Damn dams or dam the water

By Feizal Samath

Protests should have direction

Local communities in South Asia, including Sri Lanka, often prefer smaller hydro and water resource schemes to large dams that uproot people and spawn a host of social and environmental problems, an international dam Commission has been told.

The World Commission on Dams (WCD), in its first regional public hearing held in Colombo, recently was also told of how politicians got kickbacks from projects in South Asia.

While anti-dam experts presented cases of ill-advised schemes, huge populations being displaced, commissions and bribery and a land-for-land policy, which sometimes became only a promise government officials and dam backers underscored the need to reduce dependence on food imports through more output which was possible only if people had water.

Proponents and opponents of some of the world's biggest dams, many located in South Asia, had a field day during a two-day session, accusing each other in a tit-for-tat battle which often called for intervention from WCD chairman Prof. Kader Asmal, who stressed that the commission was only an advisory body and not a judicial one.

The 12-member WCD, an independent group constituted earlier this year and based in South Africa, was hearing representations from the South Asian region. This is the first of a series of regional meetings, which eventually would result in the preparation of guidelines on how to minimise the impact of global dams on local communities.

Many of the opponents of dams across South Asia, articulated similar problems of displacement, promises of land not being fulfilled, inadequate compensation, water rights, corruption and political influence and environmental issues. The official response, in most cases, was that large dams were necessary and couldn't be replaced by small projects but they acknowledged that current strategies regarding displacement and the environment needed review.

The commission drew some controversy when it was not allowed to meet in India, the original destination for the South Asian hearing, in September. New Delhi cancelled the meeting citing a case pending in India's Supreme Court on the controversial dam project on the Narmada river as reason for backing out.

Commission chairman Prof. Asmal told reporters in Colombo that the decision of the Indian government was an unfortunate matter and also noted with regret the absence of Indian government officials at the hearing.

"The most important issue as far as the commission is concerned is that we come here with an open mind. We listen to everyone and we don't take sides," he said.

Another minor controversy emerged at the Colombo hearing. Both an Indian pro-dam expert and a local journalist raised the question as to whether the commission may be perceived as biased since the composition of its members was top-heavy with private sector or NGO experts, who could have come from the anti-dam lobby.

Asmal rejected this argument and said the remarks were unfair.

Highly critical of non-governmental agencies was Indian Dr. M.S. Reddy,vice-president of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID). "If there is a referendum, 'Creation of Storages' (large dams) will win hands down. But then the anti-dam activists will dub democracy as a sham," he said.

Reddy, rejecting many of the cases buttressed by opponents of dams, said that for NGOs, the vocal minority was always right. "Politicians are corrupt, engineers are corrupt, bureaucrats are corrupt and only NGOs are honest angels."

Labelling the "dam" lobby as myth, the Indian expert asked why dams were isolated in the corruption argument. "Is there no corruption in building roads, bridges, railway tracks, public buildings? Corruption in dam construction is no more or no less than in any work falling in the domain of public works or for that matter in any public speech."

Reddy said there was no denying the fact that the displacement of people is a sociological problem. But, he asserted, that if displacement is bad, "not creating storage to avoid displacement of tribal (communities) is worse."

Bangladesh official Anwar Khan from ICID's Bangladesh National Committee said his country strongly advocated the implementation of large dams, which was the only way millions of people would benefit in terms of power and irrigation needs.

He said there were valid arguments in favour of small dams or mini-hydro schemes, all of which reduced human displacement and environmental concerns but these were not alternatives to large dams and were "additional to rather than substitutes for dams."

On the first day of the meeting, India's Sripal Dharmadhikary, from the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) or Struggle to Save the Narmada River, spoke of political kickbacks and political backing that influenced much of the dam projects in India's western region. There are 30 major dams and 130 small ones, some of which are constructed, some in the process of being built and the others in the planning stage, he said.

"If dams are supposed to solve the problems of the people, then they have not done so," he said, adding that it took 18 years to complete the Bhalgi dam. "The moment a project is announced, the displacement process begins resulting in psychological trauma for people living in the shadow of displacement."

India's massive Sardar Sarovar dam project, a part of the giant 3 billion dollar Narmada Valley Project, was not among the cases that was presented from India. Dharmadhikary from the NBA said he was barred from speaking on this project, as it was sub-judice.

"It is easy to say, don't do this and don't do that. But what options do we have?" asked Sardar M. Tariq, managing director of the state-owned Water and Power Development Authority of Pakistan.

He said Pakistan's imported food bill was growing while irrigated land was shrinking. "We need to bring another 50 percent of unused land under irrigation if we are to raise local production, and the only way to do this is by building large dams."

India's George Verghese, senior researcher of the Centre for Policy Studies, a private think-tank, articulated similar views, saying large dams were an essential part of development.

"When the rain falls, we've got to catch it and send that water to areas where people don't have this resource. That is an established fact. If not for the major dams in India, we would still be dependent on imported food grain," Verghese, a former newspaper editor, asserted.

Non-governmental organisations from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka presented cases backed with empirical evidence on how large dams have been more detrimental than beneficial to local people but the most effective plea came from a shy, young Sri Lankan woman, leading a fight for better living conditions in her village.

Amarakoon Ralage Karunawathie, (30) is a displaced person. Ten years ago, her family and 47 other families were forced to leave their village of Kinchigune in southern Balangoda district to make way for a multi-purpose dam project, and were resettled on new lands, about 10 km away.

"Each family was given a maximum of a little over 0.5 hectare for the land they originally had. My father lost four hectares of good paddy and vegetable land as a result," she told The Sunday Times, on the sidelines of the meeting.

"Water ...water is our biggest problem. The authorities promised us water. But the wells provided by the government are filled with rainwater and not from natural springs," she said. Women and children had to trek about one km to nearby villages for water as the wells dried up at least for four months of the year, she said.

"We had plenty of water in our old village," Karunawathie, who heads a local women's group, told the meeting, in Sinhalese.

In addition to Karunawathi the Sri Lankan case study was presented by Lalith Mediwake, a geographer, who spoke of the Victoria dam - the country's biggest - both as a scientist and individual who was uprooted by the scheme. Environmental scientist Hemantha Withanage took up the proposed upper Kotmale dam, which he said would destroy three waterfalls and endanger several villages.

Withanage, representing Sri Lanka's Environmental Foundation Ltd (EFL), said the project had been suspended after his organisation went to court over the issue.

Mahaweli Development and and Ministry Secretary Tilak Ranaviraja and his officials, and D.C. Wijeratne, AGM of the CEB presented the government case on behalf of Sri Lanka.

The pros and cons of the proposed Kalabagh dam in Pakistan, stalled due to local protests, were discussed by Pakistan presenters including Tariq who said the government will not go ahead with the plan until there was a public consensus on the project.

Kalabagh is slated to be as big as Pakistan's Tarbela dam, the world's largest rock-filled dam site. Aly Ercelawn, a former university economist and member of an advocacy group in Pakistan called the Creed Alliance,complained there was a lot of wastage of water while new dams were being built.

He said there was no informal consultations with affected communities when projects were conceived. "The people who are affected are the last to be told."

Speakers from India and Nepal also stressed the need to stick to small projects instead of large ones, as their impact was much less on the community. "The establishment of 2,500 small water structures in India's Rajasthan state, is a case in point," argued H. Thakkur, researcher at India's Centre for Water Policy.

Before these small schemes were set up, the mostly poor people from this region migrated to big cities like New Delhi in search of jobs and a better quality of life. However after these projects came on stream, development activity took off and migration stopped.

"A grey (poor) zone become a white (rich) zone. The villages are even exporting their products today," Thakkur said.

Nepal's Bikash Pandey, director of REPSO (Renewable Energy Program Support Office) also reiterated the "small is beautiful" concept, urging his country's planners to concentrate on small projects, which met local power and irrigation needs, rather than big ones.

Though Nepal has only small hydro power and irrigation schemes, Pandey said the government had been unable to undertake the resettlement process properly in the schemes completed.

Some of the points stressed by him were that large, foreign-funded projects were too costly; had too many aid-related conditions attached by funding agencies like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank while smaller projects reduced the dependence on foreign aid.

The case of the region's first environmental refugees was brought to the fore by Saleem Samad, coordinator of Bangladesh's Like-Minded Environmental Activists' Group, when he spoke of how 60,000 tribal people were forced to migrate to India and Burma, after being removed by a multi-purpose project in Bangladesh in the early 1960s.

Samad said the Kaptai Dam inundated 253 square miles, including 10 square miles of forest reserves, submerged 22,500 hectares of ploughed land and displaced approximately 100,000 tribals under the biggest-ever human-made reservoir.

He said it displaced one sixth of the indigenous population in the Chittangong Hill Tracts and thousands of hill residents migrated to sparsely populated regions of Mizoram, Tripura, Assam and Arunachal. There have become stateless people without citizenship rights in the foreign countries they live in.

The other members of the commission are Lakshmi Chand Jain, a development scientist from India, Don Blackmore from Australia's Murray-Darling Basin Commission, Joji Carino of the Philippines-based International Alliance of Indigenous Tribal Peoples, Deborah Moore from U.S. Environmental Defence Fund, activist Medha Patkar, leading a campaign against a dam project in western India, Shen Gouyi from China's Ministry of Water Resources, Prof. Thayer Scudder from the California Institute of Technology, Judy Henderson from Oxfam International, Australia, Jan Veltrop, president of the International Commission on Large Dams and Achim Steiner, WCD secretary-general.

Two members, Goran Lindahl of Sweden's ABB Asea Brown Boveri, one of the world's biggest builders of dams, and Brazil's Prof. Jose Goldemberg did not attend the Colombo meeting.

Protests should have direction

Medha Patkar was desperate for a cup of tea. She was tired out from the three days of sittings on the Dam Commission. "And reading reports until dawn," said this unpretentious Indian lady with a wan smile.

The Dam Commision is a wonderful thing, Medha opined. "It is completely unbiased and gives a fair hearing to both sides of the story- the affected people and the bureaucrats and funding agencies."

Daughter of a freedom fighter and trade unionist, Medha became famous after she led protests against the Narmada River damming project. Her organisation was responsible for the stoppage of four major dams. Another decision is pending in court.

Having listened to representations from both sides on the Mahaweli dams issue, Medha comments about the similarity in the problems faced by people in both countries. "People learn as they go along, even government officials. But the tragedy is in losing so much of the indigenous wealth and traditional knowledge when the old system is disrupted," she said, emphasising she is now voicing her personal opinion and not as a Commissioner.

She said any protest campaign, if they are to be successful should look at fair alternatives and constructive suggestions. Without such alternatives being offered, protests become directionless.

She said that one should not become categorised as anti-development. "All big projects have widespread implications. When a dam is built the displaced community has to be treated well and rehabilitated." (TD)

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