Thematic Review II.2: Dams, Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Minorities

Dams, Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Minorities 25
than the observance. In the Philippines, for example, those resettled in the 1950s as a result of the
Ambuklao and Binga Dams on Agno River still have to be compensated for their losses. 120 Ethnic
Minorities and Indigenous Peoples may suffer disproportionately in this respect as they may lack
formal citizenship, residency or land tenure paperwork. According to the World Bank, one-fifth of the
10,800 people displaced by the Khao Laem Dam in Thailand were Karen. Because the Karen families
did not possess legal residence papers they were considered ineligible for resettlement land or house
plots, unlike ethnic Thai oustees. 121
Moreover, despite the passage of ILO Conventions 107 and 169 in 1957 and 1989, and the World
Bank’s Guidelines on Involuntary Resettlement and Tribal Peoples in 1982, inadequate compensation
for oustees from dam projects continues to be all too common. In many instances, oustees have been
resettled on inferior land and frequently many of those relocated are given no land at all, either
because there is not enough to go around or because only those who have legal documents to prove
ownership are compensated.
In the case of the Volta Dam, it had been intended that sufficient land be cleared to provide every
farmer with 12 acres. But by 1966, as the deadline of impoundment approached, only 6,000 hectares
had been cleared from a target of 22,000 hectares. By way of comparison, the flooded area included
52,000 hectares in productive use. 122
Those resettled as a result of the Hirakud Dam in India, many of them Gonds, only received land if
they were able to produce proof of ownership. As a result many were left out even though they had
been cultivating their land for generations. 123 Likewise, in Turkey, contrary to national law, the vast
majority of landless people displaced by the Ataturk Dam and other dams being developed as part of
the Greater Anatolia Project were in many cases not compensated or rehabilitated at all, but were
simply left to fend for themselves. 124
Where cash payments are made as compensation, indigenous peoples may face particular problems,
particularly where they are unaccustomed to money matters and where traditions exclude the concept
of land as a negotiable commodity. Disorientation by the dispossession of their lands, and often
unused to handling (comparatively) large sums of money, they may squander improvidently the
money given them in exchange for their lands. 125 At Hirakud, for example, the tribal oustees, “fell
prey to businessmen selling colourful tinkets and consumer items like transistors and watches, or lost
their money in gambling or on liquor.” 126 This, notes the Multiple Action Research Group, was also
the experience of the oustees of the Koyna project in the 1960s and more recently the Kutku dam
oustees. As Karve and Nimbkar commented nine years after the Koyna dam was built; “It was an
error to hand over thousands of rupees to people who had hardly handled cash at all. Now, a number
of years later, a large majority of the displaced are still without a roof over their head.” 127
Negligent resettlement planning and entirely inadequate compensation schemes characterised the
Chandil and Icha dams on the Subarnarekha river in India’s Bihar State, which ended up displacing
some 68,000 people and inundated 30,000 hectares of farmland and forest. The adivasis threatened by
the Chandil dam protested against the project from its inception in 1975 and, in 1978, some 10,000 of
them demonstrated against the dam at the construction site. Police harassment of a protest fast and
then police firings on unarmed protesters caused four deaths. The project continued nevertheless and
in 1982 the World Bank approved a US$127 million loan to the project. Despite the absence of a
resettlement plan, the Chandil dam’s sluices were closed in summer of 1988 posing an immediate
threat to some 10,000 indigenous people, while 30,000 others faced inundation over the coming 20
months as the reservoir began to fill. University researchers described scenes of mass misery, and one
World Bank official advised Bank headquarters that the situation required the emergency intervention
of the International Red Cross. Since then the situation has become even more critical. 128
Such experiences lay behind the ILO’s recommendation that compensation should be in the form of
land-for-land, a guideline also adopted by the World Bank in its Operation Directive 4.30.
Nonetheless, the recommendations have been routinely flouted in many dam projects, including many
of those since funded by the World Bank.
This is a draft working paper of the World Commission on Dams. It was prepared for the Commission as part of its information-gathering
activity. The views, conclusions, and recommendations are not intended to represent the views of the Commission.