By Pratap Chatterjee
WASHINGTON, Jun 21 1995 (IPS)

Senior United Nations officials flying to San Francisco Wednesday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the accord that created the world body will probably not be amused when they are handed a two-page flyer entitled “Unsustainable Development Programme” with the logo of their largest agency

The unofficial title has the same acronym as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Activists from the International Rivers Network (IRN) here have chosen the new name because they say it describes the agency much better.

“We produced this flyer to describe UNDP’s latest plans and to tell people about its dismal past history of supporting some of the largest and most environmentally and socially destructive projects in the world,” says Owen Lammers, IRN’s executive director.

The New York-based agency is currently funding projects to develop three strategic waterways — the Tumen river in north-east Asia, the Paraguay-Parana rivers in South America, and the Mekong river in Southeast Asia.

Governments in these three regions not only want to develop the waterways into major trade routes for the export of commodities like timber and oil. They also want to harness the rivers generate hydro-electric power. These plans will have devastating environmental and social effects, says IRN.

UNDP has paid for feasibility studies to promote the development of each of these regions. Such studies form an essential part of the agency’s work. UNDP gives away about 1.4 billion dollars a year through its 130 offices around the world to fund activities described as “sustainable development.”

In the past, UNDP studies were used to plan the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river in India and the Mahaweli dams in Sri Lanka. Both schemes were subsequently funded through World Bank loans. Recent internal Bank studies admit that the environmental impact of both schemes were devastating.

“Environmental aspects were neglected. Economic returns were lower than expected, farmers remain dependent on the government, and maintenance has been inadequately managed and funded,” say the authors of the performance audit report on the Bank’s funding of the Mahaweli project, which lasted from 1982 to 1992.

But IRN says that UNDP continues to promote similar schemes all over the world. For example, a December 1994 study, paid for by UNDP, recommends transforming the Mekong river, which runs through southeast Asia, into a “staircase” of reservoirs.

This scheme could displace 60,000 people and destroy the world’s second most biologically diverse riverine fishery for the people of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam who share its waters, say activists from the Bangkok-based Project for Ecological Recovery (PER).

In South America, UNDP has paid for the design of the Hydrovia project which would transform the La Plata, Paraguay and Parana rivers into a 3400 kilometre-long industrial shipping channel.

More than 100 groups in Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina — the five countries that would take part in the project — have condemned the plan, saying the river regulates the flow of water into the Brazilian Panatal, the world’s largest and richest wetland. The Panatal is at risk, they say.

Building the channel will involve blasting rock formations along the river to widen it for navigation. At risk would be 600 types of birds, 60 types of mammals, 1,100 types of butterflies, 400 types of fish and 50 types of reptiles, according to the groups.

UNDP responses have disappointed the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who complain that the agency does not appear to accept NGOs as important actors in development.

“Your governments have made a political decision to build the Hydrovia, so our role is merely … to carry out the studies,” was the written response to a letter by the 100 Latin American groups from one of UNDP’s top officials.

“We are servants of governments. They asked us to help draft the agreement and that’s what we did. If environmental groups have problems, they should talk to their governments,” Thomas Cox, the deputy chief of the East Asia division of UNDP in New York, told IPS.

UNDP has recently also begun studies to develop the region around the Tumen river, which flows through China, Russia, and the two Koreas. The Tumen River Area Development Project (TREDA), coordinated by UNDP, is seeking 20 billion dollars to develop the area into a free-trade zone with facilities to accomodate major shipping vessels.

Pollution from industrial activity in the region has already had a tremendous impact. Water in Tumen city is not considered fit for human consumption, according to the UNDP studies, while agricultural and fishing activities have been also been affected.

Increased industrial activity could worsen these problems, according to IRN. It could also threaten the last remaining habitat of the Far East leopard in the Russian Far East Marine Reserve, which would be opened up for logging under the new plans.

Lammers and several members of his staff want these issues to be the theme of a meeting they have been granted Thursday with James Gustave Speth, UNDP’s Administrator, at the All Nippon Airways Hotel in downtown San Francisco.

Speth is staying at the hotel to attend a special celebration called “We, the People,” to mark the 50th anniversary of the U.N.’s creation this weekend.

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