Relocation and Resettlement in Ceará - Houston Advanced ...

10
FRC, PAGE 10
resources. Labour markets and patterns are disrupted and links between producers and
customers are often severed. Formal and informal economic associations formed over long
periods also tend to disappear with changes in public spaces, work patterns and the dispersal of
their members. Social problems arising from involuntary displacement include weakening of
community structures and social networks, dispersal of family groups, loss of cultural identity,
diminution of traditional authority and the potential for mutual help. Links with the communities’
cultural identity—such as shrines and graves—are broken. Health care is adversely affected.
Environmental impacts include inundation of flora and fauna, loss of habitat, and eco-system
degradation.
Economically and socially, involuntary displacement and resettlement have been criticised
because they have often created chronic impoverishment in project affected communities rather
than contributed positively to their development. Resettlement was too often viewed as a task to
remove people from the project site as quickly and as cheaply as possible. The view that
resettlement provides an opportunity for community development and strengthening was rarely
pursued.
Today, the World Bank and many responsive governments have established safeguards on
involuntary displacement to ensure that, at a minimum, resettlement achieves the restoration of
PAPs’ prior economic levels. The World Bank has stressed, in addition, that those displaced
should be enabled to share in the benefits made possible through the development program that
caused their eviction. As a result, resettlement management has become more demanding, with
mandated procedural safeguards and benchmarks.
The process has been facilitated by a vast amount of research conducted over the last two
decades by the World Bank and independent researchers in developing and developed countries.
Social scientists have identified the following seven broad categories of impacts of involuntary
displacement:
1) Landlessness
2) Joblessness
3) Homelessness
4) Morbidity
5) Food insecurity
6) Loss of access to common property
7) Social disarticulation
A Report Card on Resettlement in Ceará
The HARC team analysed the vulnerability of project affected persons (PAPs) in Ceará with
respect to each of these impacts. Findings are summarised below.