTERDAM, Jan 24 (IPS) - Four million people are to be forced off their lands
under projects of the World Bank currently underway or to be commissioned by
1996, six times as many as ten years ago.
A leaked internal draft World Bank report, the third in a series in the past
ten years, shows that right now 2 million people are being forced off their
lands under 134 Bank projects currently underway and another 2 million will
have to move under projects to be approved by 1996.
The report was written by the Bank's sociologist Michael Cernea. The report
says that one in seven dollars spent by the Bank, goes to projects that are
forcibly resettling people.
In fact according to the Cernea report there isn't a single project in the
world where the resettled people managed to regain their level of income.
Worse still, comparisons of the new report with the two previous reports show
that the number of people forcibly resettled by Bank funded projects has
increased significantly after every time the Bank has reviewed its resettlement
record and promised to improve it.
A Bank study presented in 1983 showed that Bank projects between 1979 and
1983 forcibly resettled 450,000 people over the four years. Despite promises of
remedying this alarmingly high figure, another Bank study presented in 1986
showed that the figure had gone up by another 300,000 in the subsequent two
years, a 33% increase in the rate.
The new Cernea figures that say the Bank will increase resettlement by 2
million between 1994 and 1996, are an astonishing rate of six times as many as
the average resettled between 1979 and 1983.
The final version of this report will be circulated to the Bank's executive
directors in a month's time and a meeting to decide what should be done about
this has been scheduled for April 15th.
''The thrust of Bank management response to the abuses that will be
identified will be to admit there are problems in old projects but that now
everything is improving and under control - 'that was then, and this is now',''
says Bruce Rich, an activist from the US based Environmental Defense Fund.
''This is a typical response - the Bank presents itself as a moving target,
admits there are some problems with the past, but maintains that the criticisms
are no longer valid since the problems are being taken care of,'' he adds.
People are forcibly resettled to make way for many different kinds of
projects, from dam reservoirs that flood productive lands, canals, road
projects, mines - especially open-cast mines - industrial parks, forestry
"management" projects, reforestation, wildlife parks and sanctuaries.
Apart from this, funders like the Bank have even paid for projects whose
sole purpose is to move people to less populated areas, such as its infamous
transmigration projects in Indonesia.
Under the Bank's own directives, resettlement can only be conducted if it
results in maintaining or raising the income of the resettled people. Yet
because productive lands are either too expensive or non-existent, people have
to be relocated in communities where they may not be welcome.
What's more Kate de Selincourt, author of ''Forced to Move,'' a report on
resettlement published by the Panos Institute in London, says that those hurt
most "are those already disadvantagedand relatively powerless: women, ethnic
minorities, the poor and the landless.''
Resettlement rarely takes account of people that have no land, such as
priests, teachers or hawkers, some of whom don't even have fixed homes or
shops. If their customers are scattered over several villages, they may not be
able to find work or they may have to compete with their hosts.
The previous resettlement reviews even warned of problems with specific
future projects. For example in the 1983 report, the Bank's staff pointed out
that the country that was worst affected by forcible resettlement was India,
and it warned of the huge resettlement that would be required by a planned new
project to dam the Narmada river, estimating that 70,000 people would be
displaced.
Yet two years later the Bank sanctioned a US$450 million loan for this dam.
In 1992 an independent review team appointed by the Bank found that not only
were twice as many people to be affected, the project implementors had
blatantly ignored the Bank's directives on resettlement.
A part of this loan was cancelled in 1993, ten years after the first Bank
review on resettlement, when the Indian government and the Bank decided that
the project was drawing too much international attention. Yet its record on
resettlement in India has not changed. Even today, the new report shows that 23
current Bank projects are ousting 800,000 people in India.
When this writer visited the dam site on the Narmada river this January he
visited Manibeli and Vedgam, the two villages that were first affected by the
damming of the river. The villages were flooded last July after the rains and
the damage that was caused is still to be repaired.
Narayan Tadvi, the headman of Manibeli, said that after the dam waters
receded, his house was full of "stinking" mud two feet deep that took ten days
to clear. He also said that many of the people in his village had agreed to be
resettled some years ago but after three years of trying to grow crops on the
poor land that was awarded to them, decided to return to their old properties.
Other examples that activists have cited in the past are even worse. Rich
gives examples from the Bank's own summaries of resettlement and rehabilitation
that the Indian National Thermal Power Corporation promised under the
Environmental Action Plan for Farakka, a hydro-power project on the Indian
Bangladeshi border.
The Bank says that the facilities awarded to the 55,000 people displaced and
dispossessed were "swimming, athletics sports material to local clubs" while
new community centres that were planned were described in three words - "bus
passenger sheds."
Interestingly the Bank's guidelines on resettlement (Operational Directive
4.30) were drawn up by Cernea himself. This directive was first drafted in 1980
and has since been revised three times in 1986, 1988 and 1990.
Nor is the Bank's studies of resettlement news to borrower governments and
activists. For example a Chinese government official from the Ministry of Water
Conservancy, recently told Beijing Review that of the 10 million people
resettled between 1949 and 1992, one-third of the resettlement seems to be
satisfactory. In fact one third of them could not even afford proper food and
clothing.
The non governmental organisation Indian Social Institute reports that of
the 15 million people resettled in India, only 4 million were properly
resettled.
Rich has demanded that the report should be made public, that people
already impoverished through previous bank projects should be rehabilitated,
that no more forced resettlement should take place until all alternatives have
been examined, that local communities have a say in what's going to happen and
monitoring systems be installed to control the proces.
If these demands are not met, governments should threaten to withdraw all
funding to the Bank and to the International Development Association (IDA), its
soft loan window, says Rich.
(END\IPS\PC94)
** End of text from cdp:hr.development **
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