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The importance of basic sanitary services
Human rights: “Make our position unmistakably clear”
No justification for dams
Beautified data
01/2007
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[ Water ]
No justification for dams
If the government gets its way, five large dams will be built in Pakistan in the next ten years. President Musharraf says that this is the only way to solve the country’s main problems. The World Bank is supporting his plans, even though no attention is being paid to poverty alleviation or resource conservation. In that respect, those in power in Islamabad today are no different from earlier governments. People afraid of being displaced by dams are now pinning their last hopes on civil-society networking.
[ By Ann-Kathrin Schneider ]
“The authorities have stopped giving us money to fix our school.” Eight men are meeting at a local council hall in Punjab. They believe they know why less and less money is being provided for the upkeep of their village’s infrastructure. “The Kalabagh reservoir is going to flood our village and all surrounding fields, so the government has stopped giving us money.”
Recently, interest in large dams has surged in Pakistan. The government has revived projects first drafted decades ago. The biggest one, the Kalabagh dam, will be 80 metres high and 3.5 kilometres long. It will produce 3600 megawatts and cost $ 12 billion. 120,000 people will have to be resettled.
The government sees the construction of dams on the Indus as the only way to tackle the country’s main development challenges: food security, rural development and growing demands for electricity and water. Its plans seem anachronistic in their blind faith in large-scale projects and their disregard for either resource conservation or poverty alleviation. Worse, they perpetuate alarming trends because Pakistan’s water policy has always taken an uneven and unfair approach to water regulation and also put the Indus eco-system under strain. The groundwater table is falling fast.
Nonetheless, Pakistan’s government argues that this is the way it will be able to meet the growing demand for energy, improve water access, and guarantee food security. President Pervez Musharraf says that the large dams planned are “a matter of life and death”. According to the World Bank, these projects are of “overwhelming national significance”, leaving no room for delay.
Naeem Iqbal works for the non-governmental Sungi Development Foundation. In his view, the fact that the government is considering old plans for large-scale projects indicates its weakness. “Musharraf has lost ground domestically and internationally. Therefore, he is promoting prestigious large-scale projects to portray himself as a man of action with clear visions for the future of the country.”
No doubt, access to water matters extremely to Pakistanis. Most depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. This sector also makes the greatest contribution to the country’s exports. Huge reservoirs and kilometre-long canals were built in the past. They are supposed to carry water from the Indus to the fields, provide for arid areas and even meet the needs of intensive agriculture, particularly in Punjab. After their construction, however, no consideration was given to granting all segments of the population fair access to water. Policy always favoured the influential strata of society – as well as the Punjab. Unsurprisingly, resource conservation was not paid any attention either.
The eco-system of the Indus delta in Sindh, the southern-most province, has suffered particularly. The diversion of river water is causing it irreparable harm. 30 kilometres upstream from the river’s mouth, saline water can be found. There is not enough water in the Indus to stop its intrusion. The Mangla and Tarbela dams are particularly important in this respect. Furthermore, the Indus also has too little sediment to keep the fragile eco-system intact. Sea waves are eroding delta land. The level of salt in the groundwater is increasing, reaching the stage where it can no longer be used for agriculture and cattle-breeding.
The World Bank’s role
Pakistan’s government has worked closely with the World Bank on its water-sector strategy. The World Bank negotiated the Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan, which laid the foundation for planning irrigated agriculture in Pakistan. The World Bank also contributed to funding dams and canals.
In July 2006, the Inspection Panel, an independent review body at the World Bank, finalised a report analysing Pakistan’s National Drainage Programme (NDP), a measure co-financed by the Bank. The report also assessed the impacts of other World Bank-supported water-sector projects on southern Pakistan. According to the Inspection Panel report, the NDP violated six of the Bank’s core social and environmental standards. Moreover, it said that breaching these standards meant wreaking environmental havoc in Sindh. The NDP and earlier projects, according to the Inspection Panel, have put the livelihoods of people there at risk and may force people to leave their land, making them to environmental refugees.
In late October, the Bank’s management responded. Its action plan, however, leaves a lot to be desired, neither providing any compensation for the people concerned, nor tackling Sindh’s environmental crisis in any way. Basically, all the action plan recommends is further research. At the same time, the Bank’s most recent country assistance strategy for Pakistan remained unchanged. According to this strategy, lending to Pakistan will rise by 200 % in the next three years, and funds for the water-sector are to increase ten-fold.
The World Bank’s new water-sector strategy for Pakistan has the same shortcomings as the old one. Making matters worse, key recommendations could even exacerbate poverty and inequity. Among other things, the new strategy is to introduce a system of water access rights, allowing water to be bought and sold like any other commodity. Unsurprisingly, it is not spelled out exactly how this is to be done, nor who it is that would benefit most. It is clear, however, that the necessary water resources would come from large dams on the Indus. The World Bank is promising several hundred million dollars for governmental infrastructure projects of this kind.
This approach is entirely misguided. The Bank is denying the victims of failed projects any compensation, but at the same time it is promising additional funds for the very policy that failed. Poverty reduction, social imbalances and environmental sustainability are still not on the agenda. Millions of dollars are allocated for more infrastructure of the same destructive kind in Punjab, whereas the policy’s victims are left to fend for themselves, not only in Sindh.
Many Pakistanis have lost faith in “better” World Bank projects. They are pinning their last hopes on closer civil-society interaction. In the Punjabi village, which would be flooded by the planned Kalabagh reservoir, the eight men at the local council want to take their fate into their own hands. They are consulting with the representative from an Islamabad-based NGO. “Our homes are in good condition and our fields produce enough to support us. We don’t want to give any of this up,” one of them says.
It is well known that Pakistan’s governments have never paid adequate attention to the rights of all affected people when building dams in the past. The process of relocation and compensation was always problem-plagued. The NGO representative therefore suggests meeting with people who were affected by the Tarbela dam and have launched a campaign for proper compensation. This is a first step in networking, exchanging experience among non-governmental groups.
Ann-Kathrin Schneider
works for the International Rivers Network, a non-governmental organisation based in California. akschneider@irn.org
References:
World Bank, November 2005:
Pakistan’s water economy: running dry
World Bank, February 2006:
Pakistan: country assistance evaluation
World Bank, April 2006:
Pakistan: country assistance strategy
World Bank, Inspection Panel, July 2006:
Investigation report: pakistan national drainage program project
World Bank, November 2006:
Management response: elaboration of the short term action plan
The last two sources can be accessed at
http://web.worldbank.org/
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