Involuntary Resettlement

Comparative Perspectives

Warren van Wicklin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351326865
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Theory
• Index: Economics

Among development assistance agencies, the World Bank has led the way in policies to mitigate the impact of large-scale engineering projects on local populations, particularly in the building of dams. Since the 1980s the Bank has implemented guidelines for policies with respect to displacement, social infrastructure and services, environmental effects, resettlement, compensation, and the restoration of income for those affected. Having learned from the failures of past resettlement programs, the Bank has endeavored to function as a responsible and caring agency. This volume builds upon earlier studies and field work to offer a broad look at dam-building projects in six countries and to review the outcomes of Bank policy, learn from experience, and assess outside criticism.

The book covers representative dam projects in India, Thailand, Togo, China, Indonesia, and Brazil. Each project was undertaken after Bank resettlement guidelines had been implemented. The widely ranging results in each country are assessed. In the areas of compensation for acquired land, relocation, infrastructure and services, the contributors note satisfactory levels of improvement or positive trends. Governments are moving towards acceptance of the idea that displaced families should be paid the real value of their lost assets. Relocation processes are now keeping pace with water movement caused by dam building, and health, education, utilities, and roads are better than before the resettlement.

Other results have been less positive. The impact on incomes of those involuntarily resettled has been harsh in some locations. Resettler dissatisfaction has been intense, notably in those countries where the national economies are not experiencing strong growth. The Bank's performance itself has been uneven. There have been lapses in appraisal and monitoring during the projects and insufficient follow-through support for resettlement operations after the completion of loan and credit disbursements.

In addition to its case by case analysis of countries and projects, the book includes detailed lessons and recommendations to strengthen resettlement policy and practice. Involuntary Resettlement will be of interest to economists, sociologists, and professionals working in regional development policy.

Robert Picciotto is director general of Operations Evaluation at the World Bank. Warren van Wicklin is task manager and evaluator at the Operations Evaluation department of the World Bank.

1

Overview

For some, large dams symbolize a failed, centralized, technocratic approach to development characterized by waste, bureaucratic bungling, and insensitivity to people and the environment. For others, large dams are almost cathedrals—the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists and adopted in image, if not in usage, by a whole population. Both myths survive because each contains a grain of truth. Some dams are marvels of human ingenuity. They make deserts bloom. They tame floods. They produce clean energy. They also put nature to work. However, a large dam can also silence a river, destroy a landscape, endanger biodiversity, and uproot whole communities. That is why we continue the search for economic and social solutions that can provide more and better goods and services for all—while sustaining a high-quality environment.

The dilemmas posed by large dams are those of harmonizing development with the environment. At the core of this challenge lies energy—the fuel of economic development. However, energy does not have to mean burning carbon, and dams have a significant role to play in freeing the energy system from carbon consumption. When built on time and on budget, they produce electric power at competitive prices. That power can substitute for power derived from wood, coal, kerosene, and oil—and thus contribute to a cleaner, safer, healthier environment. Hydroelectric power can also reduce the deadly wastes associated with open fire and smoke in homes and workplaces and with the exposure to pneumonia, TB, diphtheria and other airborne disease. It can make refrigeration possible, cutting into waterborne gastrointestinal diseases—another major killer.

Hydroelectric power has other advantages. Rather than requiring foreign exchange for fossil fuels, hydroelectric power is renewable and a domestic resource. More than that, hydroelectric plants are easy to operate and maintain. No wonder, then, that two-thirds of the large dams built in the 1980s were in developing countries. The power market in these countries is growing, and that is where the bulk of unexploited sites reside. According to the World Energy Council, energy production for hydroelectric power will double from 2,000 terawatt hours in 1990 to 4,000 terawatt hours in 2020. This implies a trebling of hydro capacity—still leaving 70 percent of the technically usable potential untapped.

There is thus a strong economic and environmental case for large dams. However, as dams are currently designed, constructed, and implemented, a strong case can also be made against them. The damming of a river can be a cataclysmic event in the life of a riverine ecosystem. The construction of dams in areas that are densely populated, environmentally sensitive, and institutionally weak can be very destructive. Just as in real estate, location matters. Consultation with affected people matters, too, but it’s not a panacea. The protection of natural habitats and the resettlement of people displaced by dams call for institutions and implementation capacities that need nurturing over many years, even decades.

The resettlement issues surrounding dam projects are inherently more difficult than those of nondam projects. Construction of dams and their related reservoirs usually requires the acquisition of large, consolidated pieces of land. Withdrawing this land from production eliminates the main means of livelihood for its owners, and that land often cannot be easily replaced nearby. Dams are in rural areas where incomes are more difficult to restore, not least because the dams inundate fertile river valleys, pushing people into less fertile uplands, which call for new skills to manage.

The purpose of this study is not to ascertain the extent of problems with resettlement. Instead, it is to illuminate the range of experience in recently completed resettlement operations to determine what works well and what does not—and to suggest means of improving performance.

Despite the debacles and disappointments, there have been some surprisingly good outcomes. The China projects show what can be done to make resettlement work when the executing agencies are prepared to do so with the tools and opportunities available—and when the Bank can protect and reinforce the commitment by government. What China does, others can do as well. In Thailand and Indonesia, resettlers were picked up and carried along by tidal changes in the regional economy. The outcomes suggest that planners can be more aggressive in designing compensation packages linked to non-land-based diversification strategies to put displaced people back to work.

Most Projects Selected for the Study Have Greater Resettlement Problems than Typical Bank-Assisted Projects with Dams

The projects selected for this study range widely in size (map IBRD 30491). On average they displace about four times as many people as other World Bank projects with dams. The dams, on average, were not significantly more expensive or larger in reservoir surface area, but they were in more densely populated areas. This study also reflects the roughly even split between dams built for hydropower and those built for irrigation, but it does not include dams built primarily for drinking-water supply or transportation.

The projects selected have generally had greater resettlement problems than most Bank-assisted projects. Three are among the most controversial in the Bank’s entire portfolio. A higher percentage of the case-study projects had resettlement problems than the portfolio as a whole, largely because more recently approved projects have generally had fewer problems. The selected projects are described below.

India—Upper Krishna

The Krishna River is one of the three main rivers of the Indian subcontinent, originating in the Western Ghats, in the State of Maharashtra, and flowing east through the States of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh before emptying into the Bay of Bengal. The study examined resettlement at four dams, two in each state. In Karnataka, the Narayanpur reservoir was not completely filled until 1996. The dam at Almatti is still not finished, and resettlement is in the early stages. Narayanpur displaced 5,100 households; Almatti is expected to displace 33,000 households, and the construction of canals, drains, and roads will displace another 2,600 households. The total of 40,000 households, or about 240,000 people, is the largest resettlement operation in the Bank’s history. This does not include another 150,000 to 200,000 people who will be displaced when Almatti is raised to its ultimate height.

The two dams in Maharashtra, Dhom and Kanher, are on the upper reaches of the Krishna. They are each about one-fifth the size of Narayanpur. Dhom displaced 3,390 families and Kanher displaced 3,860 families, for a total of about 40,000 people. The Dhom displacees had ten more years to get established, and because they moved into the functioning, upper reaches of the irrigation command, they are generally doing better than the Kanher displacees, most of whom are in the lower reaches of the command, where property disputes have delayed construction of irrigation canals up to ten years. Some of these people have already have been waiting up to 17 years for irrigation they were promised in 1980.

China—Shuikou and Yantan

These two Chinese dams, both in narrow valleys surrounded by hills, have reservoirs about 100 kilometers long. At Shuikou, relocation began in 1988, but almost 70 percent of the 67,200 people evacuated from the valley floor were moved between 1990 and 1992. Another 17,200 in Nanping City, at the upstream end of the reservoir, had to be moved to make way for the construction of embankments to protect the downtown area and avoid the need for relocating more of Nanping’s nearly 200,000 inhabitants. The full supply level of the reservoir was set below the optimal economic level precisely to avoid massive displacement in the city. The resettlers were housed in ten large apartment buildings constructed on sites scattered through the city, including immediately behind the embankments. This meant that people could continue their previous jobs. All relocation was completed by the end of 1992, and the reservoir was filled in 1993.

At Yantan, as at Shuikou, the objective was to move people short distances, and into comparable occupations. Again, it started with a land-based strategy. Yantan has a harsher topology, and plowable land is even scarcer than at Shuikou. Yantan is much farther from any large cities and farther still from the booming coastal economy. By March 1992, 43,200 people had moved, with an additional 19,200 affected. By March 1997, jobs had been arranged for 17,000 people out of a labor force of 25,000. In 1992, the agency relocated 3,600 people—with 1,000 arranged jobs—to two former state sugar farms near Guangxi Province’s own developing coastal center at Beihai. In 1997, 11,500 more people had to move—with 3,000 arranged jobs—to another government farm in Binyang in central Guangxi.

Thailand—Pak Mun

Pak Mun is in northeast Thailand, on the lower reaches of the Mun River, 5.5 kilometers above its confluence with the Mekong, which forms the border between Thailand and Laos. The power company that built the dam changed the design by lowering the dam height five meters, which reduced power benefits by one-third, more than halved the reservoir length and surface area, and reduced the number of inundated families from 4,000 to 240. Families whose houses would be within 30 meters of the reservoir—excessively isolated by the reservoir, or inconvenienced by dam construction—were offered compensation packages equal to those whose houses would be inundated. As a result, another 670 households were resettled in addition to the original 240. By May 1993, only two households had not consented to land acquisition. The relocation was extraordinarily easy. Some households literally moved across the street. Most families moved less than a kilometer, many opting to move from riverside clusters to linear alignments along the significantly improved trunk road paralleling the left bank of the river.

Brazil—Itaparica

The damming of northeast Brazil’s São Francisco River at Itaparica began in 1979 and was completed in 1988, creating a reservoir 149 kilometers long with a surface area of 840 square kilometers. It displaced 3,500 urban, 1,000 pararural (people who moved to towns but retained rights to irrigated lots), and 4,900 rural families (including 400 families displaced by the new irrigation works). Another 1,000 families received cash compensation and left the area.

Stage I—the construction of facilities and transfer of families into four new towns and 127 agrovilas (new villages)—ranks among the quickest and most successful of any large relocation operation. Private contractors worked under intense pressure throughout 1987 and the first half of 1988 to complete the works. Most families were still moving when the sluice gates at the dam were closed in February 1988, but ongoing relocation activities could keep up with the rising water and the residents were not at risk. The resettlers received much better houses (in most cases) with water and electric connections.

Stage II called for the provision of irrigation water through pressurized pipes to sprinkler systems installed on 5,900 demarcated lots ranging from 1.5 to 6.0 hectares, and totaling 20,500 hectares. Stage II is still far from complete nine years after resettlers moved to the agrovilas and eight years after the deadline by which they had been assured all the schemes would be brought into production. By June 1997, 2,300 lots totaling 8,000 hectares, or 40 percent of the total, were receiving water. Another 1,800 lots and 6,600 hectares, about 30 percent of the total, were expected to be fully operational by the end of 1998. The other 1,800 lots, the final 30 percent, were still “under study,” but these lots have such marginal soils that they may never receive irrigation. Many of the farmers assigned to these lots may be assigned new lots, or may be helped to establish other forms of livelihood.

Indonesia—Kedung Ombo

About 50 kilometers southeast of Semarang, the provincial capital on the north coast of Central Java, the Kedung Ombo dam intersects a river system that once annually restored the fertility of the river valleys and part of the floodplains. The reservoir inundated most of this intensively farmed land. The surrounding Kedung Ombo hills are among the least suitable parts of the province for subsistence agriculture. The original survey found that 75 percent of the 24,000 resettlers indicated that they would join Indonesia’s massive transmigration program and resettle to the outer islands. During implementation, however, only 25 percent of the resettlers transmigrated.

The government relaxed its pressure on families to move out of the greenbelt area surrounding the reservoir. (About 600 have stayed.) At stake were 9,000 hectares, perhaps half of its prime cultivable land, and perhaps three-quarters of that available for at least one crop during annual drawdowns of the reservoir. The government also cleared three villages in Forest Department lands to create space for another 700 families. The largest number of resettlers, 2,800 families, accepted the compensation money and resettled themselves. Most settled in the hills above the lake, although many had to find off-farm employment to restore their incomes. Given the rapidly expanding economy of Central Java, this was a viable option.

About 1,250 families transmigrated to 17 sites on Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Irian Jaya. The largest cluster, about 310 families, went to Muko Muko in Bengkulu Province on Sumatra. An inexplicable error in site planning placed many on land underlain by a medium to thick strata of peat, an almost impossible soil for irrigation. While the land could be salvaged for tree crops, and possibly even maize or other field crops, the government has stubbornly insisted that the resettlers grow rice. The 86 resettler families transmigrated to an irrigation site on Irian Jaya are doing reasonably well, and the 193 families relocated to East Kalimantan are doing the best of all with their two hectares of oil palm each.

Togo—Nangbeto

The first hydropower project in Togo, Nangbeto, is on the Mono River, 160 kilometers upstream of the coast and 80 kilometers upstream of where it begins to form the border between Togo and Benin. The reservoir and resettlement areas are entirely within Togo, but the power is shared with Benin, through the binational power company, Communauté Electrique du Bénin. The reservoir displaced 10,600 people. Of this total, 7,600 lost their houses and land and were moved to resettlement zones 30 to 55 kilometers northeast of their former locations. The other 3,000 lost their houses but little of their land. They were moved back a few kilometers from the reservoir and could continue to farm most of their former lands.

The physical relocation went well without any incidents. The 7,600 people moved to the resettlement zones were relocated in two months, after their December 1986 harvest and in time to prepare their fields for spring planting. The power company provided two-room core houses and cash compensation to finish the houses according to individual needs and priorities. The resettlement zone was sparsely populated, the soils were fresh, and land had been easily obtained from host communities. Resettlement villages were provided with boreholes with pumps, and other community infrastructure.

Project Compensation Rates and Schedules Vary but Are Improving in Terms of Fairness and Timeliness

The experience with compensation rates and schedules ranges widely, but the trend appears to be toward improvements in fairness and timeliness. Governments are moving toward broad acceptance of the principle that displaced families should be paid the real value of their lost assets. However, compensation is still a major issue in many projects and progress is slow.

Resettlers did not complain about—and therefore presumably were satisfied with—their compensation for lost houses and trees that were economic assets (“economic” trees). Nangbeto, where people were promised payment for trees but never got it, was an exception. Elsewhere people got what their assets were worth and, in several cases, could keep the salvageable material from the old house without discount or were provided with a new house or the two-room core of a house and compensation or both. One difficulty arose when many families used the funds to build at the same time, causing a shortage of materials and inflating labor as well as material costs. None of the projects compensated at enhanced rates to provide for this. More frequently, a problem arose when families were paid cash in a lump sum long before the deadline for moving, so that the compensation funds were spent on other necessities and were no longer available when the families needed them. That is a scheduling problem, extraordinarily difficult to avoid wherever responsibility for rebuilding is left with displacees who move at the last moment. A solution practiced in some countries was to have installment payments accompany the pace of building. However, this discouraged early movement. These problems usually emerged years after the project authority had agreed with the families about the house and home-yard compensation package. Displacees would grumble belatedly over compensation rates when they were really unhappy about the process.

Controversy over compensation involving payments for lost cultivable land affected three of the projects, but in only one—Kedung Ombo—did the issue blow up. There and at the two sites in India, compensation rates that probably approximated market values when the properties were surveyed were hopelessly inadequate to finance replacement purchases when the displacees entered the land market in large numbers. Payment schedules were also inappropriate, for the sa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Maps
• Preface
• 1 Overview
• 2 Confrontations and Crises in Upper Krishna
• 3 Commitment to Income Recovery in China
• 4 Responsiveness at High Cost in Thailand
• 5 Poor Planning and Settler Resistance in Indonesia
• 6 Good Intentions, Costly Mistakes in Brazil
• 7 Resettlement without Rehabilitation in Togo
• 8 Lessons Learned and Recommendations
• Index