DEVELOPMENT: Communities From Amazon to Himalayas Win Small Gains

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 8 1996 (IPS) - Several thousand Paraguayan villagers living on the Parana river in South America represent the latest community challenge to the World Bank.

Like a number of other groups in the developing world, they argue that the World Bank has failed to follow its own environmental and social standards, and they are asking for an independent investigation into a Bank-funded project.

Groups from far and wide have stepped up to the Bank’s inspection panel with their complaints. They have come from the Himalayan mountains in Nepal and the seasonal islands of the Jamuna river in Bangladesh; they have included Tanzanian entrepreneurs and rubber tappers from the Amazon forests.

In most cases, there have been no detailed probes into the complaints. But public attention has forced the Bank to revisit most of the projects and make some changes.

The Bank’s inspection panel was set up two years ago as an appeals mechanism that would allow local communities to bring grievances against projects. It grew out of a unique probe conducted into Bank loans for the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river in India. That investigation, led by former head of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) Bradford Morse, eventually resulted in the Bank pulling out of the project.

But critics argue that the process remains flawed, since the panel was never set up to actually cancel projects.

“The panel process is weak,” argues David Hunter, a lawyer at the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL) in Washington. “Even if you get everything you want, all you get is recommendations.”

That’s not to say that the public pressure from panel findings cannot force the Bank to pull out. Indeed, the Bank withdrew from another dam project in the Arun Valley of Nepal, following panel recommendations and widespread international condemnation.

But other complainants have had a harder time. In fact, claims from entrepreneurs have made the least headway so far.

The panel has tossed out two such cases. One came from an ethnic Greek business family who lost their lands in Ethiopia because of a Bank project. Another came from an Irish businessman who complained about the environmental hazards of the World Bank- financed Ubongo power plant on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam.

Observers say the cases may have been thrown out because they were filed by expatriates of Ethiopia and Tanzania. It is also true that, with one exception, all the other complaints have had significant help from international environmental groups.

CIEL and the California-based International Rivers Network (IRN) have played a major role in supporting these complaints, many of which have involved river projects.

IRN counts the defeat of the 764-million-dollar, 201-megawatt dam project in Nepal’s Arun River Valley as one of the organisation’s most significant achievements.

The major objection to the project centred on the possible environmental impact of a 122-km access road. IRN argued that the new road and the expected influx of outsiders would have placed at risk the traditions of 450,000 people from 10 indigenous groups who live in the valley, which has one of the few pristine forests left in the Himalayas.

Another complaint was lodged last year against the three-year- old, 167-million-dollar Rondonia Agricultural, Livestock and Forestry (PLANOFLORO) project in Brazil, which was to set up “extractive” reserves to help local people harvest about 30 native products, including rubber and Brazil nuts.

PLANOFLORO was to counter the effects of a previous 445-million- dollar Bank project designed to pave 1,500 kms of dirt tracks in the remote region of Rodonia, which borders Bolivia. The road spurred the migration of nearly half-a-million people who cleared the forest for cultivation. By 1991, destruction of Rodonia’s forests was proceeding at 10 times the original rate, environmentalists estimated.

Twenty-five groups, representing small farmers, rubber tappers, unions, environmental groups and indigenous peoples in Rodonia, complained that the PLANOFORO project was “hindered by a series of impediments”, including a failure by the World Bank to implement its own policies and directives.

Bank management dismissed the claim on the grounds that there was insufficient data to support the complaint.

Late last year, Chilean activists filed a complaint against the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank affiliate that promotes private sector investments. The activists accused the IFC of failing to follow environmental rules in lending 70 million dollars for the construction of a dam on the Bio Bio river.

The dam blocks the river, which descends some 1,100 metres from the Cordillera in the Andes to the town of Concepcion on the Pacific Ocean.

Bank management dismissed the complaint, saying the panel was not authorised to investigate IFC projects. The Bank has since decided to send Jay Hair, the former head of the U.S. National Wildlife Federation, to look into the problems.

Today, the inspection panel faces two new challenges.

In September, several thousand Bangladeshis who lost their homes in heavy May storms filed a complaint to the panel.

The estimated 2,750 “char” (river island) people of the Jamuna, the main waterway in central Bangladesh, say the main cause of their distress was the digging of a new diversion channel and the construction of new embankments to make way for a 696- million-dollar, 4.8-km-long bridge that would carry road and rail traffic as well as electric and gas lines.

The latest complaint comes from Paraguay.

The Paraguayans are concerned about the Yacyreta dam that straddles the Parana River where it forms part of the border between Argentina and Paraguay. The World Bank and the Inter- American Development Bank (IDB) have loaned some 1.6 billion dollars for construction of the dam.

But when the dam is completed in 1998, some 1,650 sq. kms. of land, including 300 islands that are home to unique species of flora and fauna will likely be lost to the rising water.

Some 50,000 people will have to be relocated. One in three residents of Encarnacion, Paraguay’s third largest city, will be flooded out, along with schools, churches, and 500 businesses. Across the river, the poor, waterfront neighbourhoods of the Argentine city of Posadas also will be submerged.

This complaint is unique because it is the first to be filed against the IDB, which has had an inspection panel for just over a year.

Activists are watching these two cases keenly.

“The content of both new claims are extremely good,” says Patrick McCully, IRN’s campaigns director. “If the Bank throws these two complaints out, it would make people extremely cynical about the worth of the panel.”

DEVELOPMENT: Communities From Amazon to Himalayas Win Small Gains

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 8 1996 (IPS) - Several thousand Paraguayan villagers living on the Parana river in South America represent the latest community challenge to the World Bank.
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