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DEVELOPMENT: Pakistanis Challenge World Bank Over Water Works

Abid Aslam

WASHINGTON, Oct 23 2007 (IPS) - Pakistani plaintiffs say the World Bank has yet to make good on promises to fix flaws blamed for lost lives and livelihoods along the world&#39s largest irrigation system.

"The problems are still there, even after the bank went through the exercise of investigating them thoroughly," said Mustafa Talpur, an activist who lobbied bank officials on the sidelines of the agency&#39s Oct. 20-22 annual meeting here.

"It&#39s not true to say that nothing&#39s been done," countered John Roome, the bank&#39s operations director for South Asia. The lender is working on problems identified by an internal investigation and next month will report progress to executive directors, who represent the bank&#39s shareholders and oversee its loans.

At issue is 285 million dollars in financing they approved in 1997 to support a 25-year, 785-million-dollar Pakistani bid to improve irrigation on 35.7 million acres of agricultural land along the Indus. The river runs the country&#39s length through the breadbasket provinces of Punjab and Sindh. The region generates two-thirds of Pakistan&#39s jobs and 80 percent of its export earnings.

For five of Pakistan&#39s six decades since winning independence from Britain, the World Bank has been the principal external financier of major water works along the Indus.

Large-scale irrigation has opened "vast areas of new farmland", the bank&#39s quasi-independent inspection panel said last year, but it also has brought the "twin menace" of extensive waterlogging and salinity. Farmers in southern Sindh – already among the country&#39s poorest people – saw their livelihoods rot with the earth.

Drains stretching over dozens of miles were built to solve these problems but have "brought their own social and ecological problems", inspectors said.

In 2003, vast swathes were flooded and more than 300 people died when an unusually high Indus slammed up against sea water sent surging inland by an offshore cyclone.

The following year, people hit by the calamities complained in writing to the inspection panel, saying the lender broke its own policies on the environment, project supervision, and local consultation. Also flouted were rules on the resettlement of local people to make way for the bank-financed infrastructure, complainants charged.

Inspectors, in a July 2006 report, said locals&#39 grievances had merit. Bank managers said they spent 18 million dollars in 2004-2006 on improving living conditions in areas harmed by the national drainage project, or NDP. They proposed further measures through 2016 to combat flooding and improve irrigation and drainage. Executive directors approved their plan in October 2006.

Since then, Roome told IPS, the bank has channeled aid to local communities through the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund. Financed by the government, international donors, and businesses, the fund disburses money to small projects designed and implemented by local non-governmental groups. These then account for how the money is used.

To date, 290 grants have been disbursed along the Sindh coast, 90 of them for projects in NDP-affected communities, Roome said.

Talpur, who helped write the original complaint while at the Pakistani affiliate of international charity ActionAid, said the existing programme was welcome but lacked sufficient tailoring to NDP-affected communities&#39 needs.

Complainants have yet to receive compensation for lost relatives, assets and earnings, Talpur added in an interview.

The Pakistani activist, in meetings with Roome, other staffers, and executive directors from the bank&#39s European shareholders, demanded that the action plan be revised in consultation with local communities and that drainage routes be corrected to avoid future problems.

Talpur, who was supported by U.S.-based pressure group International Rivers Network, said: "They only had management&#39s progress reports. They didn&#39t have another view. We hope this new awareness will lead to a revised action plan and more effective oversight."

In the bank&#39s view, activists "can play a very constructive role in providing feedback on how they see implementation proceeding," Roome said.

Local groups have been consulted on various aspects of the action plan since May 2006, he said, adding: "Our assumption going forward is that we will be implementing the action plan but obviously if things aren&#39t working or if things come up, we&#39ll revisit it."

Federal officials pushed through the national drainage project over objections from the provincial government in Sindh. Bank inspectors said disunity at the Pakistani end undermined the lender&#39s efforts to ensure compliance with safeguard policies.

Talpur saw it differently.

"The bank financed this project and it has direct responsibility. Its foreign consultants designed the project and their faulty design, especially their selection of disposal routes, caused our problems. This wasn&#39t the doing of the Pakistani authorities," he said.

Inspectors, in their report, said that in at least one case locals rightly argued problems could be avoided by allowing water from the Indus to reach the Arabian Sea naturally rather than forcing it into human-made conduits. Their suggestion was not taken up.

An overhaul of the drainage infrastructure awaits analyses of 30-plus proposals and will not be the bank&#39s to make, according to Roome.

"In the end, the government of Pakistan is going to make the decision on where to go," he said.