Skip to content
Site Tools
Narrow screen resolution Wide screen resolution Auto adjust screen size Increase font size Decrease font size Default font size default color blue color green color
July 2007 PDF Print E-mail
Resettlement News 16
July 2007

Urban Development and Redevelopment

Issues of Land Acquisition and Resettlement/Rehabilitation
 

The World Bank organized a workshop on land acquisition and resettlement/rehabilitation in urban development and redevelopment, during September 10-13, 2006 in Bangkok, Thailand. The Workshop was organized on request from the Government of Maharashtra who shared the leadership of the workshop with the World Bank.
 

The objective of the workshop was to progress towards a consensus between the Bank and government officials on how to address the issues of land acquisition and resettlement/rehabilitation in Indian cities by sharing global good practices. Not only would the resolution of these issues help Indian cities in preparing a strong and pragmatic policy framework to address complex urban development issues, but would also facilitate Bank participation in financing urban projects.
 

Participants included several government officials including Mrs. Vishwanathan, secretary of the ministry of rural development, and Mr. Suresh Sharma, Director (UPA) in the ministry of urban employment and poverty alleviation, as well as representatives from the states of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
 

No discussion of such an important issue could be complete without civil society participation. Hence, the Workshop was preceded by a one-day roundtable held in Delhi on September 4, 2006.About 40 representatives of civil society organizations (CSO) discussed issues of urban development and resettlement/rehabilitation. The main points raised during this CSO consultation were reported to the participants of the Bangkok workshop by Dr Parsuraman, director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. His presentation also summarised the findings of the consultations that TISS carried out in several large cities of India on the issue of urban resettlement.
 

The Workshop served to narrow down differences in perspectives between the key participants. In fact, it also helped in achieving consensus on one of the most vexing issues urban developers face when dealing with involuntary resettlement – that of restoring livelihoods for non-titleholders among displaced persons. The Workshop’s participants were agreed that displaced non-titled (encroachers or squatters) as well as title-holders should be helped to restore their livelihoods; whether this should be extended to the less vulnerable among the affected people remained a point of contention.
 

While the Bank’s resettlement and rehabilitation policy holds that all sections of Project Affected Persons, regardless of title and income-level, need to have their livelihoods protected, the implementation of this has run into official opposition from some Indian quarters.
 

A case study of experience of the Columbian capital, Bogota, showed that a meaningful middle ground can be found  -  there title holders received compensation for their property as well as livelihood assistance, while non-title holders received only livelihood assistance.
 

Other main points of consensus included:
 

·       Displacement of populations is a necessary fact of life given that the physical and spatial needs of Indian cities are growing.

·       However, resettlement should be minimized and land acquisition and displacement of population should be done, as much as possible, through negotiation, by giving impacted people reasonable choices and by using the market mechanisms.

·       Reforms aiming at removing regulatory constraints on land use and management will prove fluidity of the land market.

·       The sustainability of the resettlement process relies largely on the affected people gaining a sense of ownership over their new residence and neighbourhood; this could be gained through active involvement of the affected people at the planning stage and through pre-investment by beneficiaries. The experience of Bangkok city presented by a local semi-government organization was particularly effective in highlighting this.

·       A robust baseline and efficient data management are essential for a smooth implementation of the process.

·       Transparency, active consultations and delivery on commitments made publicly are essential.
 

Moving ahead from the Workshop, it has been agreed that the a Task Force will be set up to further flesh out the principles on which consensus has been agreed. It is understood that such an effort will be done within the framework of the relevant Bank policies and the relevant Indian constraints.   
 Sources: The World Bank in India, Vol 5/No 3 November 2006 (pp13-14)

SEZ Plan opens the Hornet’s Nest

Growing Opposition to Displacement in India
 In June 2005, the government of India promulgated the Special Economic Zone Act (SEZ). It aimed to catalyze investments, growth and job creation, and within a short time approved the setting up of 200 such zones across the country. The SEZs require large tracts of land, often fertile land, close to areas with well developed infrastructure, such as roads, ports, airports, and power stations. Fearing taking over of agricultural land and coastal areas for industrial use, farmers quickly rose in protest against this plan almost everywhere, especially in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, and West Bengal. NGOs and some politicians also rallied against it. The opposition on this scale caught the authorities by surprise. In the brutal police firing that followed to crush resistance, dozens of protestors lost their lives in some places. The killings of innocent men, women and even children in Kalinganagar (Orissa), Singur and Nandigram (West Bengal) have been widely condemned. Much opposition to SEZ plan has grown because India’s past resettlement record has been pathetic. Millions of people have been displaced to make way for dams, roads, power plants, and airports, but seldom resettled. The government has not kept even the count of people displaced due to its development plans. People have no trust in ‘development’. Government has promised a credible national resettlement policy that will be sensitive to the concerns of the farmers and their livelihoods. It is being eagerly awaited. Pakistan’s Irresponsible Dam Policy

No Justification for Dams
 

If the government gets its way, five large dams will be built in Pakistan in next ten years. The World Bank is supporting these plans, even though no attention is being paid to poverty alleviation or resource conservation. People afraid of being displaced by dams are now pinning their last hopes on civil-society networking.
 

            “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 meters high and 3.5 kilometers 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.
 

            Pakistan’s government has worked closely with the World Bank on its water-sector strategy. 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.
 

            Many Pakistanis have lost faith in ‘better’ World Bank projects. They are pinning their 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. “Our homes are in good condition and our fields produce enough to support us. We don’t want to give any one 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 y the Tarbela dam and have launched campaign for proper compensation. This is a first step in networking, exchanging experience among non-governmental groups.
 

Source:  Schneider, Ann- Kathrin. 2007 “No Justification for Dams”, Development and Cooperation D+C Volume 34 No 1 January 2007 (32-33)
 Capacity Building for Resettlement Management

Fourth Training Workshop, New Delhi, 11-15 June 2007
 

            In response to the growing need for skills to manage resettlement issues that arise in development work, the Council for Social Development (CS D), New Delhi has been involved in conducting training courses since last four years. These programmes are designed keeping in view the needs primarily of practitioners from middle to senior levels working with resettlement agencies in government, private industry, non-governmental organizations and also for those involved in training in management training institutes. Broadly, the objectives of these week-long workshops are to develop resettlement planning, implementation and monitoring skills. The course for this year 2008 held at the India International Centre, New Delhi, 11-15 June was the fourth in this series of training workshops on ‘Capacity Building for Resettlement Management’. The number of participants who attended this workshop was 18, including 6 participants from two World Bank-funded transport and urban development sector projects in Nigeria. The Council for Social Development (CS D), New Delhi, plans to organise more such workshops in 2008 and beyond. Those interested may contact, Director, Council for Social Development, 53 Lodi Estate, New Delhi 110003, India. E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
 The Forced Displacement Crisis

Recommendation of the Christian Aid on Improving Resettlement Outcomes
             The Christian Aid Report, May 2007, provides a global survey of forced displacements that arise from conflict, disasters, development, and climate change. It reports on tens of millions displaced, living in parlous conditions – their very futures threatened by the enormity of the problem. The impact of ‘development’ displacement figures prominently in this publication. Quoting Michael M Cernea, the Report states that in the final two decades of the last century, 15 million people a year were displaced and the number will rise still further in future. Christian Aid believes that the appalling plight of millions of people forced from their homes demands a stronger, braver response by the world community, and makes recommendations that should help move things in the right direction. The Report’s recommendations on ‘development’ displacement are reproduced below:  

Unlike displacement by conflict and disasters, that caused by large-scale development projects is predictable and preventable. People who are forced out of their homes by development projects normally find their lives are damaged for years afterwards, or even permanently. But it does not have to be like this.
 

            When displaced people are resettled, there is an opportunity to improve their lives, although this requires sufficient imagination, dedication and financial resources. Very few projects currently achieve this.
 

The governments, lenders and other companies that fund or profit from projects that displace people must ensure that people’s livelihoods are restored to at least as good a level as before displacement.
 

If displacement is to benefit those who are forced to move, then they must share in the benefits generated by the project that pushes them out, as well as being resettled and properly compensated for their losses. Some countries – including Brazil, China, Canada and Norway – are already following this approach in relation to people displaced by dams.
 

·       Christian Aid believes that the principle of sharing the financial returns from projects with those displaced by them is right. It should be applied by those running all major development projects that displace people.

·       All commercial and public organizations that fund or run such projects must adopt credible policies on how they will minimize displacement, and properly compensate and resettle people who are forced out of their homes. Such policies should be publicly available.

·       Policies achieve nothing by themselves. They must be implemented and their effectiveness must be independently audited at least every five years, with the findings made publicly available. This gives funding organizations an incentive to ensure that their policies are actually implemented.

·       An independent audit of the effectiveness of the development displacement guidelines adopted by OECD countries 15 years ago is long overdue. The UK and Irish governments should press for each OECD member country to organise its own independent audit and, in addition, for the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee to organise a central audit. The results of all audits must be publicly available.

·       Similarly, the World Bank has not had a thorough, independent audit of the impact of its policy on resettlement for ten years. For a lender that makes so much of its commitment to proper treatment of people and the environment, this is shameful. The bank should commission such audits every five years and make public the results.

·       Within the private sector, the Equator Principles on forced displacement are good, but should be more widely adopted. Companies that have signed up to them should have their adherences independently monitored and audited, and should make the results publicly available. While such voluntary codes are welcome, experience shows that legally binding rules are often needed to enforce proper regulation.       
 

Source: Burton, Angela (ed) 2007 Human Tide: The Real Migration Crisis London: Christian Aid
 Forthcoming Workshop

Involuntary Population Displacement and the Evolving Policy Response
8-12 October 2007, Melbourne, Australia
A Workshop on Involuntary Displacement and Resettlement will be held on Tuesday 9 October at 2.15 pm at the Metropolis Conference Venue, Sofitel at the forthcoming 12th International Metropolis Conference (8-12 October 2007 in Melbourne, Australia). Focusing on development-induced population displacement, this workshop brings together researchers, practitioners, and civil society to review recent policy developments at the United Nations, among multilateral and private sector financial institutions, and in the policy/legal frameworks of developing countries. Case studies highlight the importance of getting policies right for those people displaced.The workshop themes include:·       The continuing challenge of achieving good international standards
on  resettlement for both public and private sector projects·       Population movement, with concomitant economic and social impacts of
displacement·       Case studies on resettlement planning and impoverishment risk
management.Workshop Organizer: Susanna Price: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Forthcoming Publication

Cernea, Michael M and Hari Mohan Mathur (eds) 2007 Can Compensation Prevent Impoverishment? New Delhi: Oxford University Press
 This book convincingly argues for reforming in some fundamental ways the very foundations of development-induced forced displacement and resettlement. Highly critical of the current resettlement policies and practices that cause widespread impoverishment, leaving the affected people in a condition worse than before, it takes the firm position that simply placing piece-meal band-aids or rhetorical discourse alone would not overcome the problems. What is needed is a drastic change in the way the resettlement issue is addressed today. It calls for, and recommends, major improvements not only in international and national resettlement policies, but also in project level resettlement procedures.                    Because compensation is a basic issue in resettlement, the compensation principle is subjected to an exhaustive reexamination from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Compensation has too long been touted by policymakers as the only remedy to deal with the shattering consequences of displacement. Many social scientists too seem to have taken for granted this principle and its practice even in the face of countless resettlement failures. The long-held presumption that cash compensation is enough to re-establish the people affected by development projects is, however, questioned by the authors of this volume with incontrovertible evidence from the field.  The essays in this collection provide many examples of innovative experiences from several countries, both developed and developing, including Brazil, Columbia, China, Canada, and Norway where “resettlement with development”, supported by laws and policies, is practiced earnestly and provides benefits to project-affected people; it is not just another slogan. Both editors and the authors of this volume recognize that reforming the foundations upon which resettlement policy and practice have been built over the years is not an easy task, but contend that it can no longer be avoided. Unless those who are forced to give up their homes, lands and livelihoods for the sake of development also benefit from it, resettlement policy and practice would remain unjust and a source of much social unrest.  Authors/Contents: Michael M Cernea and Hari Mohan Mathur (Editor’s Preface and Overview) Introduction: Michael M Cernea (Reforming the Foundations of Involuntary Resettlement, Part One: Michael M Cernea (Compensation and Investment in Resettlement: Theory, Practice, Pitfalls and Needed Policy Reform), David W Pearce and Timothy Swanson (The Economic Evaluation of Projects Involving Forced Population Displacements), Herman E Daly (Forced Displacement Allocative Externality or Unjust Redistribution?), Ravi Kanbur (Development Economics and the Compensation Principle) Part Two: Susanna K Price (Compensation, Restoration, and Development Opportunities: National Standards on Involutary Resettlement), Walter Fernandes (India’s Forced Displacement Policy and Practice: Is Compensation up to its Functions?), Usha Ramanthan (Eminent Domain, Protest, and the Discourse on Rehabilitation) Part Three: Ruwani A Jayewardene (Can Displacement be Turned into Development by Compensation Alone?), Hari Mohan Mathur (Mining Coal, Undermining People: Compensation Policies and Practices of Coal India), Frances J Seymour (Conservation, Displacement and Compensation)Part Four: Dominique Egre, Vincent Roquet, Carine Durocher (Benefit Sharing to Supplement Compensation in Resource Extractive Activities), Mikiyasu Nakayama and Kumi Furuyashiki (From Expropriation to Land Renting: Japan’s Innovations in Compensating Resettlers), Barry P Trembath (Beyond Compensation: Sharing of Rents Arising from Hydropwer Projects), and Susan D Tamondong (Can Improved Resettlement Reduce Poverty).  New Publications

Hydro Nepal (Journal of Water, Energy and Environment) Vol 1  No 1, 2007  (Published by e-RG Nepal on 5 June 2007)
 

            Hydro Nepal is the first issue of the journal from Nepal, focused on issues of water resources development. It also includes some papers on related environmental and resettlement issues. There are some useful papers on resettlement as well. One such paper is by Michael M Cernea on his IRR model for population resettlement. Two other papers by Rajendra P Thanju and Kavita Rai on Kali Gandaki project are also noteworthy. Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

 

Adivasi (Development, Displacement & Rehabilitation) Vol 46 No 2 December 2006 Journal of the Scheduled Castes & Scheduled Tribes Research and Training Institute (SCSRRTI), Government of Orissa, Bhubaneswar
 

            The tribal people in Orissa are currently reeling under the impact of a new and massive wave of displacement, triggered by the globalization, liberalization and privatization processes. Large corporations both, multinational and domestic, with their large industrial and mining projects are arriving in droves, acquiring tribal lands and displacing them. The focus of this issue of Adivasi on these emerging development problems of Orissa is a welcome move. A B Ota, the editor of the journal, has been successful in bringing together papers by well known resettlement scholars, including Michael M Cernea, Hari Mohan Mathur, L K Mahapatra, Walter Fernandes, and Satish Kedia. This issue of Adivasi should be of interest not only to resettlement specialists, but the lay reader as well.
 

RESETTLEMENT News published twice a year in January and July reports on current operational, research and capacity building work in resettlement from around the world. The aim is to disseminate practical experience, information and ideas among those working for resettlement agencies, development research centres, and management training institutes. It is published by the Resettlement News Network- an informal network of individuals with a concern for the fate of people who are forced to relocate due to development projects.
 

            The submission of material relating to any aspect of development-induced resettlement is welcomed, and should be addressed to:

Hari Mohan Mathur

            Resettlement News Network

            C95 Jagan Path, Sardar Patel Marg

Jaipur 302001, India

            Tel/Fax: 91(141)2364982

            E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Website: www.displacement.net

Comments
Search
Only registered users can write comments!

3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."
 
< Prev   Next >
[ Back ]
Advertisement
INDR identifies key human rights issues in the IFC involuntary resettlement policy revision

On behalf of INDR, Theodore (Ted) Downing helped prepared an overview of human rights issues to be considered in the revision of the International Finance Corporation's Performance Standard on Involuntary Resettlement and Land Acquistion (PS5).  INDR joined with the International Accountabiity Project (Jennifer Kalafut) and the Housing and Land Rights Network (Shivani Chaudhry) to prepare a brief on key Issues for Upholding Housing Land and Property Rights in the International Finance Corporation’s Review of Environmental and Social Policy Standards (Jan 2010).  Their findings highlighted 1) minimizing displacement and ensuring that displaced persons are project beneficiaries, 2) inclusion of individuals and communities who lose their livelihoods because of polluted fisheries, diminished water supplies, air pollution and other project impacts who face the full gamut of potential human rights violations and risks associated with unmitigated displacement, 3) inclusion of full risk assessment and livelihood restoration measures,  4)  ensurance that there are specific requirements for providing information and training about rights and processes options (including IFC policies and accountability mechanisms) by a third party prior to negotiations to help balance the bargaining power, and 5) strengthening of free, prior and informed consent in compliance with other international standards.

 

Login & Registration

Members Online

No Users Online