Large Dams

Water Resources Development and Management

Thayer Scudder

Large Dams Long Term Impacts on Riverine Communities and Free Flowing Rivers

Water Resources Development and Management Series editors Asit K. Biswas, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore Cecilia Tortajada, Institute of Water Policy, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore Editorial Board Dogan Altinbilek, Ankara, Turkey Francisco González-Gómez, Granada, Spain Chennat Gopalakrishnan, Honolulu, USA James Horne, Canberra, Australia David J. Molden, Kathmandu, Nepal Olli Varis, Helsinki, Finland Hao Wang, Beijing, China

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/7009

Thayer Scudder

Large Dams Long Term Impacts on Riverine Communities and Free Flowing Rivers

123

Thayer Scudder Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA, USA

ISSN 1614-810X ISSN 2198-316X (electronic) Water Resources Development and Management ISBN 978-981-13-2549-6 ISBN 978-981-13-2550-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2550-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954042 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

This book is dedicated to Eliza Scudder and our daughters Lydee (1952–2018) and Alice

Foreword

Over the past three decades, mention of large dams often brings very different reactions from water and environment professionals. Water professionals generally consider dams as necessary structures, which are essential to ensure water, food and energy securities of the world. Environmentalists, in turn, consider them to be unnecessary and mostly cause more harms to the society than benefits. The debate between both sides is still continuing, and there are no indications that it will be settled definitively one way or another any time soon. My own interest in dams started during the early 1960s when I started teaching at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. However, my initial interest was not whether large dams are good or bad for the society but rather what have been the human dimensions of failures of a few large dams in the past. My focus on dams radically changed when I became the Senior Scientific Advisor to the Executive Director of the newly established United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi. In 1975, its Executive Director, a brilliant Egyptian botanist from Egypt, asked me to assess the economic, social and environmental impacts of the Aswan High Dam objectively. At that time, Aswan High Dam was cause célèbre globally. It was unanimously considered in the West to be a very bad dam whose costs far exceeded the benefits. The Egyptians generally considered it to be an essential structure needed to assure its economic development. During the 1970s, it was not easy to conduct an assessment of the impacts of the Dam. Because of the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, the Dam was considered to be a possible military target and was heavily guarded. Even the Egyptians were not allowed to visit the dam site, let alone foreigners. Dr. Tolba managed to get a special authorization for my visits. I was also able to visit the new areas where water was being used for irrigation, impacts of hydropower that was generated by the Dam which then accounted for nearly half of Egypt’s electricity consumption, and the Nubian resettlements. Based on my work, I reported to Dr. Tolba that if the Aswan High Dam was not built, Egypt’s future economic and social situations would have been dire. My conclusion was that the real question was not whether the dam should have been built or not, since Egypt really did not have a choice, but, vii

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rather, when the structure was planned and constructed during the 1960s, was there anything Egyptians could have done to further increase its benefits and minimize its social and environment costs? Until Dr. Tolba retired in 1992 as the Executive Director, UNEP’s view on the Dam remained the same. My view has not changed either. After the assessment of the Aswan High Dam, the question I wrestled with was why the Western scientists and the media viewed the Aswan High Dam was a very bad structure which many suggested should not have been built when in fact according to our assessment it was one of the best dams of the world in terms of total benefits to the nation? During the early 1980s, Dr. Tolba asked me to chair the International Advisory Board of UNEP’s Water Programme. One of the members of this Board was a remarkable scientist, Prof. Gilbert White, who had also done considerable work on dams. During one of our discussions in Athens, Greece, I asked Gilbert if he can suggest an authoritative and objective scientist who can separate the wheat from the chaff in the area of dam-related involuntary resettlements. Gilbert said immediately that without any doubt the real world authority in this area was Prof. Ted Scudder of California Institute of Technology. I had of course read many of Ted’s works earlier. However, after Gilbert’s strong recommendation, I very specifically read nearly all of Ted’s available work. I first met Ted when I was in Oxford, and he came to participate in a workshop on involuntary resettlement due to large development projects. Our paths have crossed numerous times since then. Ted has been kind enough to contribute several chapters to many of my books. Over the years, my respect for Ted has steadily grown, both as a human being and as an independent and objective scholar on dams and resettlement. When I was growing up, my parents warned me that if two persons agreed on everything, I can be assured that only one of them was doing the thinking. Thus, not surprisingly, Ted’s and my views on large dams coincide nearly 75% of the time. I am somewhat more pro-dam, especially when dams are properly planned, constructed and policies are followed, compared to Ted. Part of the explanation may lie in the fact that dams I have analysed are often not the same as Ted’s. Thus, both of us could be right since the dams on which our respective judgements are based are not the same. Probably even more important could be other factors which Ted and I have identified independently. The first factor could be because lack of reliable and comprehensive social, economic and environmental data of the region during pre-dam construction periods. Consequently, it is difficult to compare ex-post analyses of their long-term social, economic and environmental impacts with unreliable information of pre-dam conditions. In addition, without reliable data, it is extremely difficult to answer impartially fundamental questions related to resettlement like how many people had to be resettled due to reservoir inundation, whether all of them were resettled properly, or actually received the full compensation packages they were promised legally entitled to.

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Objective and comprehensive ex-post studies on the economic, social and environmental impacts of large dams, say 10–15 years after their construction, are mostly missing at present. In fact, a number of such reliable studies available from any part of the world can be counted in the fingers of one’s hands and still have a few fingers left over! It is indeed strange that all large dams that have been constructed anywhere in the world, during the past 3–4 decades, had environmental impact analyses (EIAs) carried out before their constructions were authorized. However, such EIAs are only forecasts of future likely developments. Predictions of impacts, including their types, magnitudes and spatial and temporal distributions, are often an art and not science. A good EIA study can at best identify around 70% of potential future impacts. Anecdotal evidence indicates that some 30–50% of the negative and positive impacts are often not accurately predicted. Some are completely missed. The only way to assess the impacts is to study what they are after 5–15 years of operation of any dam. Without good ex-post analyses, it has not been possible to improve the validity of techniques used for conducting EIAs. Accordingly, biases and errors in conducting EIAs have continued to haunt the process. In my view, until serious, objective and comprehensive studies are conducted on the positive and negative impacts of a critical mass of large dams from different parts of the world, and these are compared with reasonably reliable socio-economic, environmental and technical information of pre-project conditions, the debates on the effectiveness of large dams are unlikely to be resolved in one way or another. At present, the best one can do is to read carefully the life-long work of objective, contentious and unbiased scientists, both from natural and social sciences, and then try to make a judgement on the contributions of dams to overall social and economic development and quality of life of people in the dam-affected region. Regrettably, in this area, the number of such objective people from anywhere in the world is severely limited. After some five and half decades of my work in water-related areas, my view is there are only two people in the world whose work on dam-related issues I take seriously: late Gilbert White and Ted Scudder. One may or may not agree with all of their findings, but they are the best unbiased studies that are available at present. The present book is part autobiographical and part technical. It is very readable, and gives a good historical perspective on evolution of thinking on large dams, especially in terms of dam-induced involuntary resettlement. In my view, it should be in the “must reading” list of any person interested in the impacts of large dams. I most sincerely hope this book will reach the audience it richly deserves. Singapore, Singapore

Asit K. Biswas Distinguished Visiting Professor Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy National University of Singapore

Acknowledgements

It was Elizabeth Colson who invited me to join her in 1956 in my initial research on the impact of large dams “on Riverine Communities and Free Flowing Rivers.” During our Gwembe Tonga Research Project, she was my mentor as a socio-cultural anthropologist and my major professional colleague until her death in 2016. The breadth of our research among the Gwembe Tonga also required me to expand my interests to include the environmental impacts of large dams—in this case, the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi. Gilbert F. White was my other major mentor who encouraged my research and introduced me to international agencies through which I could apply my knowledge. John Gay has been a most valued colleague who has contributed in major ways to my career, and with whom I have shared knowledge in articles, conversations and reports. David McDowell is another most valued colleague as are David Brokensha and Michael M. Horowitz without whom there would have been no Institute for Development Anthropology. Also critical for IDA’s development were Sylvia Horowitz, Muneera Salem-Murdock, Peter Little, Michael Painter, and Vera Beers. Many thanks also to A. Peter Castro who helped draft the section on Social Forestry with David Brokensha. Special thanks go to Sabrina C. Hameister who, as my current Administrative Assistant, kept copies of this manuscript on her computer, helped me with my computer, and stood by me during the many years that it took to write this book. Valuable colleagues who subsequently joined us in the Gwembe Tonga Research Project include Lisa Cliggett, Samuel Clark, Rhonda Gillett-Netting, Jonathan Habarad, Allison Hannish, Joshua Matanzima and Emma Sitambuli. Especial thanks go to Jailos Mazambani who has been my Senior Research Assistant and my Assistants Adam Chinga, Adam Senete, Benard Siakanomba, Kenneth Kaunda, and Emmy Munsanje. Other Zambian and Zimbabwean colleagues to be acknowledged are Michael Acreman, Malcolm Blackie, Geofrey Bond, Henry Fosbrooke, Alois Hungwe, Ginny and Leo Goodfellow, Stuart Marks, C. D. Nicholson, Norman and Pamela Reynolds, Thea and Tom Savery and Bennett and Mwindaache Siamwiza.

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Most Valued at Exeter Academy was Robert Hicks Bates. Valued teachers at Harvard University were Cora Dubois, Derwent Lockard, Paul Manglesdorf, Douglas Oliver, and James L. Peters, at Boston University, Philip Gulliver, at Yale, Karl Pelzer and Harold R. Rudin and at the London School of Economics, Isaac Schapera and Raymond Firth. Without the help of the Danforth Foundation’s Kenneth I. Brown, I wonder if I would have been able to finance my education. Most valued classmates at Exeter were Fred Dunn, Neal Hastie, William Lindamood, Peter Lord; at Harvard, George Appell, Jonathan Jenness and Charles LaMuniere with whom I shared careers; mountaineers Thomas Nevison and Severo Ornstein and archaeologist Donald Lathrap. Throughout my career, I have made a special attempt to broaden my knowledge by working closely with a wide variety of colleagues in the humanities, social and natural sciences, and in the health sciences and engineering. One reason why I came to Caltech as an Assistant Professor in 1964 was that I would be the only anthropologist on the faculty; a situation that continued until I became Professor Emeritus in 2000. One result of this approach makes it very difficult to do justice to the many colleagues whose assistance, companionship and expertise I value. Under assistance, I wish especially to thank Victoria Mason who was my previous Administrative Assistant at Caltech. Among Caltech’s faculty, I especially valued astronomer Marshal Cohen, biologist James Bonner, economists Lance Davis, Roger Noll and Robert Sherman, environmental engineers James Morgan and Norman Brooks, geochemist Harrison Brown, geographer Ned Munger, historians Peter Fay and Robert Huttenback, and Political Scientists Robert Hinrichs Bates and Tom Palfrey. Former student Kirwan Magiawala has shared his interest in world development with me as has Andrew Odlyzko. At USAID, Alice Morton was responsible for the funding of my first major research project, while Sarah Jane Littlefield, as AID Director in Sri Lanka and Senegal, supported IDA projects in those countries. During consultancies for the World Bank, I especially valued friendships and working relationships with Michael Cernea and Robert Goodland as well as with Dan Aronson, Carlos Escudero, Donal O’ Leary, and John Roome. Even closer relationships were formed with fellow members of the World Bank’s independent International Panels of Environment and Social Experts. On Laos’ Nam Theun Panel, David McDowell, Lee Talbot and Tim Whitmore were especially valued colleagues, as were Robert Hitchcock and John Ledger on the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. In the field, Hussein Fahim, Robert Fernea, and Abdel Hamid el Zein were valued colleagues in Egypt; Kapila Wimaladarma and Gamini Dissanayake in Sri Lanka; L. K. Mahapatra and Anil Patel in India; Martin ter Woort in China; and E. A. K. Kalitsi, Dolores Koenig and Della E. Millan in West Africa; Patrick Dugan, India Musokotwane, Ronald E. Manley, Ronald W. Coley, Robert K. Davis, James Green, Geoffrey W. Howard, Steven W. Lawrey, David Martz, Peter P. Rogers, A. R. Douglas Taylor, Stephen D. Turner, Edwin P. Wright, D. and R.-M. Rychner, P. Hancock, E. Naane and Pete Smith in Botswana.

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My colleagues on the World Commission on Dams were Kader Asmal, Lakshmi C. Jain, Judy Henderson, Goran Lindahl, Joji Carino, Donald Blackmore, Medha Patkar, Jose Goldemberg, Debra Moore, Jan Veltrop, and Achim Steiner (Jeremy Bird was a co-worker and Jacques Leslie traveled with me in Lesotho and Botswana prior to writing his book on the Commission); and William Robichaud in Laos. Then, there are other anthropologists whose friendship and knowledge I have valued. Most recent is Jean Ensminger who replaced me at Caltech when I became Professor Emeritus. Others are Gordon Appleby, Mike Burton, Chris de Wet, Theodore Downing, Carmen Garcia—Downing, Barbara Rose Johnston, Veronique Lassailly-Jacob, Robert Netting, Anthony Oliver-Smith, and Doug White. Most recently, Bent Flyvbjerg and Burt Singer have become invaluable colleagues. I am especially grateful to Asit K. Biswas and Cecilia Tortajada for encouraging and publishing my research, including this volume in which Asit Biswas has written the Foreword. Thanks also to Loyola D’Silva and Prasanna Kumar Narayanasamy, Sujitha Shree and team members in Springer-Nature for their support.

Contents

1 Introduction of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 My Choosing a Career to Study Dams Was Not Planned . . . . 1.3 Since 1962, Large Dams Have Been My Laboratory for the Comparative, Longitudinal Analysis of Dam Impacts on River Basins Including Project Affected People . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Throughout the 1962–1973 Period I Remained Convinced that Large Dams Could Provide an Exceptional Opportunity for Implementing Integrated River Basin Development . . . . . . 1.4.1 Initial Consultancies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 1975–1997: Increasing Doubts about Large Dams but Still Hopeful . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5.1 The Accelerated Mahaweli and Sardar Sarovar Projects (1979–1989) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5.2 China’s Three Gorges Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5.3 The Process Whereby China and Laos Are Opening the Mekong River for Large Scale International Shipping to the Vietnam Delta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 The Period 1998–2000: A Considerable Broadening of My Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7 Between 2001 and 2010 I Concentrated on Writing about the Theoretical and Policy Relevance of My Consulting and Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8 2011–2018 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.9 Further Environmental Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.9.2 Aswan High Dam and the Nile Delta . . . . . . . . . . . 1.10 Economic and Financial Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.11 How Best Attempt to Reduce the Number of Large Dams in the Future and the Adverse Environmental, Economic and Sociocultural Impacts of Those that Are Built? . . . . . . . .

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Benefit Sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Options Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Inadequate Awareness and Assessment of Dam Impacts on Free Flowing Rivers and River Basin Ecosystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.11.5 Lack of Attention Paid to Impact of Climate Change on Dam Planning and Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.11.6 Discount Rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.11.7 Project Authorities Handing Over Development Responsibilities and Financial Authority to Local Governments and Project Affected People . . . . . . . . 1.11.8 Inadequate Project Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.11.9 Need for Required Ex Post Audits . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.12 My Future Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1956–1973: I Believe Large Dams Provide an Exceptional Opportunity for Integrated River Basin Development . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Elizabeth Colson, The Kariba Dam on the Zambezi and Involuntary Resettlement of the Gwembe Tonga . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Anthropological and Human Ecological Research in the Central African Federation: September 1956–August 1957 . . . . . . . . . 2.3 October 1957–June 1960: Back at Harvard’s Department of Anthropology to Complete My Ph.D. Dissertation . . . . . . . 2.4 Initial Commitment to Long Term Studies of Dam Resettlement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Financing, Planning and Implementing Longitudinal Academic Research on the Resettlement Process . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 June 1960–August 1961: Postdoctoral Fellowship in African Ecology at the London School of Economics (LSE) . . . . . . . . 2.7 The Aswan High Dam and Further Field Work in Central Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7.1 Family Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7.2 The Aswan High Dam and the Egyptian Nubian Ethnographic Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 1962–63 Gwembe Tonga Restudy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8.1 Family Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8.2 A Brief Introduction to the 1962–63 Gwembe Tonga Restudy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.9 September 1963: Back to Harvard as a Research Fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.10 1964–1968: The First Five Caltech Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.11 Why My Interest in the 1960s and the First Half of the 1970s in Large Dams’ Potential to Catalyze a Process of Integrated Regional Development? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2.12 1962–1973: My Initial Involvement in Global Development Issues and Policies Dealing with Large Dams . . . . . . . . . . . 2.13 Large Dams Seen as a Major Development Opportunity . . . 2.14 Zambia: Gwembe Tonga Resettlement and Development . . 2.14.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.14.2 The Lake Kariba Gillnet Fishery . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.14.3 Zambia: Kafue River Fisheries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.15 Nigeria: The Kainji Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.15.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.15.2 Designing the Kainji Lake Research Project . . . . . 2.15.3 Pre-inundation: The Sociology and Economics of Resettlement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.15.4 Public Health and Disease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.15.5 Wildlife Conservation and Tourism . . . . . . . . . . . 2.15.6 Kainji Lake Basin: 1968–1991 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.15.7 The Kainji Lake Basin: 1992–2014 . . . . . . . . . . . 2.16 The Ivory Coast: Kossou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.16.1 1969 Visit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.16.2 1970 Visit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.16.3 1973 Visit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.16.4 1974–1979 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.16.5 1980–2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 The International Research Activities of the Institute for Development Anthropology and Increasing Concerns About the Socio-Economic and Environmental Costs of Large Dams for Free Flowing Rivers and Riverine Communities: 1976–1995 . 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 The Global and US Context in Which IDA Arose . . . . . . . . . 3.3 The Critical Role of the United States Agency for International Development (AID) in the Rise and Fall of IDA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 The Political Economy of the Agency for International Development (AID) Under Democratic and Republican Administrations and Presidents . . . . 3.4 1976–1979: Establishing IDA as a Non-government Organization (NGO) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 IDA’s Project on the Development Potential of New Lands Settlement in the Tropics and Subtropics: May 1979–October 1981 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Settler Behavior and the Multi-stage Settlement Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5.3 The Importance of Size and the Incorporation of Old and New Towns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Post 1980s Impacts on Land Settlements Studied During the 1982 Land Settlement Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6.2 The Gwembe Tonga Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6.3 The Northern Parana Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The IDA April–May 1982 Binghamton Workshop on the 1981 New Lands Settlement Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . IDA’s Initial Land Settlement Experiences with the World Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . USAID and Sri Lanka’s Accelerated Mahaweli Project (1979–1989) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.9.2 Project Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.9.3 Mahaweli Project Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The World Bank and India’s Sardar Sarovar Project . . . . . . . . Numbers of People Affected at the Dam Site and in the Reservoir Basin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . My Experiences with Indian SSP Officials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Negative Reactions to the SSP Resettlement Process 1982–2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mahaweli and Sardar Sarovar: Further Thoughts on Two Mega Dam—Inspired Regional Development Projects . . . . . . AID’s SARSA and Indefinite Quantity Contracts . . . . . . . . . . 3.15.1 SARSA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.15.2 IDA’s Studies in Bolivia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.15.3 IDA’s Long-Term Studies in Central Tunisia . . . . . . 3.15.4 Aftermath of IDA Water User Association Research in Central Tunisia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.15.5 Conclusions of AID Evaluations of SARSA I and II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.15.6 Indefinite Quantity Contracts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . River Basins: Impacts of Dams on Free Flowing Rivers and Project Affected People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.16.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.16.2 My May 1977 World Bank Seminar on Involuntary Resettlement in Connection with Bank-Assisted Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Environmental Flows and My 1978 Lecture on “River Basin Development and Local Initiative in African Savanna Environments” at the August Wenner-Gren Conference on Human Ecology in Savanna Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.16.4 IDA’s Comparative Analysis of the Role of Institutions in African River Basin Development . . . 3.16.5 Improved Water Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.16.6 IDA’s Research on the Left Bank of the Senegal River Basin’s Middle Valley (1987–1992) . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.16.7 The Organisation pour le Mise en Valeur du fleuve Senegal (OMVS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.16.8 Middle River Policies in Senegal (1970s–2008) . . . . 3.16.9 The GEF 2004–2008 Regional Project: Senegal River Basin Water and Environmental Management . . . . . 3.16.10 Middle Valley Production Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.17 IDA’s Senegal River Basin Monitoring Activity I and II and the Senegal Government and OMVS’ Record with Left Bank Flood Recession Agriculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.17.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.17.2 The IDA Research Team and Research Results . . . . 3.17.3 The Flood Release Record from the Manantali Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.17.4 Postscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.18 The West African Onchocerciasis Control Programme . . . . . . 3.18.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.18.2 The Onchocerciasis Control Programme . . . . . . . . . 3.18.3 IDA Involvement in the OCP Programme . . . . . . . . 3.18.4 The IDA Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.18.5 Policy Issues Relating to the IDA Reports . . . . . . . . 3.18.6 Guiding Principles for Sustainable Settlement and Development in the Onchocerciasis Control Programme Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.18.7 Excerpts from Follow-on FAO Publications . . . . . . . 3.18.8 Lessons Learned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.19 Botswana’s Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.19.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.19.2 The Okavango Delta and Hinterland . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.19.3 Early Okavango Water Utilization Interventions and Plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.19.4 The Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.16.3

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3.20 The IUCN SOIWDP Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.21 The IUCN Alternative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.21.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.21.2 Development Strategies for the Village Sector and Maun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.21.3 Meeting Maun’s and Orapa Water Demand . . . . . . . 3.21.4 More Recent Events: 1993–2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.22 The Government of Botswana and the Okavango Region: From the SOIWDP to World Heritage Status for the Okavango Delta in 2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.23 Community Forestry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.23.1 Beginnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.23.2 Fuelwood Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.23.3 Beyond Fuelwood: Trees Within Farming and Natural Resource Management Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.23.4 Forestry and Food Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.23.5 In Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.24 IDA Publications and Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.24.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.24.2 The Working Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.24.3 The IDA Bulletin (Also Known as Development Anthropology Network or as DAN) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.24.4 Monographs in Development Anthropology (Under the General Editorship of David W. Brokensha, Michael M. Horowitz and Thayer Scudder) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.25 Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.26 1995: The End of IDA as Initially Planned by the Directors . . 3.26.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.26.2 The Directors and Staff Assessment of the Situation 1993–95 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.26.3 Inadequate Support from Foundations . . . . . . . . . . . 3.26.4 Shifting AID Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.26.5 Junior Staff Reductions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.26.6 Senior Staff Associates and Program Directors Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.26.7 The Directors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

4 My Increasing Disillusionment with the Planning, Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation of Large Dams, Especially as Illustrated by The World Bank—The Largest and Most Influential Financier of Large Dams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Kariba Dam and The World Bank in the 1950s . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 The Summer of 1964 in East Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 World Bank Procedures in the Field for Such Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.3 Evaluation and Utility of the Research . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 May 1977 Lecture on Involuntary Resettlement in Connection with Bank-Assisted Large Dam Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 The World Bank’s Initial 1980 Safe Guard Policy on Involuntary Resettlement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 World Bank Involvement in the Sardar Sarovar Component of India’s Narmada River Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.1 1961–1989 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6.2 1990–March 1993 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 The World Bank’s Gwembe Tonga Development Program . . . 4.8 Incorporating the Gwembe Tonga Rehabilitation and Development Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.9 World Bank International Panels of Environmental and Social Experts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.9.2 The Panel of Experts During Phases 1A (Katse Dam Construction) and 1B (Mohale Dam Construction) of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) . . . 4.10 The World Commission on Dams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.10.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.10.2 Reactions to the Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.11 With Special Emphasis on Involuntary Resettlement, the Origins, Initial Inadequacies and Subsequent Weakening of World Bank Environmental and Social Safeguard Policies for Replacement by Still Weaker Environmental and Social Framework Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.11.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.11.2 Social Issues Associated with Involuntary Resettlement in Bank-Financed Projects (OP 4.12—Involuntary Resettlement December, 2001. Revised April 2013) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xxi

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217 217 218 218 218

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Contents

4.11.3 4.11.4

Decreasing World Bank Emphasis on Environmental and Social Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 The World Bank’s April 2017 Environmental and Social Frameworks to Replace the Environmental and Social Safeguard Policies During 2018 . . . . . . . . . 246

5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 The First Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 The Second Experience . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 The Third Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 The Fourth Experience . . . . . . . . . . . Annex I: The Good Megadam: Does It Exist Considered? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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249 249 249 250 250 251

All Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

6 Postscript: In Search of a Career and Myself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Childhood and Adolescence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 A Short Career as an Ornithologist: From Camp Kabeyun to the Northern Selkirks of British Columbia . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 A Brief Career as a Mountaineer and Arctic Specialist . . . . . . 6.4.1 1939–1946: Initial Experiences with New England Mountains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.2 1947–1948: Mount Ktaadin in Winter and the Grand Teton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 1948–1955: Climbing Within the Harvard Mountaineering Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6 1952–1955: Preparing for a Career with the Arctic Institute of North America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7 Hitchhiking and a Gradual Shift Toward the Social Sciences . . 6.7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7.2 New England to the Mississippi and Back . . . . . . . . 6.7.3 Summer of 1948: New England to the West Coast and Back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7.4 Destination Cuba with Fred Dunn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7.5 Summer of 1949: Back to the West Coast and the End of Hitchhiking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.8 Eliza and Marriage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.9 Tertiary Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.9.1 The Yale Divinity School and Classes in the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: 1953–1954 . . 6.9.2 Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: September 1954–June 1956 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . 255 . . 255 . . 256 . . 258 . . 261 . . 261 . . 261 . . 263 . . . .

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. . 267 . . 268 . . 270 . . 271 . . 272 . . 272 . . 273

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275

Acronyms

A.D. AAA ABB AID AIDS AMP AUC AVB BAISIS BDPA CEO CGIAR CIMA CNPCS CO CPE CSA CTDA CTFT DAC DAN DBSA DC DG DWA EIR EPA ESF

In the Year of the Lord American Anthropology Association ASEA Brown Boveri Engineering Company Agency for International Development Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome Accelerated Mahaweli Project American University at Cairo Bandama River Valley Broadening Access and Strengthening Input Markets Bureau of Agricultural Research Chief Executive Officer Consultative Group for Agricultural Research CIMA International Senegal Government’s National Planning, Coordinating and Development—Promoting Committee for the Senegal River Valley Colorado OMVS’s Permanent Commission for Water Onchocerciasis Control Program’s Committee of Sponsoring Agencies Central Tunisia Development Authority French Technical Center for Tropical Forestry OECD’s Development Assistance Committee Development Anthropology Network Development Bank of Southern Africa District of Columbia Director General Botswana’s Department of Water Affairs World Bank Extractive Industries Review US Environmental Protection Agency World Bank Environmental and Social Framework

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xxiv

ESSP ESU FAO FAX FEDX FELDA FMG FY GEF GOB GOI GRAS GTDP GTRP HIV IAS ICOLD IDA IQC IRN IWMI IUCN IV-20 IVC-26 IVC-27 KfW KLRP LCC LHWP LSE LSR LTER M&E MCM MCZ MIT MOU MRC NAS NBA NCC

Acronyms

World Bank Environmental and Social Safeguard Policies ZESCO’s Environmental and Social Affairs Unit Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations Facsimile Associated with the European Community Federal Land Development Project Five Member Group Fiscal Year Global Environmental Fund Government of Botswana Government of India Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Gwembe Tonga Development Program Gwembe Tonga Research Project Human Immunodeficiency Virus University of Zambia’s Institute of African Affairs International Commission on Large Dams Institute for Development Anthropology Indefinite Quantity Contract International Rivers Network International Water Management Institute International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources UNDP Pre-Planning Project for the Ivory Coast’s Bandama Valley Authority UNDP Project for the Lake Kossou Fishery Project for the Bandama Valley Authority UNDP Assistance to Bandama Valley Authority Village Construction Programme The German Development Bank Kainji Lake Research Project Senegal River Local Coordination Committees Lesotho Highlands Water Project London School of Economics IDA’s Land Settlement Review for the Onchocerciasis Program Long Term Ecological Research Monitoring and Evaluation Million Cubic Meters Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology Massachusetts Institute of Technology Memorandum of Understanding Mekong River Commission National Academy of Sciences Namarda Bachao Andola Senegal River National Coordination Committees

Acronyms

NRC NRM NCA NDA NGO NIGAM NISER NT2 OCP ODI OECD OED OERS OMS OMVS OMVS-IRD OP 4.12 OKACOM OSTROM PASIE PDRG PhD PMARC POE QMC R&R RCD REDSO RHDP RLI SAR SARSA SBR SCOPE SIDA SMEC SfAA SOIWDP SSP TIAA-CREF

xxv

National Research Council Natural Resource Management Narmada Control Authority Niger Dams Authority Non-governmental organization Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research Laos’ Nam Theun 2 Dam Onchocerciasis Control Program Overseas Development Institute Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development World Bank’s Operation Evaluation Department Organization of the Senegal River States World Bank Operation Manuel Statement Senegal River Basin Development Authority Senegal River Basin Development Authority—Research Institute for Development World Bank Involuntary Resettlement Operational Policy Okavango River Basin Commission Organization for the Rise in Value of the Senegal River RHDP’s Environmental Impacts Mitigation Program Master Plan for the Integrated Development of the Senegal River Left Bank Doctor of Philosophy India’s Peoples Media Advocacy & Resources Centre World Bank’s Independent Panel of Environmental and Social Experts United States Quarter Master Corp Resettlement and Restoration A Tunisian Ruling Party An Office of the Agency for International Development A World Bank Regional Hydropower Project for the Senegal River Rhodes Livingstone Institute World Bank Staff Appraisal Report Cooperative Agreement on Human Settlements and Natural Resource Systems Analysis IDA’s Senegal River Basin Reports Special Committee on Problems of the Environment Sweden’s International Development Cooperation Agency Australia’s Snowy Mountains Engineering Company Society for Applied Anthropology The Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project Sardar Sarovar Project Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association—College Retirement and Equities Fund

xxvi

TLU TOR TRD TV TVA UC UK UN UNESCO UNICEF UNDP UNP UNSP US USAID VPI WCD WFP WHO WP WUA ZESA ZESCO ZRA

Acronyms

Tropical Livestock Units Terms of Reference Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases Television Tennessee Valley Association University of California United Kingdom United Nations United Nations Education and Science and Cultural Organization United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund United Nations Development Program Sri Lanka’s United National Party United Nations Special Fund United States United States Agency for International Development Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University World Commission on Dams World Food Program World Health Organization Institute for Development Anthropology Working Paper Water User Association Zimbabwe’s Electricity Supply Authority Zambia’s Electricity Supply Corporation Zambezi River Authority

List of Figures

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

Fig. 1.5 Fig. 1.6 Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

1.7 1.8 2.1 2.2 2.3

Fig. 2.4

Fig. 2.5 Fig. 2.6 Fig. 2.7 Fig. 2.8 Fig. 2.9

Fig. 2.10

Hillside residence and farming above the Yangze River . . . . . Hillside agriculture with annual plants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hillside agriculture with orange trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . China’s dams were the first dams that I studied caused the total or partial relocation of towns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . China’s dams also required that factories be relocated . . . . . . Pushing our boat through the rapids of a small tributary of the Nam Theun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Viewing the village of a small ethnic minority . . . . . . . . . . . . We land for interviews close to the Vietnam border . . . . . . . . Gwembe Tonga village scene in 1956–57 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mazulu Village family in 1956–57 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Evening social gathering with women smoking their home-made gourd pipes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The village has more extensive cultivated land because of access to a government floating pump in contrast to the narrow fringe of recession cultivation on the opposite side of the Nile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Three Gorges flood recession agriculture on the edge of the city of Chongqing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Upland extension of Chongqing flood recession agriculture through the use of wells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chongqing farmer using well water to extend his farmland on the edge of the Yangtze River . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Three Gorges hillside agriculture with cities on the far side of the Yangtze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Before Kariba was build, Gwembe Tonga women and men were effective fishers when the Zambezi flooded its tributaries and wetlands. In this picture women drive fish into homemade baskets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The drive over, the fishers inspect their catch . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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xxviii

Fig. 2.11

Fig. 2.12 Fig. 2.13

Fig. 2.14 Fig. 2.15 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 3.6 Fig. 3.7 Fig. 3.8 Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 4.1

List of Figures

Both sexes fish flooded wetlands with baskets and spears. Flood recession agriculture, however, was the key component of the Gwembe Tonga food economy since it allowed double cropping of maize and vegetables as well as tobacco and marihuana as cash crops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gwembe Tonga pre-Kariba flood recession agriculture . . . . . . Close-up of Gwembe Tonga flood recession agriculture. Today, the majority of Gwembe Tonga are worse off economically and socially . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Young couples build shacks in an unauthorized community while searching for work in town . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Here an elderly woman breaks rocks on the roadside which she hopes to sell to builders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hingurakgoda as an example of a successful rural town for a land settlement or resettlement scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A typical village shop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Plowing with cattle and water buffaloes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Throughout South Asia two-wheeled tractors for plowing and transport identify successful farmers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A sample family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Another sample family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A scene along the Mahaweli River showing the over emphasis on rice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A dry season scene along the Mahaweli with rice also the dominant crop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This successful farmer has diversified into chillies . . . . . . . . . A few farmers are able to afford small petro-driven pumps . . The author clearing a blockage in a small delta tributary . . . . Local people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A village meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Plowing with donkeys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cano drawing of the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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132 133 166 182 183 183 184 232

Chapter 1

Introduction of the Book

1.1

Introduction

Currently over 50,000 large dams are operational. There are two major types: dams at least 15 m high or, if between 5 and 15 m in height, with a storage capacity of more than 3 million cubic meters of water. The largest dam-created reservoir by volume is Kariba on the Zambezi River that my colleague Elizabeth Colson and I have been studying over the past 60 years with three generations of graduate students. According to the National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council’s 1966 report on ‘Alternatives in Water Management’, “it is important to state that no major water project in the United States has been studied with sufficient care and precision to determine its full effects on the systems of water, soil, plants, and human activity which it has altered … . More analysis is needed of the effects, both on the environment and on the economy, of actions taken in the development of water resources” (1966: 15). In the year 2000, that statement applies equally well not just to the United States but also to the world, with the World Commission on Dams (WCD) stating “few comprehensive post-project evaluations have taken place after the commissioning of large dams. This applies to virtually all regions and countries. With few exceptions, there has been little or no monitoring of the physical, social and environmental effects of dams, a necessary input for such evaluations” (WCD 2000: 226). Equally disturbing is the relative absence within the academic community and funding agencies of long-term studies of dam impacts on river basins, and on river basin inhabitants. Such is also the case with other major development projects that characterize the current political economies of developed and developing countries including using arable land for Special Economic Zones as in China, India and

Portions of this chapter were presented in my lecture at the National Academy of Sciences’ Sackler Colloquium on Coupled Human and Environmental Systems, March 14–15, 2016. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Scudder, Large Dams, Water Resources Development and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2550-2_1

1

2

1 Introduction of the Book

South East Asia, converting forests to plantations as in Indonesia or to cattle ranches and crops as in Brazil. Long-term studies are crucial because what at first may appear to be regionally and nationally a desirable project may prove, over the longer term, to have more negative than positive impacts. Such studies are especially lacking in the social sciences. Badly needed are long-term studies like those underway in the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program pioneered by the National Science Foundation in 1977. In 1980, the Foundation founded a LTER network for such research. In 1993, an international component was added. What follows this introduction is my own 60 year history that illustrates why long term comparative research was essential to enable me to realize that my initial support of large dams for catalyzing a beneficial process of integrated river basin development was based on a naïve belief in people’s ability to improve upon what had initially been global river basins created by free flowing rivers. What I learned was that important short and medium term benefits of large dams tend to be followed by major and unacceptable longer term economic, environmental and social costs including costs for more than half a billion project-affected people living in dammed river basins.

1.2

My Choosing a Career to Study Dams Was Not Planned

My introduction to the study of large dams came about because Harvard University had an inadequate faculty dealing with Africa in the 1950s when I was a second year graduate student in Social Anthropology. Fortunately, I was allowed to get credit for a course during the spring of 1956 at the recently established Boston University African Studies Program. That course was taught by Professor Elizabeth Colson. During the next few months, I told Colson about my hopes to undertake PhD dissertation research among the Bakonjo who lived in and around the Ruwenzori Mountains in Uganda. In return, she told me that she had recently been asked to return to Zambia’s Rhodes Livingstone Institute to lead a two person team to complete a before and after study of 57,000 Gwembe Valley Tonga soon to be resettled due to the Kariba Dam under construction on the Zambezi River. The Institute Director, Henry Fosbrooke, who had received the necessary funds, also asked Colson to recruit a geographer. When I told Colson about a Harvard geographer who had done research in what is now Zimbabwe, she asked me to seek his advice on possible candidates. As I recall, I did not try very hard so after some weeks I asked her “what about me?” In typical Colson fashion, after an impressive “harrumph,” she replied “I thought you were not interested!” Several months later

1.2 My Choosing a Career to Study Dams Was Not Planned

3

the two of us were in route by plane to Lusaka, the capital of what was then Northern Rhodesia. On selecting me as her colleague (as opposed to being a student assistant or some such), Colson took a major risk for she had only known me as a student in her class who had only completed two years of graduate school and who had no field work experience. At our first meeting with Henry Fosbrooke, a large and imposing man who had formerly been a District Commissioner in Tanzania’s Maasai District, he emphasized that he was looking forward to supervising my research. Immediately Colson, confronting Fosbrooke in a no nonsense voice, said “Look Henry, Ted is MY colleague. Together he and I will decide what research we will do, though of course we will seek your advice.” Though now working as colleagues, during 1956–57 I also remained Colson’s student while learning how to carry out productive fieldwork. Her fixed village census procedure1 was to collect detailed, similar, and unique information on each household and community and to write up each day what we had learned. We both had Olympic typewriters on which we produced three copies. Whenever we were working in the same chieftaincy, we tried to meet at least once every two weeks to exchange field notes (the third copy went to the Institute) and discuss their contents. Although we concentrated on agreed-upon topics for each of us, we were also expected to record information of relevance to the other’s interests. One result of this approach to recording and analyzing the results of fieldwork was that over the years I am unaware of any collaboration between colleagues stronger than ours. While we each had our own Land Rover and researched different villages, we intentionally scheduled our provisioning trips to Lusaka, and the Institute, so that we could travel together in one vehicle and overnight either at the Institute or at the rest house of a non-government organization (NGO) that was also working in the Middle Zambezi Valley. Such planning significantly increased our time for discussing our ongoing research. We had good social relations with Gwembe District colonial officials, but with whom we had no official relationship regarding resettlement planning—our work being seen as strictly academic. Colson’s research plan was to concentrate over the years on three villages located in different settings both before and after resettlement. What we learned from that research in those villages and how she related that knowledge to the Gwembe Tonga as an ethnic group was, in my opinion, the most important single accomplishment of our research. Colson’s 1971 Social Consequences of Resettlement remains to this day the best single source on development-induced involuntary community resettlement. In contrast to Colson, I concentrated on only one smaller village. In addition to keeping and updating a detailed census of village households which now totals over 1

This procedure, to be used over time among different ethnic groups, Colson and her Rhodes-Livingstone colleagues had worked out while together in the 1940s (Elizabeth Colson: Anthropology and a Lifetime of Observation. 2002. UC Berkeley University History Series. Berkeley, California (p. 96).

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1 Introduction of the Book

400 pages, my tasks included a detailed analysis of the village economy that included such different activities as mapping each household’s agricultural fields, describing hunting and fishing activities, and collecting for identification, vegetation used for food, housing, boat building and other purposes. I also concentrated over the years on studying the entire region settled by the Gwembe Tonga in Zambia as well as on the other side of the Zambezi in Zimbabwe. According to government estimates, 86,000 people lived in the Middle Zambezi Valley in the mid-1950s, 57,000 of whom were to be resettled. My debt to Colson was invaluable not just as mentor but also because she understood that in addition to our ongoing long-term research among resettled Gwembe Tonga that I had the same need, as she did, to develop my own career dealing with the comparative analysis of socio-economic and environmental impacts of large dams. In 2000, Suzanne B. Riess began a series of oral history interviews with Colson for UC Berkeley’s University History Series. On the last page of such histories, those interviewed are allowed to make a short statement. In the last of her six paragraphs, Colson wrote “I have been lucky in many ways” including “In having in Thayer Scudder an ideal collaborator, who goes his own way while I go mine and yet with a willingness to share notes and accept a critical give and take as we write up the research, sometimes individually and sometimes together.” Throughout my career, I have insisted on the importance of long-term research and post-project audits if one is to better understand and respond to the impacts of large dams. My own research has placed special emphasis on Kariba. As a result of that study, and subsequent research on large dams on 15 other rivers,2 I eventually concluded that over the long-term (50 years and more) large dams are not cost effective for economic, socio-cultural and environmental reasons. My Ph.D. dissertation on The Ecology of the Gwembe Tonga was completed in the spring of 1960. The rest of 1960 and part of 1961 were spent on a post-doctoral fellowship at the London School of Economics studying African human ecology. I also needed to find a job for the following twelve month period before returning to Zambia in late 1962 for our first Gwembe Tonga restudy following resettlement. My search led to a year’s appointment at the American University in Cairo that included joining a team of researchers making a study of 50,000 Egyptian Nubians prior to their resettlement in connection with the Aswan High Dam project. What a coincidence to have the unique opportunity within a seven year period to carry out two bench mark studies of different ethnic groups prior to their resettlement in connection with two mega dam projects. Unique, because following the 1962–63 Kariba restudy, to the best of my knowledge I was the only human ecologist and social scientist who had studied in different countries two large populations prior to their dam-induced relocation. It was that background that led to my recruitment by UN agencies and the World Bank to help with pre-project

2

Including the Nile (Aswan High Dam), Mahaweli (Sri Lanka), Narmada (India’s Sardar Sarovar), and Nam Theun and Xai Bang Fai (Laos’s Nam Theun 2).

1.2 My Choosing a Career to Study Dams Was Not Planned

5

planning in connection with large dams in 14 other countries along with post project planning and implementation in Lesotho, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, the Senegal River Valley, Sri Lanka, India, and Laos.

1.3

Since 1962, Large Dams Have Been My Laboratory for the Comparative, Longitudinal Analysis of Dam Impacts on River Basins Including Project Affected People

In tracing my changing views over the years, I have selected those water resource development projects that I have studied in the most detail. The one exception deals with my five trips to China in connection with the Three Gorges Dam Project, the Longtan Dam and proposed dams in Yunnan because they dealt primarily with project planning stages (Figs. 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3). While not a single reference in my Ph.D. thesis dealt with other cases of involuntary community resettlement or with other dams, I did realize that community resettlement in connection with large dams gave researchers a seldom-realized opportunity to undertake research in the field under quasi-laboratory conditions. In this context, the Kariba Lake Basin “becomes a vast laboratory for the long term study of cultural and environmental change.”3 Since the Planning of large dams is apt to take more than five years, researchers have the opportunity to undertake pre-project research before construction is completed, the reservoir filled and people resettled. Moreover, pre-dam benchmark4 environmental, demographic, socio-economic, cultural, and health studies must be undertaken at the earliest possible date, since adverse project-related impacts can be expected to occur as soon as a decision has been made to proceed with planning for a large dam. Once such a decision is made, governments are unlikely, for example, to build new infrastructure like schools and clinics in an area that will be inundated. Those who may be resettled should be advised not to build or improve housing, start new business enterprises, plant trees nor clear new fields, with the result that their living standards are adversely affected even before they are resettled. Furthermore, the commencement of preparatory works such as access roads, and the arrival of a better-trained immigrant labor force, will begin the incorporation of what was previously a relatively isolated population into a wider and more complex political economy. If resettlers are to compete in such an economy, adequate resettlement plans must include primary and secondary schooling and relevant skills training. 3

Scudder, T (1960). Part 1. Environment and a Culture: Valley Tonga resettlement is a case study in human geography. Natural History. April 7–17. 4 I use the phrase “bench mark” as opposed to “base line” studies because we are dealing with dynamic open-ended systems.

6

Fig. 1.1 Hillside residence and farming above the Yangze River

Fig. 1.2 Hillside agriculture with annual plants

1 Introduction of the Book

1.4 Throughout the 1962–1973 Period I Remained Convinced …

7

Fig. 1.3 Hillside agriculture with orange trees

1.4

Throughout the 1962–1973 Period I Remained Convinced that Large Dams Could Provide an Exceptional Opportunity for Implementing Integrated River Basin Development

I can think of at least four reasons for that conviction. The first reason was that between 1962 and the early 1970s, the living standards of a majority of the Kariba resettlers improved dramatically, while Aswan High Dam planning appeared to have led to improved living standards for the Nubian majority by the early 1970s. In the Kariba case, the development of a major fishery based on the use of gill nets played a key role. I emphasize this case history because resettlers have also benefited from dam reservoir fisheries in other African, Asian and Middle Eastern projects. Within eight months of the commencement of reservoir filling, at least 400 Gwembe Tonga villagers, of which the majority were resettlers, were fishing. By the end of the third year, over 2,000 project-affected men were using over 5,000 gill nets. The fishery also played an important role in the incorporation of women into a growing market economy. While a few women settled in the fish camps or became fish traders, the majority came from their villages to sell beer and agricultural produce.

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1 Introduction of the Book

A government credit program played a major role granted the low income and savings of the large majority of resettlers with quite a few paying off their loans within a few months Meanwhile a successful government tsetse control program had enabled fishers throughout the Zambian portion of the reservoir basin to invest their profits in cattle, plows and ox-drawn carts. Following the colonization of the reservoir’s annual drawdown area with a nutritious grass (Panicum repens), the Gwembe Valley became one of the best cattle grazing areas in the country. Cattle revolutionized Gwembe Tonga agriculture by enabling the majority of resettlers to shift from an arduous (especially for women farmers) system of cultivation with back-breaking short handled hoes to ox traction that in turn stimulated the cash cropping of maize and cotton. In 1963 there were only 43 cotton growers. By the early 1970s, more smallholder cotton was grown in the Middle Zambezi Valley than in any other Zambian district. As with fishing income, agricultural profits were also used to finance increased use of schools provided during the resettlement process, with secondary school graduates able to benefit from a much expanded job market following Zambian independence in 1964. I have been emphasizing what were major benefits but there were also major environmental, physiological, psychological and socio-cultural costs during the earliest years of resettlement between 1958 and 1961. For example, what data we have suggests increased mortality rates among elders and children as was also observed among High Dam Nubian resettlers following resettlement. The second reason that influenced me to favor large dams was the still favorable reputation of the Tennessee Valley Authority as a ‘successful’ global model. David Lilienthal, a former TVA director and chairman, had been so impressed by his TVA experience that he subsequently formed in 1955 his own private firm, Development and Resources Corporation, that planned and implemented regional development programs that also impressed me. The third reason involved my first consultancies in Nigeria, the Ivory Coast and elsewhere in Zambia that at least temporarily helped thousands of resettler households become less poor than would otherwise have been the case. However, if asked what I considered to have been my most important single impact during those 55 years, I would have to say playing the key role in stopping the government of Botswana from building dams and channelizing river flows in the Okavango Delta that is now a World Heritage site. The fourth reason arose from gratifying invitations to attend various international conferences and workshops dealing with impacts of large-scale development projects and to prepare papers for publication in conference proceedings. My first “in praise of dams and river basin development” article was in the December 1965 issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. It dealt primarily with

1.4 Throughout the 1962–1973 Period I Remained Convinced …

9

Kariba resettlers but was also influenced by my experience with the Aswan High Dam and an initial visit to Nigeria’s Kainji Dam. “In terms of regional development,” I wrote, “these projects offer an exceptional opportunity for planning and implementing an integrated river and lake basin development program. Aside from power generation, flood control, and improved transport, such a program should include irrigation and fisheries, market and small industrial centers, conservation zones and national parks, residential areas, and tourist and recreational facilities. Granted the need to resettle over 50,000 people, more highly productive environments can be created with new ground rules to maintain and increase resource potential.”

1.4.1

Initial Consultancies

In 1965, the Ford Foundation hired me as a consultant to work with Nigerian colleagues on pre-construction environmental and resettlement planning for Nigeria’s Kainji Dam Project on the Niger River. The following year the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) funded a continuation of my work through their Kainji Lake Research Project. Then in 1967 FAO agreed to my request to return to Zambia as a FAO consultant to update my research on the Gwembe Tonga with special emphasis on the Kariba Lake fisheries. A further FAO consultancy followed in 1970 to complete a short pre-construction fisheries survey for planning purposes for Zambia’s Kafue Dam. That consultancy overlapped with three Kossou Dam assignments between 1969 and 1973 for the United Nations Development Programme in the Ivory Coast. Also in the early 1970s, I made a short visit to Thailand in connection with resettlement issues associated with the ill-conceived Pa Mong Dam. Those assignments completed my transition from purely academic Kariba and High Dam research on the impact of large dams on resettlement communities and their environment to working with host country agencies and colleagues, and with international financial institutions, in efforts to enable a majority of resettlers, if not to improve their living standards, to at least restore them.

1.4.1.1

Nigeria: Kainji Dam

In Nigeria, my main institutional impact was to help FAO’s Department of Fisheries broaden its previous emphasis on the biology and limnology of inland fisheries to include social science research on fishers.

1.4.1.2

The Ivory Coast: Kossou Dam

During 1969 I was recruited to be a Consultant to the UNDP Administrator on the Kossou Dam Project in the Ivory Coast. Like Kariba and the Aswan High Dam, the

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1 Introduction of the Book

Kossou Dam was planned, and implemented, as the country’s largest project. Unlike the other large dams on which I had worked, however, its planning and implementation became the responsibility of a single agency: the Authority for the Regional Development of the Bandama River Valley (AVB) that included about one third of the country which the Bandama River bisects. The Kossou Project also differed from other African large dam projects in several major ways of which two were the most important. The first was that the project area was located in the heartland of the nation and contained the densest rural population. The second was that two major ecosystems were involved, with each under a separate AVB regional directorate. The northern directorate was in the Woodland Savannah Zone where yams were cultivated as the main crop. The southern directorate was in the Tropical Forest Zone where the resettlers were familiar with the cultivation of such tree crops as coffee and cacao. Approximately 75,000 people from 200 villages and hamlets were resettled in AVB-provided permanent housing of urban design (which the resettlers preferred) in 54 government-planned villages of which 32 were in the forest zone and 22 in the woodland savanna. In spite of the Government’s delayed request for international assistance, three circumstances allowed the Government to complete within a two-year period the physical resettlement of the 22,000 resettlers who had to be moved before the dam was to be sealed in February, 1971. First, was that a single organization, the AVB, was responsible for dam construction, resettlement, and development above and below the dam. Not only did the AVB have its own budget, but its head, Aoussou Kofi, was appointed by the President and had direct access to him. Second, the AVB also benefited from the presence of a comparatively large number of technically proficient French research and development agencies from which the AVB hired on secondment most of the senior staff of its five major departments during the first year of its existence. Third, UNDP was willing “to take action to identify, approve and finance projects at a speed commensurate with the emergency nature of the situation.”

1.5

1975–1997: Increasing Doubts about Large Dams but Still Hopeful

The next 22 years were the most exciting of my career to date. The most important reason was that I was dealing with three Asian mega-projects. In order, they were planning and implementation of Sri Lanka’s Accelerated Mahaweli Project and India’s Sardar Sarovar Project and planning for China’s Three Gorges Project.

1.5 1975–1997: Increasing Doubts about Large Dams but Still Hopeful

1.5.1

11

The Accelerated Mahaweli and Sardar Sarovar Projects (1979–1989)

Sri Lanka’ Accelerated Mahaweli and India’s Sardar Sarovar Projects are two of the largest dam-induced river basin development projects in the world. After several paragraphs on options assessment, I concentrate, however, on my Chinese research since Mahaweli and Sardar Sarovar are dealt with in detail in PART II. The decisions to implement Mahaweli and Sardar Sarovar were primarily political rather than based on a careful process of options assessment. Where large dams are involved, the stage of options assessment, in my experience, too often has been by-passed because the decision to proceed already has been made, more often than not, by the head of state. Such political decision-making can also jeopardize a project when a change of government, or in party politics, occurs. In Sri Lanka when the President decided to not stand for re-election, three of his colleagues, including the Minister of Mahaweli Development, competed to take his place with the then prime minister winning the presidency. Seeing the Minister of Mahaweli Development as his main rival, the new president’s “efforts to marginalize him included downgrading the Mahaweli Project at the very time that additional finance and effort were needed” for project completion and in spite of the fact that Mahaweli “continued to be Sri Lanka’s largest and most important development project” (Scudder 2005: 158). Rather the President “pushed his own project—100 new houses for low-income Sri Lankans in every electoral district” (ibid). Another political factor weakening large dams for regional development was the opposition of national and/or state ministries to a single organization taking over functions that they considered their own. In regard to the Tennessee Valley Authority, I remember Gilbert White explaining the Authority’s formation created sufficient resistance from both the private sector and other government agencies that the United States never supported another such program. The AVB’s collapse as a regional development agency in the Ivory Coast involved similar problems.

1.5.2

China’s Three Gorges Project

Involvement during the 1980s in the major international planning activity for Three Gorges was a major educational experience for me. At the request of the Chinese government, the Canadian International Development Agency funded a consortium of Canadian hydro-electric, engineering and other companies to carry out the project’s major feasibility study. Because the World Bank was initially5 involved,

5

The Bank subsequently withdrew from the Three Gorges Project.

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1 Introduction of the Book

Fig. 1.4 China’s dams were the first dams that I studied caused the total or partial relocation of towns

Fig. 1.5 China’s dams also required that factories be relocated

1.5 1975–1997: Increasing Doubts about Large Dams but Still Hopeful

13

Michael Cernea, the Bank’s Senior Adviser for Sociology and Social Planning, advised that the consortium recruit me as a Special Resettlement Consultant because of its limited international experience with dam resettlement (Figs. 1.4 and 1.5). Though well aware that my involvement would be criticized by many colleagues, and especially those most critical of large dams in such organizations as the Environmental Defense Fund, International Rivers Network and Probe International, I did not hesitate to accept the consortium’s invitation to work with their environment and social team. My decision was influenced by my acceptance in the late 1970s of a consultancy under the Tribal Council of the Navajo Nation in the Western United States. The consultancy’s purpose, during which I worked with a team of 11 colleagues, was to help the Navajo Tribe prevent the US Government’s intention to resolve the conflict in a Tribal Joint Use Area between the Hopi and Navajo by forcibly resettling elsewhere over 12,000 Navajo and a relatively small number of Hopi. Including my 1974 testimony against the resettlement option before the US Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs and a separate lawsuit testimony, our failed efforts over a five-year period actually extended the stressful resettlement period for both tribes. The lesson that I learned is that I can have a more favorable impact on communities threatened with involuntary resettlement by working within national and international agencies involved in dam-induced resettlement. Though I believe that my efforts most often have failed in helping resettled households and communities become better off, I nonetheless believe that I have helped millions become less poor than would otherwise have been the case. During three visits to China in the 1980s, I was able to visit isolated rural and urban communities throughout the future Three Gorges reservoir area. That included communities practicing flood recession agriculture along the bank of the Yangtze River, those growing oranges and other crops on slopes above the riverbanks, and—a first for me—those living in cities that must be resettled. I also visited the Danjiangkou Dam, the construction of which had caused poverty-inducing resettlement of approximately 383,000 villagers during the mid-1960s and mid-1970s. As a result of those visits, I refused to approve the Consortium’s Draft Report in favor of Three Gorges construction.

1.5.3

The Process Whereby China and Laos Are Opening the Mekong River for Large Scale International Shipping to the Vietnam Delta

During March 2005 I joined a Nature Conservancy Team making a China Dams Strategy Assessment in Yunnan. On arrival at the Mekong (called Lancang in China), I was amazed to see across the river the sparkling white, new headquarters for a large River Port that clearly was intended to facilitate international river trade.

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1 Introduction of the Book

The background to such trade with Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia is presented in Berman’s 2014 Masters Thesis.6 By the 1990s increases in border trade between China and its three closest neighbors had exceeded the capacity of existing land-based transport. If the Mekong could “be opened up for transport of raw materials, agricultural products, manufactured goods, and passengers, then a new engine to drive the regional economy can be created and the recent boom of trade with the landlocked Chinese province, Yunnan, can be sustained …” (Berman 1998: 1). Stopping or significantly altering current activities for changing the Mekong from one of the world’s greatest and most important free flowing rivers sustaining millions of river-dependent fishers and farmers into a channelized river of dams are, in my opinion, very unlikely. China and Laos have most to benefit from damming and channelizing the Mekong, while Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam will be the main losers. Of the six affected countries, China and Laos are the two with which I am most familiar. In regard to Chinese dams, in addition to the Three Gorges Dam in the second half of the 1980s, I was involved with three Chinese engineers and a Canadian economist in 2002 in the initial environment and social planning for the Longtan High Dam on a major tributary of the Pearl River. From 1997 through 2014, I made 24 visits to Laos as a member of the International Environment and Social Panel of Experts for Laos’ Nam Theun 2 (NT2) multipurpose project. I resigned from the Panel in 2014 for two major reasons. One reason was because my wife’s declining health required that I remain at home nights. The other reason was my conviction that the government of Laos did not have the capacity to meet the requirements of the NT2 Concession Agreement that the resettlement process improve resettler living standards. Moreover, “Nam Theun 2 confirmed my longstanding suspicion that the task of building a large dam is just too complex and too damaging to priceless natural resources”.7 The construction of NT2 has altered river flows on two major Mekong tributaries. One is the Nam Theun below the dam. The other is the Xai Bang Fai in which river flows are significantly altered from the NT2 Hydro Power Installation to the river’s junction with the Mekong. I was also very much concerned that Laos, to achieve the country’s main development goal of becoming the Battery of South East Asia, intended to build dams on practically all, if not all, of the country’s Mekong tributaries. By 2018 there were eleven large dams built or under construction on the Mekong, and “120 tributary dams planned by 2040”.8 Eight were in China and 6

Berman, ML (1998) Opening the Lancang (Mekong) River in Yunnan: problems and prospects for Xishuangbanna (1998). Masters Thesis. University of Massachusetts: Amherst. 7 In Leslie, J (August 22, 2014) Large Dams Just Aren’t Worth the Cost. Sunday Review Opinion. The New York Times: New York. 8 International Rivers (5 April, 2018). “Course Change on the Mekong Needed Now for a Just and Sustainable Future.” Berkeley, California.

1.5 1975–1997: Increasing Doubts about Large Dams but Still Hopeful

15

three in Laos. China was also involved in blasting, or wanting to blast, Mekong rapids and narrows in several neighboring countries. In April 2018, the four member9 Mekong River Commission’s Council released a 3,600 page report warning Commission members of the environmental and socio-economic cost implications of existing large dams and those currently under construction on the Mekong and planned for construction on Mekong tributaries during the next twenty years. Results and implications of the report were presented in April, 2018 at the third MRC Summit meeting at Siem Reap, Cambodia. Discussion was facilitated by the presence of expert members of the Commission’s Secretariat whose research was included within the 3,600 page report. As for overall impacts on the Mekong River, contributors to the 3,600 page report anticipate such costs as the following: 1. According to the MRC socioeconomic specialist Nguyen Thi Ngoc Minh scenarios for 2020 and 2040 suggest that if dam construction continues as planned adverse effects of such development will exceed benefits. 2. According to Minh, especially severe would be the reduction of fisheries that provides the main source of food and income for Mekong River communities. While initially agriculture would benefit from improved irrigation and reliability of river flows, over the longer term, sediment decrease would reduce productivity. 3. According to fisheries research by So Nam, the Secretariat’s Chief Environment Management Officer, Thailand would be most seriously affected by loss of fisheries production. Estimated loss of fish biomass would be 55% by 2040. 4. According to Sopheap Lim’s research, by 2040, 97% of Mekong sediment would be trapped behind dams so that only 3% would reach the delta in Vietnam.

1.6

The Period 1998–2000: A Considerable Broadening of My Knowledge

The World Commission on Dams emerged in February 1998 from an April, 1997 workshop on “Large Dams: Learning from the Past. Looking at the Future” that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and the World Bank Group organized in Gland, Switzerland. It was an unexpected honor to be selected as one of the 12 Commissioners since I was well aware that my “middle of the road position” as an academic had alienated quite a few experts on both sides of the large dam debate.

9

China is not a member.

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1 Introduction of the Book

Yet it was apparently for that very reason that IUCN’s Director General prevailed in insisting on my selection. My appointment came at an ideal time because I had just started two years as a full time research professor at Caltech before becoming Emeritus in 2000. Hence, engineer Jan Veltrop and I were the only Commissioners who had the freedom to work full time on Commission business. Other than our interdisciplinary conversations at meetings held in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, two other opportunities were especially important for me. One was frequent conversations and correspondence with Veltrop during and after Commission meetings. The other was the opportunity to expand my knowledge by reading most of the reports in the WCD Knowledge Base. Written as inputs to the Commission, they included both Case and Country Studies as well as Thematic Reviews and Contributing Papers. Especially important in broadening my knowledge were papers dealing with Economic, financial and distributional analysis; Electricity; Water supply options; and Flood control and management options.

1.7

Between 2001 and 201010 I Concentrated on Writing about the Theoretical and Policy Relevance of My Consulting and Research

In The Future of Large Dams, which was published in 2005, I analyzed large dams “as a flawed yet still necessary development option.” That was also the conclusion of the World Commission on Dams (Scudder 2005: 1). For that reason, my book was, “in a number of respects, a follow-on volume to the Commission’s Final Report. On the one hand, it endorsed the analysis and conclusions in the Final Report … On the other hand, it extended and updates the Commission’s Final Report. Extension was needed since the Commission had neither the time, nor the authority, to explore some issues in detail. Examples were multiplier effects associated with dam construction, impacts on deltas, institutional issues, resolution of conflicts among stakeholders, and, especially, how to deal at the international level with project authorities and national governments that violated human rights and other international declarations and covenants relevant to the planning and construction of large dams” (Scudder, ibid). In Chap. 3 John Gay and I reported our results from what was the first statistical analysis of large dam-induced community resettlement. Those results were grim. Of

10

My Global Threats, Global Futures: Living with Declining Living Standards was published in 2010.

1.7 Between 2001 and 2010 I Concentrated on Writing …

17

the 44 cases where we had sufficient data, project-induced living standard improvement had occurred in only three cases. In five cases living standard restoration had occurred while in “the remaining 36 cases (82 percent), the impact of the project was to worsen the living standards of the majority” (ibid: 61).

1.8

2011–2018

So we come to the 2011–2018 period during which I finally came to see large dams as a major component of a dysfunctional international development paradigm. Jacques Leslie publicized that conclusion in an August 24, 2014 Opinion in the New York Times’ Sunday Review when he wrote: Thayer Scudder, the world’s leading authority on the impact of dams on poor people, has changed his mind about dams. A frequent consultant on large dam projects, Mr. Scudder held out hope through most of his 58-year career that the poverty relief delivered by a properly constructed and managed dam would outweigh the social and environmental damage it caused. Now, at age 84, he has concluded that large dams not only aren’t worth their cost, but that many currently under construction “will have disastrous environmental and socio-economic consequences,” as he wrote in a recent email.11

My colleague, Rhodes University’s Chris de Wet, has also concluded that involuntary community resettlement in connection with mega dams and other large projects is just too complex a process to meet the expectations of planners. I agree. Five all too common major reasons for unacceptable resettlement outcomes are lack of political will, lack of planning and implementation capacity, inadequate finance, inadequate resettler participation, and, especially, lack of viable opportunities for resettlers to improve their household and community livelihood. Since the context varies within which each large dam exists, there are also situational factors that will interfere with resettlement success. As examples, John Gay and I learned during our statistical analysis of 50 dams that better educated, financed and politically connected immigrants into a dam’s reservoir basin can provide more of a constraint on satisfactory resettlement outcomes than conflicts between resettler and host populations. Unexpected climatic, political and other factors may also provide statistically significant constraints. Furthermore, the complexity involved becomes much greater when the resettlement process is integrated within a mega project such as a dam. Then the number of adversely affected people can be increased by a factor of ten or more when river basin communities living below dams are included. In their “Lost in Development’s Shadow: The Downstream Human Consequences of Dams,” Richter el al

See also Scudder, T (2017) “The Good Mega Dam: Does It Exist All Things Considered?”.

11

18

1 Introduction of the Book

concluded that “Our conservative estimate of 472 million suggests that the number of people potentially affected downstream of large dams exceeds by six to 12 times the number directly displaced by these structures …” (2010: 3). Of course, affected communities are only one of a number of entities that are involved in the construction of large dams. Further environmental costs to free flowing rivers are dealt with later in this section. Then there are the complex differences between a mega project’s powerful stakeholders that usually include national, regional and local government institutions and their consultants, engineering firms and their consultants, private financiers and their consultants, international financial institutions such as the World Bank and their consultants, various UN institutions and their consultants, and other contributing national government agencies and their consultants!

1.9 1.9.1

Further Environmental Costs Introduction

Costanza and colleagues’ 1997 article in Nature assessed “The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital.” The highest benefits in dollars from 17 categories of ecosystem services located in 16 biomes came from two habitats: estuaries, and freshwater swamps and river floodplains, both of which characterize free flowing rivers. I am aware of no environment impact studies of large dams that evaluate the financial costs of the reduction of such major free flowing river benefits. Other environmental benefits that are inadequately evaluated and protected are forests in dam catchments in which access roads open up often pristine areas to illegal cutting of timber and loss of wild life, as is currently the case with Laos’ Nam Theun 2 Project and throughout South East Asia. Loss of downstream fisheries is a major reason why large dams have adversely affected nearly half a billion people living within 10 km of free flowing rivers: a conclusion reached by Richter and colleagues (Op Cit: 3). Failure to evaluate the impacts of climate change has yet to become a common feature of impact assessments in spite of the fact that already extreme rainfall events have caused the release from dams of destructive, unseasonal floods. Such floods have occurred below the Kariba and Cahora Bassa Dams on the Zambezi and below Nigeria’s Kainji Dam, while drought has reduced generation of hydropower from Ghana’s Volta Dam at Akosombo and from Zambia and Zimbabwe’s Kariba Dam. Major deltas are also negatively affected. The extremely adverse impact of Egypt’s High Dam at Aswan on the Nile Delta has been replicated on major deltas around the world including those of the Yellow River in China, the Indus in Pakistan and a small portion of India, and the Mississippi in the United States. In the US, the three dams with the highest storage capacity are on the Missouri

1.9 Further Environmental Costs

19

River—the Mississippi’s main tributary. Try to imagine how must silt annually is locked up behind those dams. Furthermore, “One fits all solutions” in such cases are non-existent for as emphasized by the University of Colorado’s Professor of Geology, James Syvitski “Deltas are like snowflakes—each one is different.” The same applies, of course, to free flowing rivers!

1.9.2

Aswan High Dam and the Nile Delta

Among the mega deltas of the world, the Nile Delta has the highest population density (Ericson et al. 2006) with approximately half of Egypt’s rural and urban residents in 2010. The delta is also Egypt’s agricultural heartland from which come about 40% of its agricultural products. Over the years, the assessments of the impact of the Aswan High Dam on the Nile Delta have become grimmer and grimmer. Mohammad Kassas … .was perhaps the first Egyptian to emphasize that the High Dam’s completion in 1967 had “brought the delta building process to an end” (Kassas 1972: 179). Looking to the future, his concern focused on the “coastal retreat that is actively taking place now at the alarming rate of several meters per year” (ibid: 186), with the erosion of the narrow strips of land that separated the two major delta lakes from the Mediterranean Sea, and with their transformation into marine bays that would “endanger the hydrology of the northern Delta drainage systems” (ibid: 187). By the end of the 1980s, the Egyptian Government, well aware of the resettlement implications of the threat to the Nile Delta, had begun planning “for the Lake Nasser region to serve as a receptor for voluntary migration from other regions” (Adaption Fund 2011: 8 and Presidential Decree no. 476 for 1988). At the same time, and unaware of the government’s intention to settle hundreds of thousands of climate change refugees from the delta and northern Egypt into the Nubian homeland, the 50,000 High Dam Nubian resettlers and their descendants were pursuing with the Government their “Right to Return” to the shores of Lake Nasser. Though successive governments after Sadat’s12 had never committed themselves to the Nubian “right to return,” nonetheless high government officials have continued discussing the possibility with Nubian leaders. In a 1999 article in Science on the “Nile Delta: Recent Geological Evolution and Human Impact,” Stanley and Warne wrote that Since the closure of the High Dam in 1964 … impoundment trapped virtually all (>98%) sediment behind the dam… Changes in the natural cycle of Nile flow and sediment discharge had profound consequences including: accelerated erosion along parts of the delta coastline; marine incursion onto low-lying northern delta plain sectors; curtailment of flood

12 President Sadat not only supported the Nubians’ “Right to Return,” but had also visited the area in the northeast corner of Lake Nasser where Nubians were re-establishing new Adendan and new Qustul.

20

1 Introduction of the Book silt deposition that had formerly served as natural fertilizer and had offset land subsidence; increased salinization of cultivated land,13 as natural flooding no longer flushed out evaporitic salts; sharp decline in fish populations both in lagoons and seaward of the delta, as a result of decreased nutrients carried to the coast; and choking of canals and waterways by water hyacinth (Nymphaea). This last effect increased water loss through evapotranspiration and fostered schistosomiasis14… Exponential population growth in Egypt (expected to exceed 100 million by 2025 A.D.), coupled with degrading environmental changes, augurs poorly for the delta. Obvious threats to the well-being of the region call for methods to evaluate future delta evolution … Natural factors that must be considered are sea-level rise, land subsidence, climate change, and sedimentary processes … Further evaluation of long-term trends affecting the delta is necessary in order to devise measures to regain conditions of equilibrium. We can envision reversal of declining conditions by implementation of measures such as emplacement of coastal protection structures on the scale of Netherlands’ Great Delta Works, strict regulation of the limited Nile water supply, increased ground-water exploitation along the delta margins, and construction of artificial wetlands and treatment facilities for recycling wastewater. At current levels of population growth, however, these measures will be inadequate.

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “declared the Nile Delta one of three sites on earth that are most vulnerable to sea level rise” (https:// www.idrc.ca/ccaa),15 the other two being the Ganges/Brahmaputra and the Mekong deltas. While overseas and in-country Egyptian scientists had complained about the insensitivity of the Egyptian government to the Nile Delta problem, in 2010 “Egypt and the United Nations are this year launching a 5-year study of the options for protecting the delta from the encroaching sea “(Bohannon, 2010).16 That year, Stanley had told Bohannon that “the Nile Delta is now in its destructive phase … even if the sea can be stopped, notes Stanley, the delta is facing a crisis in water quality. Without the annual floods flushing the delta clean, sewage, fertilizers, and industrial wastes go ‘nowhere’” (Bohannon, ibid). 2007 was also the year when an Adaptation Fund was launched under the Kyoto Protocol of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change to help Protocol member countries plan and implement programs to deal with climate change. In the meantime, the 1994 Near East Foundation and the World Food Programme’s “New Land, New Life” Project had benefited from financing from Canada’s International Development Research Center as explained in their March, 2010 Final Technical Report. The purpose of the Final Technical Report was to present a large series of studies pertinent to dealing with climate change that have been carried out over a number of

The authors estimate that “the delta constitutes two-thirds of Egypt’s habitable land.” The authors’ citations are omitted. 15 “Climate Change Adaptation in Africa Program 2010–11 Annual Report.” 16 Bohannon, J (2010) “Climate Change: The Nile Delta’s Sinking Future.” Science Vol. 327, Nu 5972:1444–1447. 13 14

1.9 Further Environmental Costs

21

years by researchers affiliated with Aswan Province’s South Valley University, the government’s Agriculture Research Centre and the High Dam Lake Development Authority with assistance from the Near East Foundation, the World Food Programme, and other international agencies” (Scudder 2016: 48). A major outgrowth of the Middle East Foundation-Egyptian Government-World Food Programme activities was an August, 2011 $8,575,892 Government proposal, “Preparing the Lake Nasser Region in Southern Egypt as a Climate Adaptation Hub” which was submitted through the World Food Programme to the Adaption Fund (Adaption Fund. Proposal for Egypt. August 31, 2011: 1). The project’s objective, for up to a million voluntary settlers from the Nile Delta and other areas, “is to develop the Lake Nasser region to serve as a receptor for climate-induced voluntary migration from other regions, as well as a hub for applied adaptation technology that is transferrable to other parts of Upper Egypt which are climate stressed” (ibid: 2). As with the “New Land, New Life” project no mention is made of the Nubians’ Right to Return aspirations. “The proposal was turned down in September 2011 at the 15th meeting of the Adaption Fund Board that emphasized the Fund not supporting climate-induced voluntary migration from other regions as an adaption response. Rather the Board encouraged ‘the proponent to emphasize the adaption pilot activities as well as those that strengthen institutional capacity to address adaption on the national scale’ (Scudder ibid: 49). As of late 2015 no further Egyptian Government proposal had been received by the Adaption Fund.

1.10

Economic and Financial Costs

Ansar, Flyvbjerg, and colleagues’s 2014 article on Should we build more large dams? The actual costs of hydropower megaproject development confirmed my growing conviction that large dams were more destructive than beneficial over the longer term not just to free flowing rivers but also to people’s livelihood. I had long known that the adverse environmental and socio-cultural costs of large dams far exceeded the benefits to free flowing rivers and project affected people, but I assumed that overall economic benefits were positive for the political economies of nations and for society in general. Now the statistical analysis of 245 large dams built worldwide between 1934 and 2007 has shown that “even before accounting for negative impacts on human society and environment, the actual construction costs of large dams are too high to yield a positive return … Actual costs were on average 96% higher than estimated costs.” Furthermore, “the evidence is overwhelming that costs are systematically biased towards underestimation” (Ansar et al. 2014: 2–4).

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1.11

1 Introduction of the Book

How Best Attempt to Reduce the Number of Large Dams in the Future and the Adverse Environmental, Economic and Sociocultural Impacts of Those that Are Built?

1.11.1 Introduction Though various current procedures are not ethical (discount rates for example), I anticipate great difficulty in trying to reduce the number of future dams constructed as well as to avoid the negative impacts of those that are built. A major constraint to limiting construction is the current position of the World Bank. Following publication in 2000, World Bank senior management misinterpreted and rejected the 21 guidelines of the World Commission on Dams. That point was emphasized (page 38) in the Bank’s 2004 Water Resources Sector Strategy: Strategic Directions for World Bank Engagement. Also emphasized in that report was that the Bank “will reengage with high-reward-high-risk hydraulic infrastructure” (ibid: 4). Also since the turn of the century, the Bank has reduced the number of highly qualified and senior social and environmental staff like Michael Cernea (who retired in 1996) and Robert Goodland (2001 retirement). Moreover, the Bank has also broken up the Social Development Central Group of highly qualified anthropologists and sociologists that Cernea had carefully built up over the years to deal, not just with involuntary resettlement, but with all relevant social issues in World Bank projects. Not only has the number of such staff been significantly reduced but also their quality (Michael Cernea 2018 personal communication to the author). As for the Bank’s 12 Environmental and Social Guidelines, they are in the process of being replaced by a weaker Environmental and Social Framework. What follows are a series of not prioritized issues that require attention if some dams might be stopped and others implemented with more attention to environmental, economic and socio-cultural issues. My emphasis is on procedures that will replace the current emphasis on large dams as infrastructure.

1.11.2 Benefit Sharing Recognizing Entitlements and Sharing Benefits was the World Commission on Dams’ Strategic Priority 5.17 Under that priority, I agree that “Adversely affected people are recognized as first among the beneficiaries of the project. Mutually

Generally speaking, the Commission’s five Strategic Priorities were accepted including by the World Bank.

17

1.11

How Best Attempt to Reduce the Number of Large Dams …

23

agreed and legally protected benefit sharing mechanisms are negotiated to secure implementation” (WCD Guideline 5.4: 243). Protecting National Rights to International Rivers: The Mekong Case Example. Most threatened by current Chinese and Laotian dam construction on the Mekong are Thailand, Cambodia and Viet Nam. Granted the inability of the Mekong Commission to resolve disputes between member governments, should any of the three nations object to the construction of those dams, they should be encouraged to present their case before the International Court of Justice.18

1.11.3 Options Assessment No large dams should be approved unless selected as a result of a thorough options assessment process.

1.11.4 Inadequate Awareness and Assessment of Dam Impacts on Free Flowing Rivers and River Basin Ecosystems In spite of the major, global ecosystem services that free flowing rivers provide, their functions and financial values “have been generally ignored …, especially in options assessment and cost-benefit analyses for mega dams (Scudder 2017: 436).

1.11.5 Lack of Attention Paid to Impact of Climate Change on Dam Planning and Construction “Climate change is an excellent example of the type of unexpected events that often have unfavorable impacts on large projects such as mega dams” (Scudder 2017: 437)

1.11.6 Discount Rates As emphasized by Oud and Muir “It appears that it is high time to reconsider the discount rate and the inclusion of external costs. A solution the authors favor … 18

This possibility is supported by The World Commission on Dams, Strategic Priority 7: Sharing Rivers for Peace, Development and Security and Guideline 7.3.

24

1 Introduction of the Book

would be to select and ‘optimize’ projects (not just large dams, but all projects with major socioeconomic and environmental impact19) based on the social rate of preference, say 3% per annum, explicitly considering external costs and benefits. This would be a major step toward achieving long-term sustainable project concepts and would stimulate the use of water conservation measures as against the construction of oversize dam projects (IUCN Large Dams 1997: 23).

1.11.7 Project Authorities Handing Over Development Responsibilities and Financial Authority to Local Governments and Project Affected People In my experience, almost without exception Project Authorities (including international financing agencies, engineering companies and national governments and/ or regional governments) hand over responsibilities to local governments and project affected people before they are able administratively and economically to compete for their share of national and other resources. This has been a Nam Theun 2 problem with downstream communities along the Xai Bang Fai river and will be a problem, I am convinced, with those resettled on the Nakai Plateau on the edge of the reservoir.

1.11.8 Inadequate Project Monitoring Though I recommend use of independent International Environmental and Social Panels of Experts, it is essential for Project Authorities to have their own monitoring capacity.

1.11.9 Need for Required Ex Post Audits As emphasized by Asit Biswas, “One of the major reasons why the current non-productive debate on dams has thrived is the absence of objective and detailed ex post analyses of the physical, economic, social and environmental impacts of large dams, 5, 10 or 15, years after their construction” (Tortajada et al. 2012: 12).

19

Here I would include downstream environmental and community impacts.

1.12

1.12

My Future Program

25

My Future Program

For the next decade, I anticipate no major changes in my academic and occupational activities. Three major activities are foremost on my agenda. Their importance will vary, I suspect, as the emphasis on large dams for river basin development changes. Activity one, will be to analyze and write up in monograph form the Gwembe Tonga long term resettlement data that Elizabeth Colson and I have collected since the 1950s following the construction of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River. I anticipate that activity will require at least half of the next ten years. Activity two, will involve my critique of Laos’ current large dam construction program for more than 50 large dams. Currently, Laos “doesn’t have the capacity to deal with environmental and social impacts for any single one of them” including Nam Theun 2 (Scudder in Leslie 2014: 3). Since 1997 I have made 25 trip to Laos as a member of the International Panel of Environmental and Social Experts. The upper catchment above the reservoir is an incredibly beautiful place which our three member panel has explored on foot and by boat and helicopter. Activity three, will involve me playing a more active political role in attempting to influence the global future of large dams. That will involve such activities as writing opinion pieces in newspapers or even in journals such as the New Yorker (Figs. 1.6, 1.7 and 1.8).

Fig. 1.6 Pushing our boat through the rapids of a small tributary of the Nam Theun

26

Fig. 1.7 Viewing the village of a small ethnic minority

Fig. 1.8 We land for interviews close to the Vietnam border

1 Introduction of the Book

Chapter 2

1956–1973: I Believe Large Dams Provide an Exceptional Opportunity for Integrated River Basin Development

2.1

Elizabeth Colson, The Kariba Dam on the Zambezi and Involuntary Resettlement of the Gwembe Tonga

Harvard Graduate School became more interesting during the Spring Semester when I began project planning for my Ph.D. dissertation fieldwork. The project I had in mind would combine both my interest in doing an original human ecological study of an African culture and my love of the mountains and nature. The Mountains were the Ruwenzori Mountains of the Moon in Western Uganda which, rising to 16,000 feet, were the most glaciated mountains in Africa. The people were the Bakonjo who lived only on the lower slopes of the Ruwenzori and apparently was the only ethnic group living there. Better yet, they were said to communicate from one ridge to another across steep canyons by an African version of yodeling. A second improvement in my life was a course I took at Boston University’s relatively new School of African Studies on Central Africa given by Elizabeth Colson. Harvard, having no Africanists on its anthropology faculty, had readily agreed. Colson, a Radcliffe Ph.D. in Anthropology, who did her doctoral research among a pacific coast Native American people, was a leading Africanist in route to becoming one of the top social anthropologists in the world. In the 1940s, she had joined the British Colonial Rhodes Livingstone Institute (RLI), of which she later became director, to study the Bantu-Speaking Plateau Tonga in what was then the British Protectorate of Northern Rhodesia. One of her seminars, that I took, dealt with peoples and cultures of Central and Southern Africa. During that semester, I outlined to her my Uganda dissertation research intentions and plans to apply for a Ford Foundation grant in hopes that she would be one of my sponsors. Subsequently, she told me that the following September, she would be returning to Northern Rhodesia at the request of the then director of the RLI. The purpose of her return was to initiate an one year study in the Middle Zambezi Valley of a population of about 80,000 Valley or Gwembe

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Scudder, Large Dams, Water Resources Development and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2550-2_2

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2 1956–1973: I Believe Large Dams Provide an Exceptional …

Tonga, the majority of whom would be subsequently relocated because of the construction of the first mainstream dam on the Zambezi. The Institute’s Director was Henry Fosbrooke, a geographer and former colonial civil servant whose last appointment had been as District Commissioner in Maasai land in what was then Tanganyika. He had received funding for two researchers to complete an one year pre-resettlement study of the people followed by a second one year study several years after removal. He wanted the second researcher to be a geographer and asked Colson to recruit a colleague of her choosing in the United States. Her solution to Fosbrooke’s request was to ask me if I would be interested in joining her. Thereafter events moved rapidly as Harvard’s anthropology department gave their blessing (my adviser Clyde Kluckhohn had also been Colson’s adviser when she had been a Ph.D. student at Radcliffe) and the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute offered me a one-year contract at 5,000 lb sterling with a Land Rover and camping equipment provided. So began my career dealing with the environmental and social impact of large dams which to date has lasted 60 years. A few months later in September 1956, Colson and I left for Africa. We stopped over in England to attend an annual meeting of the British Association of Social Anthropologists. Colson also introduced me to Mainza Chona, a Plateau Tonga whom she was supporting while he obtained an education in law at Grey’s Inn and who subsequently served as a Vice President of Zambia and as Ambassador to China. He also taught me my first words in chiTonga. Elizabeth Colson is one of those strong individuals who will suffer criticism of her position from no one. After our arrival in Lusaka, the Capital of Northern Rhodesia and location of the RLI, Henry Fosbrooke, a large burly man whose approach was still that of a district commissioner of natives, tried to take over my supervision as to what my academic responsibilities would be. That was when I learned that Elizabeth Colson could be even tougher. Immediately she walked up very close to Fosbrooke and said, “Look, Henry, Ted is MY colleague. He and I will decide what research we shall do, though of course we will appreciate your advice.” That was that.

2.2

Anthropological and Human Ecological Research in the Central African Federation: September 1956–August 1957

My first year overseas as an adult in 1956–1957 was by far the most serious trial in my search for a career. In the Northern Selkirks it took only a month for me to conclude that I was no longer interested in the career possibilities offered by either ornithology or biology. While Colonel Walter A Woods’ decision to terminate Project Snow Cornice ended the best option I had for a career that involved mountaineering and arctic research, if that option had occurred, I believe that the opportunities and satisfaction would be less than those provided by my current occupation. Furthermore, most likely, such a career would have led to the end of

2.2 Anthropological and Human Ecological Research in the Central …

29

Eliza’s and my marriage. Would a career dealing with human ecology and the social sciences be any more satisfying? During my first ten days in the Middle Zambezi Valley I came close to deciding that the answer was no. Sharing a single land rover, Elizabeth and I set up our large cottage tents, with a spreading overhead canopy, side by side in a large village close to the lower reaches of a major tributary but out of sight of the Zambezi itself. Our September arrival coincided with the height of the dry season. During the next three weeks daily temperatures rose from slightly over 100° to above 106°. As I wrote in a letter home, Day after day there is hardly a cloud in the sky though on occasion dry cumulus clouds build up and march across the sky from east to west – always from east to west. Out of the east and up the Middle Zambezi Valley come the winds that sweep in rain from the Indian Ocean later in the year and which now bring the small dust twisters that sweep across the harvested fields and bare ground and that send people running into their huts.

If my research was being undertaken in the Mountains of the Moon I would have been in a familiar environment. I also would have been on my own rather than with a colleague who was not only, far more knowledgeable than me of our current situation but who also spoke the local language well enough to immediately begin data collection. I was also unfamiliar with my new environment: Indeed, as I wrote in my diary, “when I first hit the Valley I was convinced that I was going to expire here – a very uncomfortable anxiety filled me which included many fears relating to everything in my new environment. The first time I drank village beer I almost shook (actually, it was quite good). As for my water supply, I was convinced that it was not being boiled. The first night I put so much copper sulfate into my bath water that it turned blue.”

Although I cannot remember the exact date, after about a week in the Valley I told Elizabeth that I was not sure if I was up to doing fieldwork in the Middle Zambezi Valley; indeed, was considering heading home. Her reply was very simple —“That is something that you will have to decide for yourself.” I am unsure exactly how or when I made the decision to stay in what was a disease-ridden rift valley as opposed to the type of mountain environment that I had originally considered more appropriate for anthropological fieldwork. Certainly influential was a telephone call I made to Eliza from Lusaka. Though she later told me how much she wanted me to return to her and our daughters, over the telephone she insisted that I had made a commitment to Colson and the Institute that I had to observe. Also very important was my increased independence after I moved into ‘my own village’ overlooking the Zambezi. Sinafala, the village I had shared with Elizabeth, had been large—1000 people I estimated at the time—whereas the village I chose contained only 126 residents; certainly a much easier number to handle during my first fieldwork experience (Figs. 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3). In Mazulu, I now had my own staff of three: Adam my interpreter, Picklelose, my cook, and Simon, my general worker. Our tents were pitched under a very large Indian Tamarind Tree situated on a degradation terrace overlooking the Zambezi and Mazulu’s alluvial gardens a short distance away. Mazulu’s homesteads were

30

2 1956–1973: I Believe Large Dams Provide an Exceptional …

Fig. 2.1 Gwembe Tonga village scene in 1956–57

strung out along the same degradation terrace on either side of my encampment under the Tamarind tree. Greatly increasing my independence in early 1957 was the Institute providing me with my own short wheelbase Land Rover. Elizabeth’s and my arrangement as colleagues was to meet at least once a fortnight to exchange experiences, ideas and typed field notes, the third copy of which were for the RLI. Over the years, I am unaware of any collaboration between colleagues stronger than ours, one result being that we frequently have been unaware of who first thought of a particular conclusion or hypothesis.

2.2 Anthropological and Human Ecological Research in the Central …

Fig. 2.2 Mazulu Village family in 1956–57

Fig. 2.3 Evening social gathering with women smoking their home-made gourd pipes

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2 1956–1973: I Believe Large Dams Provide an Exceptional …

Within a month of my arrival I had come to see the Middle Zambezi Valley as “an amazingly beautiful place1 … Every day I continue to learn something new and as the patterns of this society slowly emerge I find myself fascinated; the fitting together of facts into patterns both important and incidental is certainly provoking.” Among the villagers, I felt closest to Sialozi who was the most entrepreneurial hamlet head. Occasionally I accompanied him as he hunted big game with dogs and an old Portuguese muzzle loading gun. On one occasion, he pointed out the tracks of what may have been the last rhinoceros on the north bank of the Zambezi though rhinos were still relatively common on the south bank. On another occasion we had to seek help from a local government game guard to dispatch a large buffalo that Sialozi had wounded and which, now dead, we loaded into a trailer to take back to the village. During the previous dry season, Sialozi with his two wives had expanded Mazulu Village when he built a substantial new homestead outside of the current village. That was when I began to realize “what a messy business this resettlement is, and how much misunderstanding is connected with it. Sialozi is no man’s fool and I doubt that he would have built an entire new homestead if he actually knew he was to be moved. Now I would not be surprised if he refused to be moved entirely and waited until the water rose.” While both Elizabeth and I were both ‘loners,’ she was more content than I to spend weeks at a time in whichever village she was studying. I, on the other hand, wanted to combine my village time with local exploration and with excursions throughout the Middle Zambezi Valley. Those differences meshed well with our division of labor. Although we both collected “open ended” information on Gwembe Tonga activities and behavior, Elizabeth concentrated on social organization and belief systems while I was responsible for a detailed analysis of the local economy, the overall environment of the Middle Zambezi Valley, and how the Gwembe Tonga related to that environment. Those responsibilities not only gave me the opportunity to cover most of the valley but also to meet other knowledgeable outsiders dealing with Gwembe Valley geology, archaeology, vegetation, wildlife, and the Gwembe Tonga themselves. While Elizabeth and I were the only researchers concentrating on Gwembe Tonga ecology and social organization, Barry Reynolds was doing a detailed analysis of the people’s material culture while other of his colleagues at the Rhodes Livingstone Museum in Livingstone were concentrating on Gwembe archaeology as part of a broader Kariba Studies Program that included Geology, Zambezi fisheries and Ornithology. No question that all such researchers not only made important contributions to my work but also became friends as did the District Commissioner and his wife and three Pilgrim Holiness missionaries that had recently established the first Christian mission in Chipepo Chieftaincy.

1

ibid.

2.2 Anthropological and Human Ecological Research in the Central …

33

I also established a close friendship with Agricultural Supervisor C. Donald Nicholson. We were about the same age, with our friendship including driving to Uganda, with a climb up Kilimanjaro in route, where Don saw me off on the plane for the United States at the end of my fieldwork.

2.3

October 1957–June 1960: Back at Harvard’s Department of Anthropology to Complete My Ph.D. Dissertation

Writing my dissertation required special attention since it was supposed to be published by Manchester University Press as a complement to Elizabeth Colson’s The Social Organization of the Gwembe Tonga which was published in 1960 as part of the Kariba Studies Series. Knowing ahead of time that an acceptable manuscript was a guaranteed publication, as in fact occurred in 1962, was one of the major and exceptional benefits of my association with the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute since in a university-setting a published and well-reviewed book would speed one’s receiving academic tenure. I knew that I had more than enough data for the dissertation and the book (in fact the two manuscripts were almost identical). On the other hand, I was very nervous about passing my General Examinations because I had taken no graduate courses dealing with methods (including statistics), linguistics, and human biology. When the dreaded day arrived, I was invited to occupy the remaining empty seat at a rectangular table around which five faculty members were already present. Looking directly at me Professor Kluckhohn opened the discussion by asking me to define the difference between hair and fur. I assumed that Kluckhohn, as well as the others, considered it exceedingly unlikely that I would know the answer, the purpose of such a question presumably being to shake the candidate up a bit so as to see how he (in my case) would adjust to dealing with such a question and with the rest of the examination. I cannot remember the details of my answer but they were a very precise and very detailed analysis based on my earlier work with the Quarter Master Corp’s Climatic Research Laboratory since the difference was of critical importance not just to mountaineers but especially to the Eskimo for whom fur was an essential component of their cold weather clothing. Thereafter the examination went very well with fair, straightforward questions. I was told later that the length of my General Examination was one of the shortest, if not the shortest, in the history of the Department. Certainly Kluckhohn was pleased for afterward he told me that about eight weeks preparation should be sufficient before taking my Special Examination. That examination subsequently went well in part because in preparation I met individually with the two faculty members least familiar with my work and because the examination also dealt with my dissertation.

2 1956–1973: I Believe Large Dams Provide an Exceptional …

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2.4

Initial Commitment to Long Term Studies of Dam Resettlement

The possibility of complementing Elizabeth and my longterm research on Kariba resettlement with similar Aswan High Dam research must have first occurred to me in September 1960 when I became a candidate for a one year job in either Egypt or the Sudan, either of which could involve Nubian resettlement research in connection with the High Dam. On November 30, 1960, I wrote my Harvard graduate school colleague George Appell that: Elizabeth Colson and I would commence in September 1962 our first Kariba restudy and over the years would have a great opportunity to study the process of social change, noting what changes have occurred and then attempting to find out why. Since I think this kind of study has much to offer social anthropology, I want to make an analogous one of another giant resettlement project that would also involve the relocation of alluvial farmers. Aswan is the logical choice… Needless to say follow up of both Kariba and Aswan through time would be most exciting … I will not even speculate on the extent to which regularities might be observed in the general processes which would be at work … To me this kind of study offers the greatest degree of laboratory control outside of small group studies.

2.5

Financing, Planning and Implementing Longitudinal Academic Research on the Resettlement Process

While writing my dissertation I realized that resettlement in connection with large dams gave researchers a seldom-realized opportunity in social science to carry out research in the field under quasi-laboratory conditions. In this context, the Kariba Lake Basin “becomes a vast laboratory for the study of cultural and environmental change.”2 Since the planning of large dams is apt to take more than five years, researchers have the opportunity to undertake pre-project environmental and socio-economic research before construction is completed, the reservoir filled, and people are resettled. Pre-dam benchmark3 studies therefore must be undertaken at the earliest possible date, since project-related environmental and social changes can be expected to occur as soon as a decision has been made to proceed with a large dam. Once such a decision is made, governments are unlikely, for example, to build new infrastructure like schools and clinics in the area that will be inundated, while those who will be resettled may be advised not to build or improve housing, start Scudder, Thayer (1960). Part 1. “Environment and a Culture: Valley Tonga resettlement is a case study in human geography.” Natural History. April. 3 I use the phrase “bench-mark” as opposed to “base line” studies because we are dealing with dynamic open-ended systems. 2

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new business enterprises, plant trees, nor clear new fields. On the other hand, the commencement of preparatory works such as access roads and the arrival of a better-trained immigrant labor force will begin the incorporation of what was previously a relatively isolated population into a wider and more complex political economy. One would like to assume that such an opportunity for fundamental and policy relevant research, would be accompanied by a significant number of health and socioeconomic researchers funded from government, university and/or private sector sources. Yet I subsequently learned that the detailed Kariba studies (funded by a copper company through Fosbrooke’s initiative) and Aswan Nubian Ethnographic Survey (Ford Foundation funded on the initiative of Robert Fernea and AUC’s Social Research Centre) were unique not just at the time but perhaps until this day! Lack of capacity, as opposed to an inexcusable lack of interest, is not the problem. In 1980, for example, the National Science Foundation in the United States initiated a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program to support “fundamental ecological research that requires long time periods and large spatial scales.” Initially research was funded on six sites, with the number of sites currently expanded to a network of 26 sites. Results to date have been impressive. Scientists working at the Hubbard Site, for example, “pioneered the small watershed approach which transformed the study of forests by using whole water sheds as living laboratories;” an approach presumably applicable to the catchments of large dams. The LTER Network Office, currently located at the University of New Mexico, was established in 1983. Multiple functions include “facilitating communication among the LTER sites and between the LTER Program and other scientific communities.”4 Planning and conduct of collaborative research is supported along with appropriate training. Current staff now include a social scientist due to an increasing interest in what is now referred to as Long Term Socio-Ecological Research.5 Why is there not a similar program for long-term environmental and social science research on mega-projects such as the largest dams or on other comparative, long-term issues of relevance to planning for the global future? Even more appalling is the extent to which governments and financial institutions have ignored adverse environmental and social impacts of large dams. In John Gay’s and my statistical analysis of resettlement outcomes of the 46 dams for which there was sufficient data, the estimated number of people to be resettled was only 50% of the final count. How can you plan, budget, and staff an adequate resettlement process when data used during feasibility studies refers to only half of the final number to be moved?

4

The Long Term Ecological Network. LTER Home Office. http://www.lternet.edu/sites/Ino. See Redman, Charles L. et al. (2004). “Integrating Social Science into the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network: Social Dimensions of Ecological Change and Ecological Dimensions of Social Change.

5

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Lack of relevant data also is unavailable to analyze development outcomes of large dams. In 2000, for example, the World Commission on Dams reported that “one of the most disturbing … findings was the lack of monitoring of the impacts of dams and the complete failure to conduct project ex-post evaluation of performance and impacts.” Such a situation “suggests little obligation on the part of powerful centralized agencies and donors to account for the costs and benefits incurred. Perhaps more critically, it signals a failure to actively engage in learning from experience in both the adaptive management of existing facilities and in the design and appraisal of new dams.”6

2.6

June 1960–August 1961: Postdoctoral Fellowship in African Ecology at the London School of Economics (LSE)

Our plan on our arrival in London was to spend as much of the summer as possible traveling in Ireland and the United Kingdom before beginning the academic year at LSE. For camping, we purchased a Bedford Dormobile which was a British version of the better-known Volkswagen Camper. It was ideal for a family of four, with the children sleeping on fold-out cots under canvas roofing that extended upward from the roof like an accordion’s bellows while the Dormobile’s seats converted into a double bed. A stove and sink were also provided. In North Ireland, we based ourselves with friends in Comber outside of Belfast while exploring County Down and the northern and north-western portion of the Irish Republic. Especially memorable was camping in Donegal just above a seaside cliff on which puffins and other sea birds were nesting. From Ireland, we took the ferry to Stranraer in Scotland which, with emphasis on the West Highlands, we covered from thirteen different campsites. Throughout we avoided crowded and noisy official camping areas in favor of seeking out isolated and scenic spots well off the major highways where usually we would be the only campers. Back in London, we moved into the currently vacant apartment that Fred Dunn and his family were renting. Finalizing my Ph.D. dissertation for the publisher, my mind was occupied by the Gwembe Tonga when I happened to notice the name H. Habanyama on a letter delivered in the morning mail. Four years earlier, I had met an H. Habanyama in the Middle Zambezi Valley. At that time, he was the Chair of the Gwembe Tonga Rural Council and was, to the best of my knowledge, the only Gwembe Tonga with some university education. I was writing a note asking if the H. Habanyama on the envelope was the same man, when Habanyama himself appeared and was indeed the same man. He was in England as a member of the

6

Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making. The Report of the World Commission on Dams (2000). London: Earthscan. Page 184.

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Moncton Commission studying the constitutional problems of the Central African Federation. A search for our own rental property until our June 1961 departure for Egypt exceeded even our highest expectations. The cottage we moved into on September 1 belonged to two artists who were in the process of fixing it up; hence, the rent was low since some construction would be ongoing during our occupancy. Convenient was a nearby County Council School for Lydee and Alice whose teacher helped Eliza arrange a program for observing the local school system. As with dwellings on either side, our cottage was built into the wall surrounding Bushy Park and was directly across a major road from Hampton Court Palace whose garden I walked through on days that I caught the train into London. As for Bushy Park, we were told that it had originally been the royal park for the palace and that our cottage had been inhabited by a royal gamekeeper. The game, literally accessible from our bedroom, was still there in the form of several species of deer. Needless to say, our daughters never had had such a large and intriguing back yard (the rutting season had begun at the time we moved in); indeed we had to set territorial limits beyond which they were not allowed to go. Early in the morning, it was a beautiful sight to see the deer moving through the ground mist. Daily Eliza made a large batch of oatmeal for the family and the deer some of which would be waiting at our open window. My fellowship appeared to get off to a bad start when I went for my initial meeting with Isaac Schapera who was supposed to be my LSE supervisor. Actually I never got inside the doorway of his study, for on telling him who I was, he told me that he was too busy this year to be my supervisor so would I please leave. As so often has occurred during my career, an initial setback provided me with the opportunity to seek and find an alternative which occurred when Raymond Firth— certainly one of the most famous anthropologists at that time—invited me to join his Seminar on Theory which met once a week. Other participants were mainly graduate students from different countries, a third of whom had done fieldwork. There had been nothing like Firth’s Seminar while I had been at Harvard. His topic this term was Theories of Exchange. Subsequently I also was invited by Schapera to discuss my fieldwork with him in his office. Not only did I get to like him, but I profited immensely from his knowledge of southwestern Africa. Since my fellowship had no requirements on how I spent my time, I soon found that the London area was a goldmine of research materials housed in various libraries and institutes all over the city. Soon I was spending only two days a week at LSE with the rest of my time spent either reading and writing at home, or in other libraries. I also attended lectures elsewhere, knowledge of which I heard about after I was invited to join an inter-staff seminar that drew participants from a wide range of institutions in and around London. While my reading focused on African human ecology, I also benefited from Estyn Evans’ detailed human and physical geographical work in the Mourne Mountains of southeastern North Ireland and from J. Fraser Darling’s books on the Red Deer and the West Highlands of Scotland. By coincidence, Darling also had just published in 1960 a book on Wildlife in an African Territory, which happened

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to be Northern Rhodesia, where Darling concluded that the decline in ungulates was primarily due to competition with cattle and small stock over grazing and forage. A day that I spent in early 1961 with Darling at his manor house in the Berkshire Downs was a highpoint as was being asked by Oxford University’s Kenneth Kirkwood to give a lecture in his refresher course for Colonial Civil Servants for which I read up on ten government-sponsored African resettlement projects. Another high point was Eliza and I entertaining, during our last evening in London, Gwembe District Commissioner Leonard Butler who was on home leave. March 1961, we spent mainly in southern France where we visited a Harvard team of archaeologists near Les Eyezies in the Dordogne River Basin. We also made a number of camping trips to the New Forest in the South of England; one of the most fascinating forest ecosystems that I have visited. Forests of giant beech and oaks, with an undercover of holly and shrubs, are interspersed with open moors. On one visit, we were inundated by a large herd of pigs that swept around the Dormobile on both sides, as they fed on fallen acorns that covered the forest floor. As with the semi-wild ponies roaming the forest at will, no one was tending them. A fantastic sight really which took me back 4,000 years or more since presumably this was the way pigs were kept during the European Neolithic. It was easy to see how much at home they felt. They fed in circles of different diameter, returning past the Dormobile several times until hardly an acorn remained. Another activity was for me to find a job for the 1961–62 academic year. Rather than return to the United States for the fifteen months between the end of my Fellowship and the Gwembe Tonga restudy scheduled to begin in September 1962, my preference was to find a research or teaching position that would allow us to live in Africa or the Middle East. Colleagues had suggested two possibilities as early as September 1960 either of which would exceed my initial expectations. One, for 12 months would be as an Assistant Professor at the American University in Cairo (AUC). Elizabeth Colson was responsible for the other possibility. Concerned that lengthy fieldwork in connection with the Aswan High Dam might adversely affect my year’s restudy of the Gwembe Tonga the next year, she told her colleague Ian Cunnison at the University of Khartoum that I might be interested in a year’s teaching appointment there. Cunnison then wrote me in September that “Rumor has it that you may be interested in coming to the Sudan … Would you like to come and spend a year here teaching?” The Ford Foundation having agreed to provide $100,000 for the Nubian Ethnographic Survey, my preference was definitely for the Egyptian position. What a coincidence to have an opportunity within a seven year period to carry out two bench mark studies of different ethnic groups prior to their resettlement in connection with mega dam projects. The Egyptian possibility was even more attractive because the director of the Nubian Survey was AUC faculty member Robert Fernea who had been one of the two other anthropologists who received a Danforth Fellowship with me in 1954. Anthropologist Alan Horton, who I had met at Harvard, was the person alerting me to the AUC option. Currently he was AUC’s Dean of the Graduate Faculty and was familiar with my Gwembe Tonga research. Hence, the various coincidences

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surroundings the Nubian High Dam option were surprisingly similar to those that led to Elizabeth Colson inviting me to join her in 1956. On March 10, 1961, I wrote my parents that I had just received a cable from AUC’s President stating ‘Please confirm appointment on basis semester Cairo, semester research and summer writing at Salary $6,500.’ En route to Egypt, we left England for Norway via the ferry from Hull to Bergen. Norway, with outstanding camping, ethnic museums and scenery, was the highlight of our trip through Sweden (in Stockholm I received the first half of The Ecology of the Gwembe Tonga for proof reading), Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Italy where we boarded the Agamemnon for the boat trip to Alexandria, Egypt.

2.7 2.7.1

The Aswan High Dam and Further Field Work in Central Africa Family Issues

Our Egyptian experience preceded our arrival in Alexandria when Eliza met on the boat two American women who were married to Egyptians. They alerted another Egyptian family who met us at the dock. Dr. Fawzy, an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Alexandria, expedited the clearance of the Dormobile and our luggage (two trunks included) through customs. In Cairo, the University provided us with a ground floor flat in the suburb of Maadi in which we lived until our August 1962 departure for Zambia. Like our London quarters, our lodgings were ideal. Maadi was also a relatively quiet (for Egypt) neighborhood and within walking distance to a shopping center, the children’s school (to which Eliza took them daily on their bicycles), and a social club with swimming pool. A day later, we were visited by the suffrage7 who previously had been associated with the house for 21 years. Currently employed by an unappreciative family, Sayed, as he wished to be called, wanted to return to our flat. His presence throughout our stay made a good flat a paradise. Trained over 20 years when the flat was inhabited by a French woman, his cooking was outstanding. He also wanted to take over all family activities where outside help would be needed, babysitting included. Especially important, we became very fond of him as a person. Complementing my professional work at the University’s Social Research Center, Eliza worked afternoons with Egyptian colleagues at a low-income children’s welfare center. Among a wide range of her experiences at the Center and elsewhere, by far the most traumatic was pulling a small child off the railroad tracks

7

There really is no position in the United States equivalent to a Suffrage who has complete responsibility for maintenance and protection of the house as well as being family caregiver and cook.

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literally seconds before a train would have killed it. Almost immediately, she was surrounded by a threatening group of village women who were furious at the rescue that she had just completed. Looking at the child in her arms, Eliza realized that he was so severely handicapped by Down’s Syndrome, and his mother so poor, that a quick death was essential for family welfare. Fortunately, a policeman was close by who quieted the women and asked Eliza did she realize what she had done? Her reply was, “I know now. I would never interfere in such a way again.” On her return home, Eliza told Sayed “I have done a terrible thing.” He replied, “I know” which illustrates how fast news can spread in a verbally oriented society.

2.7.2

The Aswan High Dam and the Egyptian Nubian Ethnographic Survey

Construction of the Aswan High Dam in Upper Egypt lasted over a ten-year period between 1960 and 1970. Filling of the reservoir began in 1964 by which time it was necessary to resettle 48,000 Egyptian Nubians.8 By the time the 500 km long reservoir, which is still one of the largest in the world, had backed up into the Sudan, over 50,000 Sudanese Nubians had also to be resettled; in their case along the Atbara river in the Central Sudan’s Khashm el Girba area. Well aware of the sacrifice the Egyptian Nubian people were making, the Government’s resettlement policy was, I believe, the first national effort in the world to make resettlers project beneficiaries by providing them with their own large irrigation project. It was also designed to better integrate them within Egyptian society. Those two goals were to be achieved by resettling the majority downstream from Aswan in the new resettlement town of Kom Ombo adjacent to the future irrigation project. The Government carried out in 1956 and 1957 the initial social surveys for planning purposes on the location and number of Nubian communities. Then, during January and February 1960, 60 social workers and 165 Nubian teachers from local schools completed the first social survey of families in the 536 resettler communities. Later that year the Ministry of Culture provided a boat to enable 20 artists and writers to visit the area and its Nubian inhabitants and to record their impressions. Funded by the Ford Foundation, 1960 was also the year that the Government requested AUC’ s Social Research Center to carry out an ethnographic survey. Unfortunately, however, the survey did not get under way until late 1961 and 1962 so that there was a disconnect from the start between the government’s resettlement timetable and the availability of ethnographic data that could be useful for resettlement planning. 8

Also requiring resettlement, were about 5,000 non-Nubian Arabic speakers.

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Indeed, it was not until January 1964 that preliminary Ethnographic Survey results were presented during a two-day workshop in Aswan. That was when physical resettlement to Kom Ombo already was halfway completed. No wonder, government planners were sensitive to what they perceived as critical, after-the-fact, comments during the workshop on their resettlement planning and implementation. On the other hand, various meetings between Robert Fernea and high officials in the Ministry of Social Affairs before the commencement of physical removal, may well have had some influence with those Egyptian authorities responsible for the resettlement process. Though I was asked by the Ministry during the first half of 1962 to write on possible applicability of lessons learned from Kariba resettlement, I doubt my report had any significant impact at that late date. AUC’s Nubian Ethnological Survey involved more than 20 Egyptian and expatriate researchers between 1961 and 1964. The Survey included five major studies. Two were detailed studies of representative Nubian communities in the future High Dam basin. The third study dealt with Nubian circulatory labor migrants to Cairo, while the fourth was Abdel Hamid el Zein’s and my human ecological survey of Nubian communities between the High Dam site and the Sudanese border. The fifth study by Hussein Fahim and John Kennedy was in a community inhabited mainly by Nubians living immediately downstream from Aswan who had been resettled in 1933 when the original Aswan Dam, completed in 1902, had been heightened for the second time. A number of topical studies were also completed. The High Dam resettlement in Egypt was unique in being the fourth time that some Nubians had been involuntarily removed from their villages along the Nile. The first was due to the 1898–1902 construction of the original Aswan Dam. Most resettlers at that time chose to resettle further upstream along the Nile, with the same choice made by those who had to move either a second time or a first time when the dam was heightened in 1912. By the time the dam was heightened for a second time in 1933 there was little unoccupied land upstream, so only a few households moved for the third time while the majority resettled downstream below Aswan. High Dam reservoir formation would inundate all remaining land along the upper Nile in Egypt so that all communities had to move downstream below Aswan, with an unknown number of households moving for the fourth time. The width of arable land for the Nubians’ flood recession agriculture between both banks of the Nile and the desert had rarely exceeded a hundred yards, so that even before the construction of the original Aswan Dam, Nubian labor migration and permanent emigration to the cities of Egypt and the Sudan had occurred. For that reason, Peter Geiser’s study of Nubian migrants to Cairo was especially interesting because Egyptian Nubians, and perhaps the Yoruba in Nigeria, may well have been the first population in Africa in which a majority already had become urban residents (Figs. 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7 and 2.8). In designing Zein’s and my survey, we worked closely with Geiser and Mohammed Firky while they were designing their sampling procedure. In January 1962, the four of us rented a felucca with crew and traveled the 320 km up the Nile

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Fig. 2.4 The village has more extensive cultivated land because of access to a government floating pump in contrast to the narrow fringe of recession cultivation on the opposite side of the Nile

Fig. 2.5 Three Gorges flood recession agriculture on the edge of the city of Chongqing

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Fig. 2.6 Upland extension of Chongqing flood recession agriculture through the use of wells

Fig. 2.7 Chongqing farmer using well water to extend his farmland on the edge of the Yangtze River

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Fig. 2.8 Three Gorges hillside agriculture with cities on the far side of the Yangtze

between Aswan and the Sudan Border. In route, we stopped in Geiser’s sample of 66 of the 536 villages that the government had listed for resettlement from which he picked over 1000 household heads from which 747 were interviewed in Cairo. Rough labor migration rates in those 66 villages ranged from 50 to 100% that presumably was one of the highest rates in the world. Zein and I then picked four villages with high rates and four with low rates for further study when we returned for a month’s surveying in mid-February. Not surprisingly, our four villages without a single male over the age of 13 were the closest to the current Aswan dam. As for the four upstream villages, their greater economic resources varied significantly. One village, close to one of the Nile’s cataracts, was a well-known base for the feluccas that sailed up and down the Nile provisioning villages and transporting their citizens. Two other villages were close to the Sudan border and had higher per capita access to fertile alluvial soils. Ballana, in which the Ferneas were doing one of the community studies, also had access to a government agricultural project served by pumps on pontoons. The other village, Adindan, was the closest to the border and the least affected by the original Aswan Dam. Persian water wheels (sakia) were used to irrigate riverine alluvia in front of the village that also had cultivation access to a mid-river island. The data that we collected have never been adequately analyzed. Interviews and other material are currently available in the Archives of the Social Research Center. By far the most detailed document drawing on our data was Zein’s 1966 300 page Master’s Thesis on Water and Wheel in a Nubian Village: A Study of Adindan.

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According to Eickelman, scholars who have examined the thesis “agree that it undoubtedly constitutes the most comprehensive account of the technology and social organization of irrigation practices available for the Middle East.”9 My publications are a 42 page article in Robert A. Fernea, editor (1966), Volume I: Contemporary Egyptian Nubia on “The Economic Basis of Egyptian Nubian Labour Migration” and my 2016 Aswan High Dam Resettlement of Egyptian Nubians which documents from the 1960s to 2016 one of the very few long term studies of the large dam resettlement process.

2.8 2.8.1

1962–63 Gwembe Tonga Restudy Family Issues

Before Eliza and I could leave Egypt for Northern Rhodesia in August 1962 we had to decide whether or not our two daughters (now age 10 and 8) should accompany us or return to a boarding school in the United States. Neither option was desirable. Boarding schools in the United States for youngsters do not have the favorable reputation that they do in England. On the other hand, if we took them with us to the Middle Zambezi Valley the risk to their health would be much more serious than had been the case in Egypt where both had been treated for bacillary dysentery and trachoma. That was bad enough, but in the Middle Zambezi Valley, these were only two of a wide range of potentially fatal tropical diseases. After much correspondence with Eliza’s and my parents, we decided to register the children in a boarding school close to my parents in Woodbury, Connecticut with whom they could easily visit on weekends. On the long flight back to the United States, they were accompanied by a friend of ours who delivered them to my parents. In August, we drove the Dormobile down to Port Said to be shipped to Mombasa, Kenya to await our arrival by plane. Our first major stop was to visit Henry Fosbrooke who was now living in a beautiful location in northern Tanganyika on the edge of a volcanic lake on which I learned how to waterski. Next stop was at a lodge in Tanganyika’s Lake Manyara National Park where Eliza saw her first rhino in the wild. Thereafter on the way to Lusaka, where we joined Elizabeth Colson, we stayed at several small pleasant inns, with well-kept English gardens, which tended to be owned and run by retired colonial officials and their wives.

9

Zein subsequently did research at Lamu on the Kenya coast for his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. When he died of a heart attack at 44, he was an Associate Professor at Temple University. His career was outlined in Dale F. Eichelman’s “A Search for an Anthropology of Islam: Abdel Hamid el-Zein.” International Journal of Middle East Studies. 13 (1981): 361–365.

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2.8.2

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A Brief Introduction to the 1962–63 Gwembe Tonga Restudy

This section is brief because a separate volume will be devoted to Elizabeth Colson’s and my 60 year long term study of the Gwembe Tonga. After picking up a Land Rover, tenting and other equipment at the Rhodes Livingstone Institute, Eliza and I proceeded to Mazulu Village. Because of insufficient arable land in the Kariba Reservoir basin, Mazulu was one of the villages in Chief Chipepo’s area from which 6,000 people had been relocated to the Lusitu Region downriver from the Kariba Dam (and, alas, out of sight of the Zambezi approximately a kilometer away). Though with considerably less room between them (indeed the closest houses in two of the villages were visible), the three villages adjacent to Mazulu were the same ones that had formed a single neighborhood on the banks of the Zambezi before relocation since the Administration wanted to keep neighborhoods of villages together to the extent possible. The other Chipepo neighborhoods were settled on both sides of the Lusitu River that was a major Zambezi Tributary that flooded during the rainy season and usually dried up before the end of the dry season. Host villages close to the Kariba Gorge Hills were predominantly Gwembe Tonga who lived in Simamba’s chieftaincy. The Lusitu area, however, was entirely in Sikongo’s chieftaincy where most of the host population belonged to a different ethnic group—the Goba. Before the 6,000 Chipepo people could arrive, the Colonial Administration had to “obtain” Chief Sikongo’s “permission” for the resettlers not just to live permanently within his chieftaincy but to also remain under the authority of their own Chief Chipepo. Though the necessary permission was given, future host-relocatee conflict and lawsuits could be anticipated and, in fact, have occurred. The District Administration, though well aware that their decision was problem prone, had selected the Lusitu area for the 6,000 relocatees for two major reasons. One was that it enabled the resettlers to remain in the Middle Zambezi Valley and under the jurisdiction of their own chief. The other was that the land was not only close to the Zambezi but both fertile and relatively unoccupied. On the other hand, few Tonga were willing to relocate there because the Lusitu was nearly 100 km away from their previous village and because the area was inhabited and under the political and ritual jurisdiction of a different ethnic group. Though many Goba were gradually switching their language to Chitonga, the dominant language of the district’s other six chieftaincies, their culture differed in significant ways from the Chipepo Tonga’s. The Goba, for example, buried their dead in cemeteries while the Gwembe Tonga buried their dead close to the house of the deceased. Moreover, the Lusitu had a bad reputation since population densities in the past had been much larger as suggested by the relatively small number of current residents living near arable but uncultivated land and the presence of a significant number of graveyards—one of which was located in a sacred grove close to new Mazulu Village.

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What was responsible for the death of so many people in the not too distant past? To Europeans, it was easy to attribute the high death rate to the influenza epidemic of 1918, or to small pox or to the Rhodesian variety of human trypanosomiasis that was known to have wiped out relatively isolated populations in the past. But, already under stress due to the threat of involuntary resettlement, it was easy for the Gwembe Tonga to attribute the high death rate to a virulent form of sorcery. All such concerns about shifting to the Lusitu became background issues that led before resettlement to the Chisamu War which occurred in Miyaka neighborhood of which Mazulu was one of four villages. We built our Mazulu homestead under several leafless acacia trees, with the Dormobile converted into a bedroom with the rear doors opening into a thatched enclosure covered by the Dormobile tent where we could bathe and eat in private. The RLI tent became a storeroom in which the most important item was a kerosene-fueled refrigerator over which we placed a blanket that we wetted down in the morning to help fridge-kept beer and other items cool. As in 1956–57, our other shelters included tents and thatched huts for our staff of three (Pickelose as cook, Wilson as camp assistant, and Edward as my assistant, while Eliza hired Chief Chipepo’s daughter, Rhoda, as her assistant), a thatched cooking shelter and an outhouse (chimbuzi in chiTonga). Daily, Mazulu villagers, and especially women and children, passed us on an adjacent path to get water from a resettlementprovided borehole with pump that also served the new primary school. The main purpose of our 1962–63 research was to assess the impacts of involuntary resettlement on the Gwembe Tonga in the Northern Rhodesian portion of the Middle Zambezi Valley and on how they responded to those impacts. Elizabeth would concentrate on Musulumba Village that was also moved to the Lusitu, Sinafala which moved a short distance inland from the reservoir and Siameja which had been moved well inland into the foothills in the upper portion of the reservoir basin. Showing sampling difficulties involved with mega-projects, Elizabeth had studied Musulumba in 1956–1957 as a hinterland village that would not be resettled, but in fact had to move following the decision to heighten the Kariba Dam. Eliza and my research had two broad foci. First, I would repeat a very detailed study of Mazulu with special attention to resettlement impacts on village society and culture and on the current village economy. Eliza would study resettlement and primary school impacts on children and women’s responses to increasing impacts of resettlement-induced development on their lives. She also completed sufficient experiments on the development of the thinking ability of Mazulu children to show that Tonga children learned how to conserve in the same fashion as in the United States. Our second focus was to examine in detail Gwembe Tonga responses to, and impacts of, such new post-resettlement situations as increasing competition for farmland. Also important were the implications of the government’s efficient tsetse fly control operations that allowed not just more cattle in the Gwembe Valley, but also accelerated a shift from hoe cultivation to use of ox-drawn plows.

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Of equal importance was analysis of Gwembe participation in the Kariba reservoir fishery which provided the main source of new funds for financing children’s education, small businesses such as village stores and bars, and in general a higher household and homestead living standard. We were also interested in assessing how the Gwembe Tonga were responding to their increasing absorption within a widening political economy with Zambian Independence expected in the middle 1960s. Eliza’s presence greatly improved my existence, but she found the poverty, ill health and lack of opportunities for village children and women not just inexcusable in the twentieth century but very difficult for her to have to observe day after day. While holding a sick child, she also caught infectious hepatitis that required four days hospitalization plus recuperation at the Rhodes Livingstone Institute. On the other hand, there were also memorable shared experiences. While driving to Mana Pools National Park on the south bank of the Zambezi, we decided to have a picnic lunch at the edge of a small stream that we had just driven across. Half way to the edge of the water, we found our way blocked by a pride of lions resting in the sun with their cubs. With the lionesses looking directly at us, we slowly backed up and re-entered the Land Rover. On another occasion, when we were driving along a dirt road near where a fish trader had been killed by an elephant,10 we spotted elephants on both sides of the road. As two elephants flapped their ears ominously, I stopped and began to back up. Then, feeling adventurist, we turned around, having decided to back up past them yet able to beat a rapid retreat the way we had come should they charge. When we were about 40 feet away, the elephants’ ears began to flap even more ominously until one trumpeted and charged. Two of our Tonga passengers in the back began yelling that the elephant was closing on us while Eliza was in seventh heaven, these being her first real elephants that had not been in a national park. The charge was aborted, however, as the land rover roared away in a cloud of dust as we picked up speed.11 Another change from 1956–57 was that the District Administration, perhaps partially in anticipation of Tonga—Goba problems, had established a sub-Boma in the Lusitu area. There we met and socialized with the District Officer and other district officials. On Christmas, we arrived for the celebrations with a Knob-nosed Goose that I had shot for a lavish meal that included several species of game (a Government Game Ranger was also a guest). On another occasion, when Eliza was still recuperating in Lusaka, I joined the District Officer on a boat trip up the Zambezi to the Kariba Gorge. On our return, we counted 108 hippos one of which had just given birth.

10

Gwembe elephants were known for their dislike of people, presumably because many in the past had been wounded by Tonga hunters using home-made gun power and ammunition (from assorted nails and other pieces of metal) fired from muzzle-loading Portuguese made shotguns. 11 I also have been chased by a hippo at night, which, in my Land Rover, I tried to scare from devouring maize, beans and squash in a Mazulu river bank garden.

2.9 September 1963: Back to Harvard as a Research Fellow …

2.9

49

September 1963: Back to Harvard as a Research Fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies

During the first half of 1960s, my major goals appeared to be limited to two outcomes that were potentially achievable in a number of ways. The first outcome was to improve our family’s living standards. Though I believe that spending three years overseas between 1960 and 1963 was in our long-term interest, for over twenty years of marriage Eliza and I had lived what our friends and relatives would call “a hand to mouth existence.” Such an existence was much harder on Eliza (whose career goals were interrupted by our being in four different countries for less than a year in each case) and our children (both having attended five different schools during a four year period) than on me. During those years, we were largely dependent on fellowships and scholarships, help from both Eliza’s and my parents, and incredible good luck. The good luck more often than not involved being in the right place at the right time. Hence meeting Elizabeth Colson in 1956; complementing within a three-year period Kariba resettlement with Nubian resettlement; and now, with no jobless interruptions to date, receiving a post-doctoral research fellowship at Harvard that would enable me to write up some of the Nubian material; and to search, from an excellent location, for a relatively permanent job. By the end of January, however, the employment problem appeared to be solved with two of my former Harvard Professors informed me that Harvard was a good bet for a research fellowship in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. In March, the Harvard fellowship was unofficially confirmed to start on about September 1 for a twelve month period. During the fall of 1963, I prepared a paper on “The Economic Basis of Egyptian Nubian Labour Migration” to present at the January 1964 Symposium on Contemporary Nubia to be held in Aswan. It was subsequently published in 1966 as part of the Symposium proceedings. Looking for a job was my primary activity for the next three months. Four possibilities interested me. The first, which I accepted, was a temporary four-month consultancy in Africa with the World Bank. Initially the consultancy was to start in December 1963 but postponement until May 1963 allowed me to sign on for four months.12 The other three possibilities were for potentially “permanent” jobs. The first would be a staff appointment with the American Universities Field Staff that was a 1951 outgrowth from the Institute of Current World Affairs. Staff was selected to live in various areas around the world—Central Africa if I had been selected, and every two years to return to the United States for a year to meet with students and faculty at participating universities. The selection committee, which included various presidents of the member universities, decided, appropriately in my opinion,

12

My experiences and learning on the World Bank assignment are dealt with in Part III.

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2 1956–1973: I Believe Large Dams Provide an Exceptional …

that my interests centered more on site specific research than on general reporting on a country’s general affairs. The second and third possibilities led to Assistant Professor job offers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At Caltech, I would be the only anthropologist in a Division of Humanities and Social Sciences while at MIT I would be a junior member of a large internationally oriented and famous Political Economy program. In April, I visited Caltech, gave a lecture and investigated Pasadena including children’s schools. Being close by, I was able to visit MIT on several occasions. The decision between the two Institutes was not an easy one. At MIT, I would have graduate students of my own and stimulating colleagues in related fields. On the other hand, during my interviews I was told what kind of courses I would be asked to teach. At Caltech, it was unlikely that I would have graduate students and colleagues with relevant interests, but as the only person in my field, I would have much greater freedom to do “my own thing” without the interference of a heavy teaching load and administrative duties. Caltech’s higher salary offer was also a factor in our decision to accept the Caltech offer since as a family we had been accumulating debts rather than savings.

2.10

1964–1968: The First Five Caltech Years

The Scudder family proceeded to California from Cambridge, Massachusetts in two vehicles. In our VW bug, Eliza followed the Dormobile which I had exported to New York from what was then Portuguese East Africa. Containing various Gwembe Tonga artifacts, it had arrived in the United States with quite few African coffee beans inside which I assume leaked out of bales when the Dormobile presumably was commandeered as an additional container in a heavily loaded freighter. We arrived in the Pasadena area on a late September afternoon in dense smog to take up residence in a house in Sierra Madre rented from a Caltech faculty member who was on a two-year assignment at India’s Institute of Technology in Kanpur. Our integration as a family into the Pasadena area was speedy since both children had been accepted at the first rate Polytechnic School across the street from the southwest corner of Caltech. Eliza was hired a few months later as a pre-school head teacher at Pasadena’s Pacific Oaks Children’s School that was a West Coast version of the Nursery Training School of Boston that Eliza had attended.13 As the only tenure-track anthropologist that Caltech had ever hired, I was initially treated as both a curiosity and a mascot. For several years, we were “adopted” as a family by the Caltech physicists who invited us to their parties and introduced

13

Abigail Eliot, a former director of the Boston school, had played a major role in conceptualizing the Pacific Oaks Children’s School’s curriculum and orientation.

2.10

1964–1968: The First Five Caltech Years

51

us to isolated areas for camping in the Southern California deserts. I especially remember our first morning in a remote canyon in the Anzo-Borego Desert State Park when breakfast was preceded by heavily liquored Bloody Marys.14 Hiking in the surrounding mountains was also rewarding. Two, 10,000 foot Mt. Baldy (or San Antonio) and 11,500 San Gregonio, also provided winter ascents up snow and ice covered ridges and glissades from the summit down large bowls. As a hiking, climbing, and tennis companion, Richard Schuster, Caltech’s Director of Development, was also my best friend until his tragic death during the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 on May 25th 1979. He was returning from Caltech business in Chicago at the time and the next day we had plans for one more hike.15 As for my academic activities at Caltech, I was a free spirit who was allowed complete freedom to choose what courses to teach. A member of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, I joined and voted with the small but growing group of social scientists. From my first day at Caltech I was determined to make it clear that I had come to the Institute to do research first and teaching second. During my visit the previous April I had learned that academic staff in other divisions usually taught only one course a quarter whereas the main responsibility of the Humanities and Social Division was seen as teaching with faculty expected to teach two courses a quarter. That requirement, however, did not mean that there were no distinguished and well-published scholars in the Division, especially in History and Literature. Not objecting to my insisting on only one class a quarter, the Division chair also allowed me to determine how often my class would meet. My decision was to teach one two and a half hour class a week in the evening. That arrangement would allow me to accept, on short notice, overseas research-related opportunities for up to three weeks by teaching two successive classes before I left and two more on my return. When, on returning from such a trip, a colleague asked me if I was just returning; I joked that “no, I was just leaving.” That answer led to the myth of my invisibility since I was absent when I was present and present when absent. When I came to Caltech as an Assistant Professor in 1964, my Ph.D. dissertation had already been published by Manchester University Press as a well-received book. While that presumably would have sped up my promotion to a tenured Associate Professor, the whole process was reduced to less than two years because I received an offer of Associate Professor with tenure at the University of Illinois in 1965. In response to the University of Illinois’ offer, Caltech not only promoted me to tenure, but raised my salary to the extent that Eliza and I were able to buy our first, and only, house that spring. Our house hunt had started the previous year when we marked on topographical maps locations where we would like to live within a 15–

14

On another occasion, when ascending an adjacent ridge, we came across a small herd of mountain sheep that were still sleeping behind a large rock. Close up, they were much larger than I had assumed they would be. 15 Many of our hikes in the San Gabriel Mountains also included Caltech biologist James Bonner and physicist Robert Christy.

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2 1956–1973: I Believe Large Dams Provide an Exceptional …

20 min drive from Caltech and the Pacific Oaks’ Children’s School. All were in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains either on a canyon edge or within a canyon. Our real estate agent was also a Pacific Oaks trustee, and a friend of Eliza’s, so he took our preferences seriously, especially after showing us two nice in-town properties which we rejected. I remember vividly the morning he telephoned that a house literally on the edge of Eaton Canyon in the unincorporated community of Altadena was about to come on the market. On the way to Berkeley to visit Elizabeth Colson, my detour past the driveway was sufficient for Eliza to visit the house the next day and for us to buy it the day following. Early in my third year as an associate professor, I requested the Division chair, Hallett Smith, to initiate the promotion to professor process. He was surprised by the request since promotions for teaching faculty occurred less frequently and did not require outside letters. My position was that with one book, two book chapters and four articles behind me, I would be considered qualified for promotion at other first class universities. Still not convinced that was the case, Hallett agreed that I could pioneer, as the first research-oriented social scientist in the Division, the process of seeking outside letters. Because the letter writers agreed that I would be promoted to professor at such universities as the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago, my promotion was approved to start during the 1966–67 Academic Year.

2.11

Why My Interest in the 1960s and the First Half of the 1970s in Large Dams’ Potential to Catalyze a Process of Integrated Regional Development?

In the Kariba case, nearly half of my Gwembe 1962–63 research dealt with the regional development of the Kariba Lake Basin. I was especially interested in the fisheries potential. I also suspect that my interest in regional development may have grown out of an awareness of, and interest in, Roosevelt’s Tennessee Valley Authority and perhaps David Lilienthal’s Development and Regional Planning company (Figs. 2.9, 2.10, 2.11, 2.12, 2.13, 2.14 and 2.15). Certainly, I knew that large dams would have major environmental costs as well as a wide range of costs to project-affected people. So why, as a consultant, did I support the development potential of such dams as Kariba, the Aswan High Dam, Kainji and Kossou? I can guess at several reasons of which two strike me as influential without my being able to rank them in importance. First, between 1962 and the early 1970s, the living standards of a majority of Gwembe Tonga resettlers improved dramatically. In spite of resettlement flaws, Aswan High Dam planning had also improved living standards of the majority by the early 1970s; and a majority of Kainji resettlers were in the process of restoring their living standards.

2.11

Why My Interest in the 1960s and the First Half of the 1970s …

53

Fig. 2.9 Before Kariba was build, Gwembe Tonga women and men were effective fishers when the Zambezi flooded its tributaries and wetlands. In this picture women drive fish into homemade baskets

Fig. 2.10 The drive over, the fishers inspect their catch

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2 1956–1973: I Believe Large Dams Provide an Exceptional …

Fig. 2.11 Both sexes fish flooded wetlands with baskets and spears. Flood recession agriculture, however, was the key component of the Gwembe Tonga food economy since it allowed double cropping of maize and vegetables as well as tobacco and marihuana as cash crops

2.11

Why My Interest in the 1960s and the First Half of the 1970s …

55

Fig. 2.12 Gwembe Tonga pre-Kariba flood recession agriculture

Fig. 2.13 Close-up of Gwembe Tonga flood recession agriculture. Today, the majority of Gwembe Tonga are worse off economically and socially

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2 1956–1973: I Believe Large Dams Provide an Exceptional …

Fig. 2.14 Young couples build shacks in an unauthorized community while searching for work in town

Fig. 2.15 Here an elderly woman breaks rocks on the roadside which she hopes to sell to builders

2.11

Why My Interest in the 1960s and the First Half of the 1970s …

57

Second, the TVA experience was still considered a potential model when I attended the Knoxville conference in 1971 and I expect that my thinking was also influenced by interest of experts like Gilbert White and others in large dams and man-made lakes.

2.12

1962–1973: My Initial Involvement in Global Development Issues and Policies Dealing with Large Dams

As I look back on my career, my decision to accept the American University in Cairo position versus a year at the University of Khartoum was the correct one to make. The main reason was that by the time we left Egypt for Zambia, I believe I was the only research scientist who had completed two pre-relocation surveys of large populations from different ethnic groups in different countries soon to be relocated in connection with mega dams. For that reason, and following four months in 1964 in East Africa with the World Bank, the Ford Foundation hired me in 1965 as a consultant to work with Nigerian colleagues on pre-construction environmental and resettlement planning for Nigeria’s Kainji Dam Project on the Niger River. The following year the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) funded a continuation of our joint work through their Kainji Lake Research Project. Then In 1967, FAO agreed to my request to return to Zambia as a FAO consultant to update my research on the Gwembe Tonga with special emphasis on the Kariba Lake fisheries. A further FAO consultancy followed in 1970 to complete a short pre-construction fisheries survey for planning purposes for Zambia’s Kafue Dam where construction was just beginning on a major Zambezi tributary. That consultancy overlapped with three assignments between 1969 and 1973 for the United Nations Development Programme in the Ivory Coast with my first, and only genuine, river basin authority. During those Ivorian assignments, I worked closely with the chairman and others in the Authority for the Development of the Bandama River Valley (AVB) in planning the resettlement program for the Kossou Dam. These assignments completed my transition from purely academic research on the impact of large dams on resettlement communities and their environment to working with host country agencies and colleagues, and with international financial institutions, in efforts to enable a majority of resettlers to become project beneficiaries. Between 1963 and 1972, I was also invited to present papers on dam resettlement at two of the first three international symposia on Man Made Lakes and at the 1968 Arlie House Conference, the results of which were published in 1972 as The Careless Technology: Ecology and International Development. I mention these conferences in some detail because contact with leading engineers, natural and social scientists, and project managers at such conferences, as well as in the field,

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has helped me analyze large dams in which resettlers are just part of a complex system. The first Man Made Lakes symposium was in 1965 and was organized by the UK Institute of Biology in London. According to the proceedings’ editor, the Symposium for over 200 delegates was “particularly valuable for two reasons. Firstly, it brought together engineers and scientists of many disciplines all concerned with some aspect of the development of new lakes. Second, it also brought together, in many cases for the first time, people working on similar problems in widely separated parts of the world, especially the tropics.” The second symposium, which I did not attend, was held in Accra, Ghana in 1966. The third, The Symposium on Man-Made Lakes: Their Problems and Environmental Effects, was held in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1971 under the auspices of the International Council of Scientific Unions with support from various UN agencies, the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Ford Foundation. 550 scientists, engineers and managers attended.16 The various sessions were preceded and followed by visits to various Tennessee Valley Authority facilities and projects. The Careless Technology symposium, held at Airlie House, Virginia, December 8–11, 1968, was sponsored by the Conservation Foundation and the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems. Though Gilbert F. White and E. Barton Worthington were prominently involved in both of the first two symposia, there was little overlap in personnel so that I had the opportunity to meet a still wider number and variety of colleagues. Sessions involved six sections of which I chaired the one on Irrigation and Water Development and which was the only session in which some presentations dealt with mega-dams and man-make lakes. In 1972, as a follow up effort to seek the synthesis that was not achieved at the Knoxville conference, I joined Gilbert White’s Working Group to prepare a report on Man-Made Lakes as Modified Ecosystems for the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment of the International Council of Scientific Unions.17 Important also in influencing my perspective on the potential of mega dams for initiating a process of integrated river basin development and/or a process of regional development was a brief field trip in 1965 to Ghana and Nigeria. During that trip, I was able to visit the Volta Dam at Akosombo as a consultant to the U.S.

16

The Proceedings of the three Symposia were the following: Man-Made Lakes. Edited by R.H. Lowe-McConnell (1966). London and New York: Academic Press for Institute of Biology; ManMade Lakes: The Accra Symposium. Edited by L.E.Obeng (1969). Accra: Ghana Universities Press; and Man-Made Lakes: Their Problems and Environmental Effects. Edited by Ackermann, William C., White, Gilbert F, and E.B. Worthington (1973).Washington. D.C.: American Geophysical Union. 17 Our report, after commentary by 23 reviewers, was published in 1972 as Man-Made Lakes as Modified Ecosystems. SCOPE Working Group on Manmade Lakes. SCOPE Report 2. Paris: International Council of Scientific Unions (initially it was my understanding that that our report was to be included in the 1973 volume on the Knoxville Symposium).

2.12

1962–1973: My Initial Involvement in Global Development …

59

National Academy of Sciences’ Board on Science and Technology in International Development. Next, as a consultant to the Committee for the Coordination of Investigations of the Lower Mekong Basin of the UN’s Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, I made a short visit to Thailand in 1971 in connection with resettlement issues associated with the ill-conceived Pa Mong Dam.

2.13

Large Dams Seen as a Major Development Opportunity

Throughout the 1962–1973 period, I continued to believe that large dams provided national governments with major opportunities to plan and implement large-scale programs of integrated river basin and regional development that could even benefit involuntarily relocated communities. I believe the high point of my optimism was during the second half of the 1960s when my dam enthusiasm was reflected in several of my articles and reports. My first “in praise of dams and river basin development” article was in the December 1965 issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. It dealt primarily with the Gwembe Tonga but was also influenced by my experience with the Aswan High Dam and an initial visit to Nigeria’s Kainji Dam. “In terms of regional development,” I wrote, “these projects offer an exceptional opportunity for planning and implementing an integrated river and lake basin development program. Aside from power generation, flood control, and improved transport, such a program should include irrigation and fisheries, market and small industrial centers, conservation zones and national parks, residential areas, and tourist and recreational facilities. Granted the need to resettle over 50,000 people, more highly productive environments can be created with new ground rules to maintain and increase resource potential.” On the second page of my 1965 report to the Ford Foundation, I wrote that such dams as Kainji presented “an unparalleled opportunity for planning and implementing an integrated river and lake basin development program that could raise the per capita income and living standards of millions of Africans … Through experimentation, new production and extension techniques can be developed which can subsequently be applied to [non-project] settled areas.”18 The following year my article on dam resettlement in Lowe-McConnell’s, ManMade Lakes repeated the same message; namely, “As part of an integrated lake basin development plan, relocation … offers an exceptional opportunity for introducing rapid social and economic change (1966: 99).” Also in 1965, an article in Caltech’s “Engineering and Science” included the same message although its “The Kainji Lake Basin: Research, Resettlement and Development”, Unpublished August 1965 Report presented to the Ford Foundation. .

18

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2 1956–1973: I Believe Large Dams Provide an Exceptional …

purpose was more scientific in that my main topic was on how “An anthropologist uses population relocation to study cultural evolution on a speeded-up scale.” As I write this section, I find it important to try to understand why I thought the way I did during the 1960s. Presumably, a major contributing factor, as previously mentioned, was the fact that Gwembe Tonga living standards had begun to improve by the time that Colson and I returned for our first restudy in late 1962. During the first half of the 1960s, the rapid spread of the new gillnet fishery among the Gwembe Tonga provided a new and major source of income to resettled and host households. Meanwhile, a successful tsetse control program had enabled fishers throughout the Northern Rhodesian portion of the reservoir basin to invest their profits in cattle. Those cattle revolutionized Gwembe Tonga agriculture by enabling the majority of resettlers to shift from an arduous (especially for women farmers) system of short-handled hoe cultivation to ox traction that in turn stimulated the cash cropping of maize and cotton. During the same period, the resettlement-related increase in primary education throughout the valley, and a significant increase in secondary school education, coincided with increased employment opportunities associated with Zambian Independence in 1964. Times were good and I do not remember thinking about, and certainly not writing about, whether or not such conditions would or could continue. Moreover, personal issues were involved. Returning to the Gwembe Valley in 1962–63 (with Eliza), 1967, 1970, 1971, 1972, and 1973 (with Eliza, Lydee and Alice) was a pleasure for me as local living standards continued to rise. I suspect that I also found being in Zambia during the initial years of independence a fascinating comparison with two earlier years of fieldwork during colonial conditions. If the above circumstances were not sufficient to explain my naivety, it so happened that conditions also were improving for Egyptian Nubians at least in the opinion of scholars who had been involved in pre-resettlement research. Fernea and Kennedy titled their 1966 article “Initial Adaptations to Resettlement among Egyptian Nubians: A New Life for Egyptian Nubians,” while Fahim reported by 1970, “a great transformation not only in the physical scene but also in Nubian achievements and aspirations” (1974: 12). During those years, I also continued to be misinformed about the Tennessee Valley Authority’s record with resettlement and hence continued to see, erroneously, TVA as a global model for river basin development. Not aware that TVA resettlement had further impoverished Afro-American sharecroppers and employees, Brokensha and I, in our 1968 “Resettlement” chapter in Warren and Rubin’s Dams in Africa misinterpreted David Lilienthal’s statement “The TVA could not close the gates of the dam, pay off the landowners and townspeople and call it a day. That would not do because the resources of the region—human energies included—were to be seen as a whole … What at first seemed a calamity was turned into an opportunity and a community sense of direction has resulted that continues to bear fruit” (Lilienthal 1944: 62 and 64). I also have to face the fact that the 1964–1973 period was, for me, an overwhelmingly heady period during which I was a stand-alone consultant on important

2.13

Large Dams Seen as a Major Development Opportunity

61

mega-project issues to a series of very influential organizations such as the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Development Programme. Also during those years, not only had I received tenure track offers from Caltech and MIT, but at Caltech, had proceeded from being an assistant professor to a full professor within five years. Those facts certainly had an impact on my sense of self-worth as well as a self-assurance concerning the correctness of my decisions. Nonetheless, my naïve optimism and self-assurance during those 18 years, was slowly being influenced by an increasing awareness of the difficulties for planning and implementing the development potential that I continued to believe was there. I critiqued, for example, that during the critical initial planning for the Kainji dam (as with Kariba, the Aswan High Dam and Ghana’s Akosombo), the Consultants ignored hydrological, agricultural and social surveys in the future lake basin. Though a one-month fishery appraisal on the Zambezi was completed during December 1960 and January 1961, it was unable to offset the erroneous belief that the Gwembe Tonga were indifferent fishers. As for the 1963 soil survey in Kainji’s New Bussa area, it was completed too late “to have any influence on the siting of the new township or the airstrip” which reduced the best areas for agricultural development. Furthermore, by 1973, my summary of various dam resettlement experiences examined at the Third Symposium on Man-Made Lakes in Knoxville, Tennessee dealt more with problems than with opportunities. My first sentence stated “Resettlement, both from the point of view of the local people and from that of the government, has probably been the least satisfactory process associated with the creation of man-made lakes.” (1973: 707). And, as stated in the first sentence of the summary, “the planned resettlement of entire communities is an incredibly complex process … Community resettlement is a type of settlement scheme, and the failure rate of settlement schemes is discouragingly high on a worldwide basis. Planners do not have the knowledge to execute a successful settlement scheme in the same way that engineers can build a successful dam” (717).

2.14

Zambia: Gwembe Tonga Resettlement and Development

2.14.1 Introduction Elizabeth’s and my Gwembe Tonga field work in 1956–57 and 1962–63 had been planned and implemented as a strictly research-oriented study of how the Gwembe Tonga lived in the Zambian portion of the Middle Zambezi Valley before their resettlement and how the majority fared during the transition period following physical removal to new village sites. We had virtually no impact on the resettlement policies and programs of the Provincial Administration and the Gwembe Tonga Rural Council that had been formulated before we arrived.

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2 1956–1973: I Believe Large Dams Provide an Exceptional …

Occasionally we discussed resettlement issues in 1956–57, including the type of impacts, and responses to those impacts, that we would be studying in the future, with various government officials on social occasions or during visits to the Provincial Administration’s District Headquarters on the Plateau. I can think, however, of no occasion when our advice was sought in an official context, no doubt because resettlement policies, to a large extent, had already been formulated. Since Mazulu Village had been part of the neighborhood most directly involved in the Chisamu War19 following our departure, I was subsequently told that a few colonial officials suspected that I might have encouraged resistance to resettlement. One of those involved became a close friend in 1962–63 during which such mistaken suspicions had no adverse effects on our research. In fact, during 1962–63 Eliza and I were invited to spend a weekend with the Provincial Commissioner (who had been the Gwembe District Commissioner in 1956) and his wife in Livingstone that was the headquarters of Southern Province. My biggest, indeed only, impact on policy during 1956–57 was to support the administration’s intention to incorporate the Gwembe Tonga within policies for the future development of a Kariba reservoir fishery. That was a novel and rather unusual Northern Rhodesian government policy since already the Federal Power Board and the Federal Government’s Kariba Lake Coordinating Committee were considering restricting the fishery to a government corporation or to private European-controlled companies. The Federal viewpoint may also have been influenced by the 1958 published opinion of Philip Tobias, a distinguished South African human biologist, that the Gwembe Tonga were not fishers.20 To correct that inaccurate viewpoint, Henry Fosbrooke arranged for the section on Gwembe Tonga fishing in my dissertation to be published as an article in the June 1960 issue of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute’s Human Problems in British Central Africa. Fosbrooke also added an Editor’s Note “that the facts presented in this article will enable the necessary decisions to be made in the light of full knowledge of the situation.” The purpose of my ten-page article was “to correct the widely held opinion of the Valley Tonga as indifferent fishermen.” That statement was followed by a detailed analysis of the local fishery as a respected part-time activity in which a wide range of techniques were utilized to procure fish throughout the year…Well aware of this situation, the Northern Rhodesian Government hopes that the problem of agricultural pressure on the land will be lessened by the adaptation of certain villages along the future lake shore margin to full time fishing involving the use of gill nets set from boats… Competent boatmen on the rapidly flowing Zambezi, some Gwembe Tonga had already acquired gill nets which they had learned to set and repair following instructions from African Fish Guards provided by the Department of Game and Tsetse Control.

19

Colson, Elizabeth (1971) The social consequences of resettlement. Kariba Studies IV. Manchester University Press. pp. 40–42. 20 Man. 1958: 88.

2.14

Zambia: Gwembe Tonga Resettlement and Development

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In 1962–63, Elizabeth’s and my Gwembe Tonga Research Project had even less influence on policy issues since, following the release of a “Gwembe Tonga Special Fund” in 1960 from the Federal Power Board to the Gwembe District Council and the Provincial Administration, an ambitious set of development policies had been formulated and were underway by the time we arrived in September 1962. On the other hand, about half of my research dealt with the implementation of, and Gwembe Tonga responses to, those policies throughout the District.

2.14.2 The Lake Kariba Gillnet Fishery The experience with fisheries development in manmade lakes in the tropics and subtropics is for an explosion of productivity to occur during reservoir filling and immediately thereafter. In the Kariba case the reservoir did not reach full storage level until the 1963 dry season so that the period of highest productivity lasted for over five years. It is hard to overemphasize the importance of the gill net fishery for Gwembe Tonga development in spite of the fact that the artisanal fishery collapsed within five years. Though initial estimates of productivity were over four times the peak reached in 1964, such optimism provided an incentive for planning and implementing a multi-faceted program to which local villagers responded almost from the day the dam was sealed with the result that they benefited from that surge of productivity before the reservoir stabilized and productivity dropped. Within eight months of the commencement of reservoir filling, 407 villagers, of which the majority were resettlers, were fishing using 93 boats (of which 87 were dugout canoes made from local timber) and 748 gillnets. By the end of 1962, over 2,000 local fishers were using over 5,000 nets. Though the total number of boats was unknown, 225 were counted in nine fish camps of which 75 were of improved plank and metal construction. Though the large majority of boats were still hand paddled, twelve outboard motors were counted. A project credit program, designed to operate as a revolving fund, was essential for their purchase, as well as for the purchase of improved boats, nets and accessories, granted the low income and savings of the large majority of Gwembe Tonga before they became fishers. Repayment rates during the first half of the 1960s were excellent by international standards, with quite a few fishers paying off their loans in a few months. I suspect that outcome was also responsible for my ongoing support for credit as an essential component of most, if not all, poverty reduction programs in spite of the impoverishment risks associated with poorly designed programs and poorly trained and/or unmotivated recipients. Fish landings, weighed by District Council fish guards, initially exceeded 3,000 short tons rising to 4,000 during 1963 by which time fishers had established fish camps over the entire length of the reservoir and on islands. Fishers distant from markets built by the District Council sun-dried and smoked their catch that was

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either transported to the markets for sale, sold to itinerant traders, or marketed by the fisher and his wife themselves. During the 1959–1963 period income from fishing for unskilled fishers, who on the average owned three nets and rented boat space, approximated that for unskilled wage labor. While skilled fishers made significantly more, the large majority of all fishers accumulated savings, as the cost of living in the fish camps was very low (with the Gwembe Tonga’s insatiable consumption of beer of any sort being the major expense). Savings were used by most fishers for a wide range of consumptive and productive activities. Three of the most important were self-financing of marriages at an earlier age than was the case among those farming in the villages; purchasing cattle, plows and ox-drawn carts (responsible for Gwembe Tonga villagers shifting from hoe cultivation to ox traction); and education of children who then purchased more cattle to speed the transition to ox-traction. Following the colonization of the reservoir’s annual drawdown area with a nutritious grass (Panicum repens), the Gwembe Valley became one of the best cattle grazing areas in Zambia. Between 1962 and 1972 herd size more than doubled from 24,000 cattle to over 52,000. In the villages, the large majority of farm families were able to switch from hoe cultivation to ox traction that in turn expedited the growing of cash crops when the fishery began to decline. Cotton, brewing sorghum, and maize were the principle cash crops in addition to the pre-Kariba sale of tobacco cones and marihuana. In 1963, there were only 43 cotton growers. By the 1966/67 season, there were over 350 with the total increasing to over 600 in the early 1970s. By then, more smallholder cotton was grown in the Middle Zambezi Valley than in any other Zambian district. Capital from fishing also played an important role in funding a proliferation of beer halls as well as small general stores for serving an increasing demand for a greater variety of consumer goods. Bicycles, transistor radios, and paraffin lanterns were no longer rare. Diets were improved with more consumption of animal protein. Improved village housing was furnished with folding and other chairs, small tables and spring beds, and mattresses with blankets and sheets. Kitchenware improved as did clothing for men, women, and children. Though women were not actively involved in catching fish or mending nets, they were more involved in farming than men. The fishery, however, played an important role in their further incorporation into the Gwembe Valley’s new market economy. While a few settled in the fish camps or became fish traders, the majority came from their villages to sell beer and such agricultural produce as eggs, fowl, cereal stables and vegetables. As for life in the fish camps, both resettlers and hosts grouped themselves, and sold their surplus, in customary ways. During 1959, eight fishing camps were established along the middle reaches of the reservoir. The largest contained 128 fishers. The camp itself stretched along the lakeshore for about three miles with fishers grouping themselves according to village and neighborhood. As with basket and pot makers, and practitioners of other skills, they expected buyers of any surplus to come to them.

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The organization of fishing operations was based on familiar kinship patterns. While the administration had hoped to form fishing cooperatives and a strong fishers organization, the few government coops established to sell nets, fishing accessories and other goods eventually failed, while the social organization of the fishery continued to be kin-based. A common pattern was for a senior kinsmen advancing a younger relative the capital to acquire the necessary equipment. Should the fishing operation prosper other kin would be recruited to assist, with the most successful then establishing themselves in the same way. The speed with which the fishery developed, and with which the above changes in livelihood occurred, were primarily due to the government’s excellent plan implementation coupled with the local initiative of Gwembe villagers, and strong assistance from the District Council and from the United Nation’s financial and technical assistance through the UNDP/FAO Central Fisheries Research Institute. A Training program was initiated by a mobile extension unit in the fish camps and at a Fisheries Training Centre opened at Sinazongwe about halfway up the reservoir that also trained carpenters to make improved wooden boats that were adapted to Lake Kariba conditions. The gill net fishery was largely a seasonal activity during the dry season. During the rains, fishers returned to their villages to cultivate, a pattern that was encouraged by the Department of Fisheries declaring a December-March closed season for reservoir fishing until the mid-1960s. Thereafter productivity began to drop, with landings by less than 500 fishers dropping to less than 1,000 tons during 1967. By then fishing had become more a subsistence than a commercial activity for the gradually decreasing number of fishers. When the north bank fishery was opened to all Zambians in 1964, the proportion of Gwembe Tonga dropped to less than 50 percent of the total. The collapse of the fishery in the second half of the 1960s was primarily due to two reasons. The first was the predictable decline of the productivity of the fishery after what has come to be called the “initial windfall years” associated with dam reservoirs. The second, a coincidence, was the long planned opening of the fishery in 1964 to all Zambian citizens at the very time that productivity was peaking. A contributing factor to downturn was a poorly designed and implemented government credit program in 1965. That year I had been hired by the FAO’s fishery Department to work on resettler development in connection with Nigeria’s Kainji Dam Project. The following year, I wrote colleagues at FAO’s Rome headquarters about the possibility of my returning to Kariba (which recently had become the first of five FAO-administrated UN Special Fund—financed African Man-Made Lakes research projects)21 during the summer of 1967 to update my 21

In January 1964, the Lake Kariba Fisheries Research Institute was established at Kariba. After Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in November 1965 following Zambia independence the previous year, the Special Fund financed, under FAO and the Zambian administration, the Central Fisheries Research Institute. Based in Chilanga, the Institute was expected to continue work in Zambia’s Kariba waters and “to expand operations to all Zambian Fisheries” (Joeris 1973: 143).

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fisheries research under UN auspices that would improve access to, and cooperation with, Zambian officials in the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The reply I received from Rome stated that “The Kariba Project should welcome your return.” We will “bat your proposition around promptly, examine funds, and see what comes.” The first step was to ask Leonard Joeris, the Kariba Project manager, for his reactions; in the meanwhile, the Rome-based Coordinator of the African reservoir projects asked if I would be interested, before going to Zambia, in examining “the evolution of” Aswan High Dam resettlement in Egypt. I replied that my former colleagues in Egypt would be better qualified, and Arabic speakers as well, because of their experience with the American University in Cairo’s Nubian Ethnographic Survey. In the meanwhile, Joeris had replied favorably to my being hired as a Kariba fishery consultant and Andre Coche, FAO Fisheries Biologist in Rome, would handle the necessary arrangements. My recruitment began in June 1967 as did FAO’s request to the Zambian Government for my clearance as a UN consultant for the month of August. FAO would handle my international transport expenses and a consultancy fee for that month since I would remain on my Caltech salary throughout my August– November visit. As a scope of work, I suggested that “most important is a follow-up study of the North Bank Zambian fisheries with emphasis on my original sample of 200+ fishers, on the peasant or master fishers trained as the Sinazongwe Fisheries Training Centre, and on the impact of non-Tonga fishers on the fisheries and on Tonga participation.” My second interest concerned the extent to which Gwembe Tonga were exploiting the lakeshore margin in terms of agriculture and grazing. Placing fishing and agriculture in a wider perspective, I was also interested in assessing the impact of Zambia’s first coal mining enterprise (recently initiated in the Middle Zambezi Valley) on the lake basin and Gwembe Tonga economies (were fishers, for example, leaving fishing, to obtain employment on the mines?). My 1967 Preliminary Report on Kariba Lake Fishermen was never published because as Joeris wrote me in February 1968, both he in Zambia and FAO fisheries staff in Rome had received Zambian complaints about the content of my report which would delay publication until Joeris and I “could come up with a version more agreeable to Zambia.” Specifically my “long discussion on the evils of loans given to African fishermen is not in the best interest of Zambia and seems to be the line of thought that created the problems.” An impasse followed because by 1966 the fishery had collapsed with the number of fishers dropping from approximately 2,000 to less than 500 at the very time that the fishery had been opening to all Zambians. The influx of outsiders coincided with the availability of 23,000 lb sterling in loans for fishing gear (including 75 mechanized units composed of nets, improved boats, and outboard engines), all of which was paid out in 1965. The main recipients were newcomers with no experience with novel Kariba conditions such as heavy wave action, snags from trees standing in the water, and water “weeds” such as Salvinia and Pistia in some of the

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most productive areas which could form a substrate for other plants so thick that I could ‘walk on water.’ In other words, the majority of immigrants receiving loans for mechanized units were starting off “with a heavy debt burden, new equipment, and minimal experience with Kariba conditions. During the breaking-in period, many of these fishermen not only lost a large number of nets to underwater snags but they also found that yields were insufficient to enable them to improve their standard of living and pay off their loans … The availability of easy credit in 1965 is largely responsible for this unfortunate situation.” (1967: 1–2). Though no further credit had been provided in 1966, in November 1967 when I visited the local office of the Credit Organization of Zambia, I was told that credit would again be available in January 1968 and that 120 applications had already been received. When I looked through them, at least half were for mechanized units that, as I wrote in my report, were ill advised at that time. All six recommendations in my report were based on my assumption that “The immediate problem is how to improve the situation for the fishermen.” First, new loans in 1968 should be “primarily for nets and accessories.” Second, the typical loan should be only “for five to ten nets with accessories.” Those two recommendations were based on my interviews that indicated that “some of the best fishermen on the lake do not have outboards, or even boats, not because they cannot afford them but simply because they do not want them.” Their yields even in 1967 were quite satisfactory because they knew where to set their nets that they mounted and mended carefully. Moreover, their contribution to the Kariba Lake fisheries to date had been “tremendously underestimated.” The third recommendation was “that a special effort be made to distribute loans around the lake in proportion to the number of fishermen per camp.” The case was the same for mechanized units that had been concentrated in one of the three fishing areas not because of better fishing but because of better access to fuel, markets and the Fisheries Training Centre. Two other recommendations related to the development of a satisfactory water transport system for marketing both fresh and smoke-dried fish and for reliable provision of “petrol for outboard owners at the major markets.” As for the last recommendation, that was to improve communication between fishers in their camps, the Kariba Fishers Association, the Department of Fisheries and the Credit Organization of Zambia. As for the criticisms of my report from Zambia, Len Joeris wrote me in November 1968 that “now I can safely say that your report can be presented to the Government without causing much controversy. I am afraid that the previous objections were more personal opinions of certain expatriates than anything else.” I now realize that I should have more carefully worded my report, because there were strong differences in opinion between the Chief Fisheries Officer (a Zambian who agreed with my analysis that the buildup in mechanized units had been too fast), and the Officer-in-Charge of the Fisheries Training Centre (an expatriate from Russia) who believed that the Zambian portion of the reservoir could support a much larger number of mechanized units.

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2.14.3 Zambia: Kafue River Fisheries The Kafue, cutting the nation in half, is Zambia’s most important Zambezi tributary. The Kafue Basin or Flats, where the river flood in most years creates up to 6,000 km2 of wetlands and relatively shallow lagoons and waterways, is arguably Zambia’s most important single ecosystem. The Flats are also Zambia’s most productive fisheries and pasturage for cattle. In 1991, as another indicator of their importance, the Flats were listed as a Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance for waterfowl and other wildlife. In addition to the high productivity of the Flats, especially during the drier months, they are easily accessible from Lusaka as well as from the railroad towns of Chilanga, Kafue, and Mazabuka where Zambia’s Sugar Estates and largest irrigation project draws its water from the Flats. During my 1967 correspondence with FAO about returning to Kariba, I also wrote that “before things get rolling too fast, I believe that it would be worthwhile to become familiar with the resettlement and development aspects of the proposed Kafue scheme as it relates to both fishing and agriculture.” I also wanted to include a Kafue Flats visit because Henry Fosbrooke, who had been director of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute at the time of Elizabeth Colson’s and my initial Gwembe Tonga study in 1956–57, had returned to Central Africa from retirement in Tanzania and was now the Zambian co-manager of a broad Kafue Basin Survey. As it evolved, the Kafue scheme included two dams. The Kafue Gorge Dam was completed in 1973. With a generating capacity of 900 MW, it was sited near the beginning of the gorge through which the river drops down into the Middle Zambezi Valley and which was the initial site that the Northern Rhodesian government had preferred to the Zambezi’s Kariba gorge during the years of the Central African Federation. Beyond the upper end of the Flats and inundating a portion of the Kafue National Park, the Itezhi-Tezhi Dam was completed in 1977 for regulating river flows to the Kafue Gorge Dam. Sporadically, Itezhi-Tezhi outflows were timed to increase the productivity of the Flats whose overall extent and productivity had been reduced due to increased regulation of annual flows. Further regulation can be expected when the installation of two 60 MW turbines is completed in 2015 which will further adversely affect the productivity of the fishery and of grasslands and water supplies for cattle and wildlife as well as increase uncertainty for fishers and surrounding villages. During my 1967 return to study the Kariba fishery as a FAO consultant, FAO had also agreed that I should visit the Kafue Flats. What I learned there was of sufficient interest to FAO that I received a cable from Rome in May 1969 asking if I was interested in a possible consultancy mission to Nigeria’s Kainji Dam and Egypt’s Aswan High Dam as well as to the Kafue Flats. In my letter reply, I answered “yes” on the assumption that a possible consultancy to the Ivory Coast could be fitted into my itinerary if it materialized. The time period agreed upon was six weeks in August and September which would allow me to get back to California in time for October teaching.

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Since I was replying to an old friend in Rome, I also noted that I was “disturbed” by the extent to which FAO’s personnel department downplayed my expertise in their records; hence “I would like your personnel department to acknowledge my standing in my field of experience in their scale system … It’s my pride which is primarily rankled.” That outburst arose from my growing impatience with how FAO’s Department of Fisheries tended to downplay the expertise of social scientists. It paid off for in a June reply I was told that “There is no question that we should match your present earnings.” What followed was over a year of back and forth negotiations that demonstrated the bureaucracy involved in confirming and getting under way a short-term consultancy. In the United States, citizens must get Washington clearance to work for international organizations. At FAO’s office in Rome and Liaison Office in Washington, medical records had to be received along with other personal data that may or may not have already been sent to one of the two offices. And in host countries, a potential consultant’s clearance could drag on and on. Hence, imagine the difficulties in completing arrangements for a mission involving not just one but three or possibly four countries! In addition, almost inevitably, personal and/or political issues become involved. In Nigeria, relationships between the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER) at the University of Ibadan and the Niger Dam Authority with FAO had deteriorated. That didn’t surprise me since I had known that NISER, correctly in my opinion, wanted to be in charge of the socio-economic studies. The Nigerians also believed, again correctly in my opinion, that the co-manager designation for the host country should be replaced by more equal titles such as “Project Manager: National” and “Project Manager: International.” The upshot of such conflicts were that FAO informed me that “the government insisted on the discontinuance of our sociology studies under the project” so my return as an FAO consultant was not pursued. The big problem with the Egyptian and Zambian consultancies was getting clearance. In addition to worrying that one was no longer welcome, part of the problem was that, although FAO initiated my consultancy proceedings in May 1969, clearances were not requested until July. With neither clearance received by mid-September, I wrote FAO September 16 “why couldn’t the various formalities have been initiated months earlier? Should clearance come through now, presumably it will take FAO another couple of weeks to complete its own formalities.” Of course, I should have realized this from past experience. But I didn’t and hence have been sitting around for the past four weeks ready to leave on 48 h notice. Laments aside, what now?” I then suggested a series of later options extending into the late spring and early summer of 1970 during which I could be available for up to three weeks. Dated 29 September, I received in October a letter from FAO that Zambian clearance had come through “about 20 days ago and FAO, Rome immediately notified.” That news had been cabled me September 27. The day previous I had received a telephone call from UNDP that I had been cleared to go to the Ivory Coast immediately. Because I assumed that I might be more useful there and that

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there was no hope for Zambia before 1970, I agreed to go to the Ivory Coast for twenty days. So I wrote Rome ‘Who would have thought that the two assignments, both under consideration since May, would finally materialize at the same time?” Meanwhile FAO decided to recruit me for Zambia and Egypt (clearance had also come through in September) on a “when-actually-employed basis” for six weeks between December 1, 1969 and June 30, 1970. Subsequently, FAO decided to cancel the Egyptian portion of my consultancy22 so in late March I flew to Zambia via Rome to spend six weeks assessing for FAO possible impacts of the future Kafue Gorge and Itezhi-Tezhi dams on Kafue Flats fisheries and surrounding villages, followed by a month’s further Kariba research on my own. In my final instructions before leaving California, Len Joeris, as FAO’s top man in Zambia, advised me that “it will be best to spend a little while with the Government and FAO staff at the Kafue research station … I am sure your study will be very interesting and informative … but your final report on it may be difficult to prepare because of the political situation in the area.” No doubt in writing that warning, Joeris also had in mind the critical reaction by some Zambian staff (all white expatriates, I now believe) to my 1967 Kariba fisheries draft report. He further added “Some people have expressed the opinion that they do not trust sociologists working in remote areas because they have a tendency to make the local situation look blacker than it really is. You can interpret this as you like but keep it in mind when you are working in Zambia.” I have found such suspicions of social scientists to be quite common in various countries in which I have worked including the United States. They tend to fall in one of two categories. The first arises from the critic’s assumption he knows more about a given situation than the social scientist either because he has lived in the country for a longer period of time or because he sees social science as “unscientific” (like “witchcraft” in the opinion of a now deceased Caltech professor). The second involves national political figures or local leaders who do not want social scientists (anthropologists in particular) “snooping around” their area. I have tried to cope with such suspicions by listing my occupation as “scientist” on visa and other applications and once in county by “flying below the radar” to the extent possible. I had yet to learn such tactics, however, during my FAO consultancies during the 1960s and early 1970s that explains I believe Joeris’ well-meant comments since my reports and correspondence were blunt and self-assured to the extent that may have caused adverse reactions to my ideas. I am rather appalled now, for example, by what I interpret as rather “preachy” suggestions I made to the expatriate Director of the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and National Parks in a letter written in June after my return to the United States. My biggest mistake was to advise him on senior personnel matters; a most delicate issue which consultants and advisers should avoid in all but extreme situations.

22

That was a disappointment because I had looked forward to assisting with the development of the Lake Nasser Development Center in Aswan.

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In September, 1970 I mailed off my draft Working Paper on “Suggestions for Development of the Kafue River Fishery” to FAO’s Fisheries Department. Only 6 pages long, that report without a doubt has been one of my most original over a 60 year period. That was primarily due to my first recommendation that was “provision of permanent sites for fishermen within the lake basin.” The two recommendations that followed were to serve the first; namely, “development of an effective water transport system for fish marketing” and “provision of an Active Extension Programme.” Though natural flood waters, and those that will be backed-up behind the Kafue Dam, are relatively shallow, there are few sites within the flood plain which are high enough for fishers and their families to live permanently. Furthermore, after the completion and testing of the Kafue Dam, the period of flooding will be as much as three to four months longer that will leave large and productive areas of the flood plain too far from fishers sited around the edge of the Flats. The solution, according to recommendations 1–3, was to use tractors and other earth-moving equipment to make artificial mounds, large enough for small fishing villages, in the more productive areas during the three years that water behind the filled reservoir is drawn down to the Kafue channel to allow testing of the dam. Such artificial mounds would not be a new development. What knowledge we have is that an indigenous population, the BaTwa, who had initially colonized the Flats, had made two types of artificial structures to enable them to fish and live within the Flats throughout the year. One was a floating mat of vegetation large enough to hold a fisher who would then spear or otherwise catch fish through a hole made in the mat. The second type was an earth mound on which a Batwa family could live and some of which had been enlarged and heightened by current non-BaTwa fishers who told me that their parents and grandparents had been born on the same mound or on a neighboring one. The current distribution of the few such mounds was irregular, however, with none occurring over large areas of the Flats in spite of floodwater being relatively shallow. My first recommendation suggested that several such mounds be built or heightened “under government auspices” and with fisher involvement as pilot projects during the current dry season. “If they appear successful, a more ambitious building program could be launched during the three year transitional period.” I also suggested that lanes, such as some fishers had already cleared, could be cleared to access the main river channel or various lagoons that could also provide additional places for setting nets to catch fish crossing the lanes. They would also facilitate marketing (my second recommendation) as well as other services. An Active Extension Program (the third recommendation) would also be necessary since Extension was a weak point of both the Government and the FAO fisheries program. The previous June I had discussed these recommendations with government fisheries officers, staff of the Central Fisheries Research Institute and the Kafue Co-ordinating Officer, all of whom seemed supportive. The same month they received my report, FAO Rome was also preparing to release it “as a working paper … to the Central Fisheries Research Institute for informal distribution. The

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report contains a number of practical suggestions for solving some of the problems connected with the construction of the Kafue Gorge Dam and fishery development, which will lose some of their value as time passes.” During the next few years, however, only one such mound was built. It was almost immediately occupied by a number of permanent fishing families. Several years later at a meeting that I was attending, the Chief Fisheries Research Officer mentioned that mound as one of his major innovations. He then looked across at me and winked. Perhaps my feelings were hurt, but I smiled back because by then I knew that a consultant’s success depended on host governments implementing those of one’s recommendations that made sense.

2.15

Nigeria: The Kainji Dam

2.15.1 Introduction Kainji was one of five African projects initiated in the 1960s for researching and developing reservoirs, reservoir basins and human populations associated with the construction of mega-dams. Kariba was the first. The others were Kainji, Ghana’s Volta Dam at Akosombo, Egypt’s Aswan High Dam and the Kossou Dam on the Bandama River in the Ivory Coast. One natural lake, Lake Victoria, was also involved. In each case the key International Financial Institution (IFI) was the United Nations Development Programme (Special Fund), while the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) was the implementing agency. Two senior Special Fund consultants were stationed in Rome to look after Special Fund interests as they related to the six projects. Kainji provides an excellent example of the difficulties that international financial institutions (IFIs) have in initiating promptly pre-project environmental and socio-economic studies for large dams that are essential for planning, implementing and monitoring subsequent development. Kainji also illustrates the type of complementary efforts that are necessary to help IFIs, with more active involvement of host county institutions and colleagues, speeding up conceptualizing such a research project, financing it, and recruiting key personnel to implement and administrate it in a timely fashion. The history of the Kainji Dam dates back to 1959 when the Netherlands Engineering Consultants and Balfour Beatty Company (which separately had been researching the hydropower potential of the Niger and Benue rivers) were asked by the Nigerian Government to design the first Niger River mainstream dam at Kainji Island. In 1960, the Special Fund agreed to finance the government’s initial request for studies on “the resources potential of the Kainji Lake area in respect to: (a) hydro-electric production potential; (b) development of national and

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international navigation; (c) the possible expansion of agriculture; and (d) fishery production.”23 The Niger Dams Authority (NDA) was established in 1962 based on the Niger Dams Act passed by the Nigerian Federal Parliament that September. The Authority’s main development functions followed up on the results of the above research funded by the Special Fund; namely “to use the Kainji works for the purposes of generating electricity, improving navigation on inland water ways, promoting pisciculture and operating irrigation schemes.” Though locks were built, they were never used, while the government- sponsored irrigation schemes “eventually … were allowed to fold and were abandoned at considerable loss in capital resources” (Roder 1994: 61).24 As for the development of the reservoir basin and the resettlement of approximately 50,000 people, the NDA initially handed those responsibilities over to the new Military Government in Kaduna following the January, 1966 coup. The construction of Kainji was one of several large African dams for which the World Bank provided funding just for physical infrastructure in the 1950s and 1960s. The Bank’s July 7, 1964 loan agreement with the Niger Dams Authority involved $82 million at an interest rate of 5½% repayable over a thirty year period starting in 1969. In addition to the dam, the generation and transmission of electricity, and navigation locks, the loan covered “the permanent township of New Bussa for the displaced residents of submerged Bussa to be built in conjunction with a construction camp.”25 As with Egypt’s Kom Ombo, New Bussa was to be a modern town with “hospital, school, post office, fire and police stations, a water supply system, a sewage treatment system, an airstrip, and various permanent and temporary residential buildings.” An exploratory Special Fund mission to deal primarily with resettlement and lake basin development issues was delayed until early 1965 at which time dam construction had already been underway since 1964 with completion expected (and realized) in 1968. In other words, it was already too late to influence initial physical resettlement and socio-economic policies that had already been drawn up by competent Nigerian institutions. The four person, ten day, Special Fund mission included E.B. Worthington from the Nature Conservancy as Special Fund consultant, a high Special Fund official, an FAO Division of Fisheries official, and, representing the World Health Organization, a public health engineer. Worthington was responsible for producing Tuli, R.L. (1967). Unpublished “Report on the Public Health Aspects of the FAO/UNDP(SF) Kainji Lake Research Project, Nigeria. World Health Organization: Geneva. 24 The irrigation projects involved “capital intensive, high cost technical solutions without any attempt of foresight about the social implications for farmers or what their economic well-being requires.” (Roder. op.cit: 60 after Arungbemi 1982). 25 Loan Agreement (Kainji Project) between International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Niger Dams Authority (July 7,1964). Schedule 2. Description of the Project. pp. 16–17. 23

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the mission’s report that recommended a Kainji Special Fund project and suggested a broad provisional research program based on what the four men had learned in Nigeria and on their own expertise. Emphasis was on Limnology and Fisheries, the Sociology and Economics of Resettlement, Public Health and Disease, and Conservation and Tourism. During the Worthington mission, Nigerian universities had already begun relevant socio-economic studies through NISER whose director, economist Adebola Onitiri, appointed world class Nigerian geographer, Akin Mabogunje, to direct the socio-economic studies. In July 1965, the Government of Nigeria submitted to the Special Fund a request based primarily on the Worthington Report for $831,100. Funding for the socio-economic studies component was to cover three time periods: 1966 for pre-resettlement research, 1969 for research the year after dam completion, and research in 1972 for follow-up study. In January 1966 in response to Nigeria’s request, the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme approved $1,259,100 for establishing a Kainji Lake Research Project. FAO was designated as the Executing Agency until the project would be handed over to Nigeria in 1976 as the Kainji Lake Research Institute.26 My first contact with Kainji was a short visit early in 1965 that was followed by a consultancy in August 1965 for the Ford Foundation. Based largely on my previous Kariba and Aswan High Dam experiences, my brief 17 page report emphasized that “the fisheries and agricultural potential of the Kainji Lake Basin … is significantly higher than has been indicated by the Joint Consultants and national and international planning agencies.” As for the Borgu Game Research (which became Nigeria’s first and currently largest National Park in 1976), “under proper management, and provided its boundaries are extended to the lake as currently proposed, the future Game Park could become the major game reserve in Nigeria.” My report also recommended one year studies of the pre-inundation riverine fishery and of the system of agriculture (which included small-scale rainy and dry season irrigation of the riverbanks and islands) of the Kamberi resettlers.27 Though both studies were incorporated within the Kainji Lake Research Project, the challenge was to recruit within FAO two expatriate researchers to work with their Nigerian colleagues during 1966 so that their one-year studies would be completed before the people were resettled. That would not have happened without additional financial assistance from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the help of Gilbert White and Wilton Dillon.

During the construction years, research on fisheries was undertaken by the University of Liverpool and later under the direction of A.M.A Imebore at the University of Ife. In 1987, following up on the Institute’s continued emphasis on fisheries, the Institute was renamed the National Institute for Fresh Water Fisheries Research with its functions expanded to deal with national freshwater fisheries and aquaculture. 27 I also recommended a Marketing and Markets study which was not funded as a separate KLRP study, although subsequently NISER‘s G.A. Jawando and O. Anthonio, as well as Jenness and Roder, dealt with marketing issues in their research. 26

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It was the Ford Foundation that enabled me to work closely with NISER in conceptualizing their program of socio-economic studies. The two researchers that I was prepared to recommend as FAO’s first Kainji Lake Research Project staff were Jonathan Jenness for the fisheries study and Wolf Roder for the irrigation study. To make a long story short: both were at work within Nigeria by July, 1966, because Gilbert White had convinced the Rockefeller Foundation to make available a grant of $15,000 to NISER part of which would be available for recruiting and equipping Jenness and Roder on the understanding that funds used would be reimbursed from Nigeria’s counterpart funds once the Kainji Lake Research Project was operational. Gilbert White at that time was a Professor of Geography at the University of Chicago and former President of Haverford College. He was also Senior River Basin Adviser to the United Nations Development Programme, and an influential member of the US National Academy of Sciences. One of my few mentors,28 his help was essential not just for arranging the Rockefeller grant but also for expediting Jenness and Roder’s recruitment. That was because once FAO heard about the Rockefeller arrangement, I was notified on April 25, 1966 that for FAO “it would be most expeditious to recruit directly the three experts [I was the third] for the first study for a year. That could be done quite readily under advance recruitment procedures.” Even advance recruitment procedures, however, would not have gotten Jenness and Roder into the field three months later. Jenness’ recruitment story, for example, was almost unbelievable. Dated 26 May, 1966 he received a letter from FAO’s Recruitment Section at their Rome headquarters that stated “it seems unlikely that we will be able to offer you employment …” Yet also dated 26 May, 1966, Jenness received another letter from FAO’s United States Regional Office stating that FAO’s “Fisheries Department is most anxious to receive your personal history forms in connection with a possible assignment, Special Fund Lake Kainji” so would you please send the enclosed personal history forms directly to Roy Jackson, Assistant Director-General, Fisheries Department at FAO’s Rome headquarters. In addition Jenness, like Roder, would also have to get loyalty clearance from the US Government which was required for US citizens seeking employment with international agencies. Imagine getting such clearance from any government in time to be in the field within two months? Yet it happened because Jenness and Roder’s forms were sent to the US National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council, where Wilton S. Dillon, Head of the African Affairs Section, ensured that they were soon approved by the necessary authorities! Yet another routine recruitment requirement was getting NISER’s approval for Jenness and Roder to actually work with Mabogunje’s team. That was arranged

28

The others being Elizabeth Colson, Harvard University’s Professor Cora DuBois, and my wife Eliza.

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between a Special Fund consultant and Onitiri on 15 May 1966. In the consultant’s June 1966 report he wrote, Onitiri had obtained $15,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation and was on the point of hiring the two experts recommended by Scudder. After discussion it was agreed that he would take no further action as I suggested it was entirely possible to recruit these men ourselves, leaving the Rockefeller money for other additional work. As a result I cabled Rome on 18/5 to commence recruitment procedures for Jenness and Roder … as soon as possible. Throughout the discussions with Dr. Onitiri, it was apparent that he was quite nationalistic in his attitude to the SF assistance. He did not want the studies to be dominated by the FAO team of experts and wished to have Professor Mabogunje direct the work… He also felt the experts should not be confined to one country only …, as this was not in line with UN policy. I agreed, but said that as it was urgent to get the work started, we would have to accept the only people readily available. It was agreed that we should not commit ourselves to Scudder’s team beyond one year, however.

2.15.2 Designing the Kainji Lake Research Project Another outcome of my 1965 report was my recruitment by FAO to return to Nigeria during the summer of 1966 “to assist the relevant Nigerian and International agencies in formulating, in the shortest possible time, an acceptable Plan of Operations for a Kainji Lake Research Project. Timeliness is crucial … if the results of research are actually to be utilized in planning and implementing lake basin development. [Hence] all the baseline studies must be completed prior to the flooding of the lake basin in July-August, 1968.”29 At FAO I reported to the Department of Fisheries because the series of Special Fund/FAO research projects were initially designed to concentrate, far too much in my opinion, on the biology and limnology of lake fisheries. Whether or not the intention of FAO, I interpreted my consultancy and my Report to FAO as an opportunity to broaden the research agenda into a wider range of environmental and socio-economic studies; an opportunity enhanced at that time by my personal ties with senior Special Fund and FAO staff and their advisers in New York and Rome.30 The final report of my FAO assignment drew especially on a synthesis of conversations with 95 well-informed researchers and officials who, aside from my Nigerian and expatriate research colleagues, included such senior Nigerian officials as the Secretary of the Military Government, Kaduna (who as Chair of the

Thayer Scudder (August, 1966). Unpublished Report on “The Kainji Lake Basin: Research, Resettlement and Development: The Food and Agriculture Organization: Rome. 30 The World Health Organization’s consultant, R.L Tuli, played the same sort of role in regard to health issues which continue to be seriously neglected in large dams projects. 29

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Subcommittee on the Niger Dams Project was initially responsible for resettlement and development), the Permanent Secretary of the national Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Acting Director of the National Fisheries Service, the Chief Conservator of Forests, Kaduna, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health, Kaduna, and the Chief Engineer and the Secretary of the Niger Dams Authority (both based in Lagos). My report was largely based on analysis of what I had learned from such knowledgeable people complemented by my experience with the Aswan High and Kariba Dams, travel throughout the Kainji Lake Basin Area and village visits. In the report’s covering letter to FAO, with Copies to UNDP (SF) and Willis Evans who would become the Project’ s International Manager in September, I noted that UNDP’s Administrator’s recommendation to UNDP’s Governing Council was that “For the implementation of the project, the UNDP/Special Fund will provide expert and consultant services amounting to a total of thirty-four and one-half man-years; fellowships totaling six man years” which was more than enough assistance to expand the non-limnological and fisheries components of the project by funding 7.5–10 man years of assistance and studies on sociology and economics of resettlement, 2–3 man years on health oriented assistance and studies, 2–3 years on wildlife, conservation and tourism studies, 2.5 years on irrigation, grazing and other agricultural topics, and six man years for the project manager. Close cooperation with NISER and between Evans and Mabogunje would be essential in selecting and staffing topics so as to avoid omissions, overlapping studies, and leadership tensions. I then went on to write: I urge you fisheries people to very carefully evaluate the situation in terms of just what the purpose of the research program is all about. My personal view is that limnology and fisheries have been over-stressed in all these man-made lakes UNDP-FAO projects and that a wider perspective is necessary in the use of scarce UN development funds. After all, even the optimal exploitation of the Kainji Lake fisheries potential will not support the same number of people that would benefit from intensified agriculture and population centered development. Another point is just how much research is necessary for the scientific management of a large lake fisheries and where is the point of diminishing returns concerning use of funds for alternative purposes?

Unfortunately, I do not know what impact my August 1966 report and above comments had on the final Plan of Operations for the Kainji Lake Research Project. The same applies to my suggestions in July 1966 to the Chief Agricultural Officer in the Ministry of Agriculture, Kaduna, that the Joint Consultants would be willing to add villager reservoir margin irrigation to the variables (such as power generation and flood control) for analysis of different Kainji Lake Regimes IF they had quantified data for computer analysis on irrigable drawdown and lakeshore margin areas, preferred crops, and their market values, that would be available under different lake operational regimes and schedules.

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2.15.3 Pre-inundation: The Sociology and Economics of Resettlement Resettlement was complicated by the 50,000 resettlers being residents of three provinces “unwilling to lose taxpayers” and three emirates “that historically have been at odds with one another”31 (Scudder 1965: 1). Furthermore, more ethnic groups (over 10) were involved than in other mega dam projects. In addition, during a five-year period four different resettlement policies were suggested, of which three were implemented at different times for different categories of resettlers. 2,766 residents of the original town of Bussa were resettled in new housing in New Bussa where they were supposed to have access to good social, water and sanitation services. Approximately 3,000 resettlers from 18 small villages,32 in the vicinity of the dam site, were provided with cash compensation and told to either build new villages elsewhere or to find other villages for rebuilding their housing. Problems, such as resettlers using compensation for other purposes, resulted in a new policy for consolidating the large majority of resettlers, who lived in over 150 villages, in a much smaller number of larger planned and NDA built settlements. Fortunately, that policy was rejected before implementation because it had ignored the land and Niger River resources that resettlers would need for livelihood purposes. Instead, resettlers were allowed to choose sites to which to shift their current villages (or households in cases where resettlers wished to join another village) where, if found suitable by government officials in regard to agriculture, water resources and flooding, the Niger Dams Authority would build new villages. They were designed by an architect (F. R. Akinson) with West African experience in designing permanent village housing for rural Africans and who, in the Kainji area, relied on villager answers to a questionnaire provided by consulting anthropologist David Brokensha. The result for the large majority proved relatively successful on housing-relevant issues. Livelihood planning and implementation involved close cooperation between NISER researchers, FAO staff and government staff from relevant departments. There were difficult sensitivities between Nigerian and expatriate staff, including a falling out between English fisheries experts at the University of Livingstone and Nigerian colleagues. My recommendation that Jenness and Roder’s contracts include two restudies was diplomatically rejected by noting the undesirability of having too many expatriate staff from the United States (Evans was also American). At NISER, Mabogunje had recruited seven lecturers from three of Nigeria’s five universities who initiated research during 1966, in close cooperation with FAO’s Jenness and Roder, dealing with settlement planning, agriculture, fisheries and Scudder, Thayer (August, 1965). Unpublished Report on “The Kainji Lake Basin: Research, Resettlement and Development” for the Ford Foundation, New York. 32 Tuli. Op. Cit. page 15. 31

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marketing of agricultural produce, fish and cattle (transhumant pastoral Fulani seasonally grazed up to 35,000 cattle in the Kainji Project area).

2.15.4 Public Health and Disease By far the most neglected topic was public health and disease. As I noted in my report, “In large part this is because at both the Nigerian and United Nations end, nobody is pushing health aspects in the same way that biological-limnological and socio-economic studies are being pushed. In the absence of leadership, little action has been taken to date.” In his early 1967 WHO report on Public Health Aspects of the Kainji Lake Research Project, R. L Tuli analyzed just how serious this oversight was. Just as I had used the January 1966 session of the UNDP Governing Council to further expand the scope of the KLRP, so Tuli did the same for health in arguing for 48 months of UNDP(SF) support dealing with health related aspects that WHO’s B. Z. Diamant had initially recommended as a participant on the Worthington March, 1965 mission. Tuli summed up the health situation in the Kainji Lake Basin and among the resettlers as follows: 1. Health services are sub-minimal, dispersed among many agencies, and poorly integrated and coordinated. 2. Environment sanitation falls far short of desired standards as witnessed by the high incidence of diarrhea, dysentery, infectious skin diseases, and helminthic infections. 3. There is a high incidence of parasitic diseases led by malaria (and including onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, and trypanosomiasis). 4. Resettlement is resulting in a general psychological stress and may create more public health problems than are solved as planned and currently being executed.33

2.15.5 Wildlife Conservation and Tourism Though wildlife conservation and tourism did not figure prominently in the research program, I recommended that both “be re-evaluated in terms of project goals” with special emphasis on government plans to extend the Borgu Game Reserve to Kainji Lake. Borgu “has a higher potential than any other game area within Nigeria. The

Tuli is the only researcher in the literature that I had access to who emphasized “psychological stress.”

33

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fact that its borders are within an hour’s drive of the dam site and New Bussa have important implications for the development of tourism.” According to A. P. Mead, Professor of Zoology at Ahmadu Bello University, what is needed is systematic long-term research to build up the current low density but wide range of species attractive to tourists.”

2.15.6 Kainji Lake Basin: 1968–1991 Probably more project-related biological and socio-economic research was completed by more host country and international investigators at Kainji than at any other mega dam in the tropics and subtropics. Yet that research had relatively little impact on resettler development and the development of the Kainji Lake Basin. Other than providing information on the people and habitat of a little known area, the main value of the research was capacity building of Nigerian development and scientific expertise with Roder listing over 50 Nigerian authors in his bibliography. The main reasons why the developmental impact of research completed had so little impact proportionate to its volume was its delayed initiation until after construction commenced in 1964 and the initial absence of relevant environmental and socio-economic studies. When initial feasibility studies ignore soil suitability, agricultural, social and health surveys, as at Kainji as well as during the preceding Kariba, Aswan High, and Volta Dams, subsequently “(t)here is insufficient time to undertake and apply the results of research surveys between the initiation and completion of dam construction.”34 Also relevant in the Kainji case, as emphasized by Roder, were a series of National upheavals that included the January 1966 National Coup that brought to an end Nigeria’s first republic less than six years after Independence. The May 1967– January 1970 Civil War followed. Meanwhile, physical removal of an estimated 50,000 people had to be completed before scheduled completion of construction. What development did occur subsequently was due primarily to two factors: nationally provided physical infrastructure and resettler enterprise. Infrastructure included the dam and the construction of New Bussa for the labor force, subsequent immigrants, and—as a minority—2,766 resettlers from Old Bussa,35 and an all-weather access road to the dam from Ilorin and to New Bussa from the dam site. Subsequently, another all-weather road was completed east of the reservoir in 1976 from the dam site to Yelwa and on to Sokoto. As for resettler enterprise, aside from initial resettlement around the dam site, the large majority of resettlers were not only allowed to pick their own resettlement sites (provided they were above the high water mark and had access to potable

34

Scudder, Thayer, 1965: 7. Roder, 1994: 136.

35

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water and land for agriculture) but also to re-establish their previous settlement patterns, production systems, and socio-cultural systems. According to my own global research on mega dams and the resettlement process, during the stage immediately following physical removal, a majority of resettlers appear to behave as if a socio-cultural system was a closed system in which people tend to behave conservatively; in other words, to be risk adverse. Hence, Roder’s conclusion that resettlers adapted to their new areas with minimal psychological stress was, presumably, because they were able to carry on their lives pretty much as before resettlement. In the sections that follow through 1991, my single most important source has been Roder’s 1994 Human Adjustment to Kainji Reservoir in Nigeria: An Assessment of the Economic and Environmental Consequences of a Major Manmade Lake in Africa. Recruited as part of the initial FAO team, Roder based his book on his 1966–1967 research, on visits in 1966, 1968, 1971, 1988, July 1989 to March 1990, and 1991, and on the biological, environmental and social research of his many Nigerian colleagues. Based primarily on Roder’s analysis, John Gay and I concluded that Kainji was one of only 8 cases (18%), out of 44 mega dams with sufficient information on the resettlement process for statistical analysis, where the large majority of resettlers were able to maintain or improve their livelihood between 1968 and Roder’s last visit in 1991. In a 1994 publication, Ayeni, Roder, and Ayanda considered resettlement to have been a success “because it aimed at replacement of lost villages, and left the people undisturbed in their social, economic and cultural life” (Page 120). On the other hand, the Kainji case was still one of the most difficult to evaluate.36 The majority of resettlers continued to combine agriculture with fishing. The proportion of resettlers who combined rainfed agriculture of cereal crops with small-scale irrigation in the drawdown area and above the high water line also increased: not just among the Kamberi but also among most ethnic groups. Onions were the main cash crop with the more productive farmers able to spend profits on small-scale pumps and on livestock. Whereas before the dam, most cattle were owned by transhumant pastoralists, twenty years later resettlers owned the majority of cattle. They have also turned the principal fodder crop (Echinochloa sp.) into a dry season cash crop that they keep for their own cattle,and to sell to pastoralists.37 Fishing the reservoir remains a part-time activity for the majority of resettlers. By the late 1970s, estimated productivity of the reservoir varied between 4,500 and 5,000 metric tons versus Jenness’ pre-dam estimate of 3,000 metric tons for the relevant section of the Niger River. Generally speaking, Roder’s informants agree

36

Scudder, 2005:77. Morton and Obot estimate over 110,000 tons “of standing crop” is available of which 75% “is harvestable” (1984: 694).

37

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that productivity of the reservoir was higher than pre-dam catches in the river, although opinions tend to concur that in recent years better equipped and larger number of fishers have reduced catches due to overfishing. Most lakeside settlements were those of immigrant fishers, a minority of whom had become permanent residents, whose wives complemented fish processing with some farming. In 1970, Roder notes that Bazigos counted 268 lakeside, fishing settlements, only 16% of which were permanent resettler villages. Fishers were estimated at 6,320, only 23% of whom were local (including resettlers and hosts), using a total of 3,415 canoes. Perhaps the most successful KLRP project involved training boat builders to make fishing boats more suitable for reservoir conditions as well as larger boats for transporting smoke-dried fish, cattle, and other goods. Over the years, boat design has continued to be improved while the increasing number of outboard engines allowed fishers to travel further from fishing settlements. As the number of fishers and farmers has increased, so too have the number of markets. Complementing large permanent markets in New Bussa and Yelwa, has been an increasing number of periodic four day and seven day markets in resettler and other villages. In his conclusions, Roder judges that “the volume of trade per capita” is up. “There has been a definite quickening, an increase in all types of economic activity in the lake area. This economic development has been the result of many individuals pursuing their families’ interests and well-being rather than the consequences of official actions.” (1994: 162). Major problems remained, however, in the early 1990s. Health remains poor and health facilities and staff inadequate. Referring to a “thorough” study of two villages, Roder notes that Adekolu-John (1980) “found that thirty percent of children died in the first five years of life, and that these deaths were 86% of all deaths in the under 35 age cohort.” Because of increasing numbers of people, farmers are finding it harder to find land for growing cereal crops for household consumption, while transhumant pastoralists are finding browse and grazing less available. Encroachment on what is now called the Kainji Lake National Park is increasing. Herders, for example, encroach upon the park to cut off branches for their cattle to browse, while poachers have reduced Park wildlife. While the road system on the eastern side of the Kainji Lake Basin has improved, the one road on the western side from the dam site to the ferry crossing at Rofia (to access Yelwa) remains inadequate. Not only was it built well inland from the Niger to reduce the cost of bridging tributaries, and is apt to be impassable during the rainy season, but the Project provided no access roads to resettler villages at the edge of the reservoir. Local initiative can only be expected to continue “if the government can maintain and improve the infrastructure needed for every day commerce, health and education” (ibid: 163).

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2.15.7 The Kainji Lake Basin: 1992–2014 During the past two decades the situation has deteriorated, but to an unknown extent, among Kainji resettlers and communities living below the dam. The main problem below the dam was serious flooding in the late 1990s when, to prevent overtopping, large quantities of water were released from the dam without adequate warning, the impact of which was increased by encroachment of settlement and fields on the flood plain. Based on a detailed statistical analysis, Olukanni and Salami concluded that the main cause of flooding “is not due to normal operation of the hydropower stations in Nigeria [namely Kainji and Jebba], but is due to sudden discharges at the reservoirs located in the Niger Republic and the Republic of Mali.” Whether climate change is a factor in increased upriver releases in those countries is unknown. The Niger River Authority is well aware of the need for member nations to synchronize releases but has no authority to take action on its own initiative. On the other hand, international financial institutions since 2000 have begun to work with member countries through such joint programs as the World Bank’s $186 million 2008–2014 Niger Basin Water Resources Development and Sustainable Ecosystems Management Project that has allocated $82 million to rehabilitate Kainji’s hydropower capacity along with other dam-associated infrastructure. Progress on most project components, including Kainji, is slow, however, with disbursement in May 2014 only about 36% ten months before closing date. There is no evidence that living standards among a majority of resettlers have improved. Indeed, what little information is available suggests that, as in Nigeria as a country, poverty has increased. In their final report38 on the Environmental Audit of Kainji and Jebba Dams under the above World Bank Project, CIMA International carried out focus group discussions in New Bussa and in villages close to the dam. Among their findings were the following: 1. Increase of poverty. 2. Problems of population health (even in New Bussa residents were still drinking untreated water). 3. Destruction of the vegetation around the reservoir for domestic needs leading to a degeneration of forest from one year to the other. 4. And especially relevant, “the under-rating of potentials for development of socio-economic activities around the reservoir (recessional cropping, fishing, animal rearing, etc). presumably because of “the absence of senior staff specialized in the management of environmental and social impact of this type of installation;” hence “The [dam] management and employees are not very sensitive to environmental and social issues.”

38

Presumably 2014 or more recent.

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2.16

The Ivory Coast: Kossou

2.16.1 1969 Visit I suspect that it was due to Gilbert White’s influence, as Adviser to the Head of the United Nations Development Programme, that I was recruited in 1969 to be a Consultant to the UNDP Administrator on the Kossou Dam Project in the Ivory Coast. A useful coincidence was that the large majority of resettlers were Baoule who were one of the ethnic groups studied in the early 1960s by John C. De Wilde’s World Bank team of which I was a member. Though I had only been involved in the East African research, I was familiar with the West African studies through my involvement in the Bank’s 1967 two volume Experiences with Agricultural Development in Tropical Africa. Like the Aswan High Dam, Akosombo, Kainji and Kariba, the Kossou Dam was planned and implemented as the country’s largest project. Unlike the other mega dams on which I had worked, however, its planning and implementation became the responsibility of a single agency: the Authority for the Regional Development of the Bandama River Valley (Authorite de Valle du Bandama or AVB) which includes about one third of the country which the Bandama River bisects. Though initial surveys for the Kossou Dam, and a major irrigation project below the dam, began in 1960 under Kaiser Engineering, Electricite d’France and Lilienthal’s Development and Resources, as elsewhere with other mega dams, pre-construction surveys of project affected people and the river basin ecosystem were largely ignored until the AVB was established by Presidential Decree in 1969 —the same year that construction commenced! On the other hand, as with the Aswan High Dam, not only was the Head of State personally interested in the Kossou Project, but he came from the project area as did his close friend Aoussou Koffi who he appointed to head the AVB and who reported directly to the President. The Kossou Project differed from other African large dam projects in several major ways of which two were the most important. The first was that the project area was located in the heartland of the nation and contained the densest rural population. The second was that two major ecosystems were involved, with each under a separate AVB regional directorate. The northern directorate was in the Woodland Savannah Zone where yams were cultivated as the main crop. The southern directorate was in the Tropical Forest Zone where the resettlers were familiar with the cultivation of such tree crops as coffee and cacao as cash crops, some 20,000 hectares of which were inundated by the reservoir (Pittaluga 2007: 70). Approximately 75,000 people from 200 villages and hamlets were resettled in AVB-provided permanent housing of urban design (which the resettlers preferred) in 54 government-planned villages of which 32 were in the forest zone and 22 in the

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savanna. The larger of two AVB United Nations projects provided assistance to the physical construction of the 54 villages whose high cost was disproportionate to the budget needed for economic development.39 In spite of the Government’s delayed request for international assistance, four circumstances allowed the Government to complete, within a two-year period, the physical resettlement of the 22,000 resettlers who had to be moved before the dam was to be sealed in February 1971. First, unlike the situation with other African mega dams, was that a single organization, the AVB, was responsible for dam construction, resettlement, and development of the central portion of the Bandama River Valley both above and below the dam. Under the President’s authority, the AVB had political autonomy and, starting in 1970, its own budget. Approximately one-third of the budget was in the form of counter-part funding for the dam and associated hydroelectric facilities while approximately two fifths were for an irrigation project below the dam, resettlement and the integrated development of the lake basin. Second, the AVB also benefited from the presence of a comparatively large number of technically proficient French research and development agencies from which the AVB hired on secondment most of the senior staff of its five major departments during the first year of its existence. As a result, the AVB had the capacity to almost immediately begin the cartographic and soil surveys necessary for resettlement purposes. One French agency, for example, used aerial photography to map relevant areas around the reservoir at 5 m contours. Third, only 22,000 of an estimated 75,000 resettlers40 had to be resettled before project completion in 1971 since hydrological surveys indicated that it would take at least another four years for the reservoir to fill. Fourth, in response to an initial central government request and subsequent AVB ones, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) was willing “to take action to identify, approve and finance projects at a speed commensurate with the emergency nature of the operation.”41 Such differences from other mega dam projects emphasize the need for timely ‘situational analysis’ as a planning requirement for all such projects; a requirement which need be part of the preliminary options assessment process. As with other UNDP/Special Fund Projects, UNDP did not receive an urgent request for assistance with resettlement and lake basin development until February 1969; 1969 being the year that dam construction began. In June, following an inter-agency consultation in Rome, terms of reference for an initial UNDP pre-project Mission were agreed upon, with FAO consultant Karl Lagler as

The second UNDP project dealt with fisheries which is dealt with below. Another 60,000 people were estimated to lose some, or all of their land, but not their villages. 41 UNDP. Ivory Coast. Project IVC 20: Assistance to the Bandama River Authority (AVB). Report on Project, Results, Conclusions and Recommendations. 1971. UNDP: New York. 39 40

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coordinator and WHO, UNESCO and FAO providing relevant expertise including FAO’s David Butcher who had been studying Volta Dam resettlement in Ghana.42 Later that month, details were firmed up in the Ivory Coast with the mission operational in-country July 7–August 20. To complement and follow-up on the Lagler Mission, UNDP asked me to make a two week visit to the Ivory Coast in October–November 1969. I mention these details because they show that when a single UN agency was directly responsible for initial international project planning as well as playing a major operational role, a reasonably rapid response was possible. I subsequently emphasized in my report the need for UNDP not only to stay in charge during what became the UNDP project’s two-year preliminary phase, but also to maintain the flexibility to quickly make major changes relating not just to the Lagler and my Missions but also to subsequent ones. That advice was followed to the extent that at the end of the two-year pre-project stage, UNDP decided to shift from providing “operational/ financial inputs” to providing advice and consultant services. During my two weeks in the Ivory Coast I was exceptionally lucky not only to have Madame de la Taille as my interpreter but to also develop a close friendship with her husband, Michel, who, on secondment from the French agency OSTROM, was in charge of the AVB’s Agro-Development and Public Health Section from 1969–1972. He joined us during our field visit to the future lake basin where we also visited with the AVB’s new resettlement officer, F. Konan, who was a Baoule, and two of the 36 villages whose 22,000 people must be moved during the dam construction process. In the case of the de la Tailles, Michel and I subsequently corresponded as close friends during a three-year period.43 It is hard to over-emphasize the importance of such relationships with project officials as a means of keeping oneself informed of relevant issues during the long absences that usually characterize international consultancies. For example, Michel alerted me to the over- emphasis within the AVB on infrastructure, and especially housing, as something physical that could be seen, as opposed to agricultural extension; hence the danger of that over-emphasis using up funds that should be used for resettler livelihood. Michel also mentioned his concerns about how inexperience and tense relationships between AVB Ivorien staff, French experts on secondment, and UN experts were interfering with recruiting the best people for resettlement and development activities and the implementation of those activities. One crucial example involved the need for a fulltime, experienced sociologist for a number of years. Both David Butcher, the FAO sociologist on the initial UNDP 42

Following several Kossou consultancies, Butcher wrote a FAO resettlement guide based to a large extent on his work on Volta and Kossou resettlement. Later in the 1970s, when Michael Cernea asked me for recommendations for experienced people to help him draw-up the World Bank’s initial resettlement guidelines, I recommended Butcher who thereafter continued his career at the Bank. 43 I also had a more formal correspondence with Andre Jourdanne who was in charge of the AVB’s Development Division that included de la Taille’s and Konan’s Sections.

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1969 mission, and I had recommended Pierre Etienne as the ideal person for that job because he had done extended pre-resettlement research among the Baoule, was fluent in the local language, wanted the job and his employer was willing to release him for at least the first year. In my 1969 correspondence and report, as well as my Notes for UNDP Consideration Only, I went to great lengths to emphasize why Etienne’s long-term recruitment was crucial. It is important to relate my efforts in detail because they represent the bias against anthropologists/sociologists in the majority of institutions dealing with mega dams—in spite of the crucial need for their expertise in planning, implementing, and monitoring mega dam resettlement and development issues. This problem I have encountered to date, including most recently within Laos’s Nam Theun 2 Project that the Government, the major project authority (Electricite de France), and the World Bank intended to be a global model. In my 1969 report, I recommended “that UNDP attempt to negotiate Mr. Etienne’s release from OSTROM for a number of years so that he can observe the Baoule throughout the relocation and development period. As a result of this study, Mr. Etienne would be in an excellent position to advise the AVB as to the implications for the Baoule of various policy alternatives.” I followed up that recommendation with two letters to John Saunders, Chief of UNDP’s Africa Division, along with some of Etienne’s publications on the Baoule. The first letter, within a month of my return to California, was a single-spaced, two page typed letter. I enclosed Etienne’s CV and explained why I sincerely hoped that UNDP would recruit him: to carry out a long term study of the population undergoing relocation… Etienne was mentioned as the best possibility. Granted his probable availability it now remains to convince the AVB of the need for Etienne’s services on a full time basis and then for UNDP to arrange his release from OSTROM for the duration of his UN assignment… While in Abidjan, I was impressed with the technical competence of the AVB’s French staff … On the other hand, I was disturbed by the lack of attention paid to understanding the behavior, attitudes and expectations of the population to be relocated, and to the provision of appropriate training facilities to prepare them for their new lives around the lake shore margin… The lake basin population is largely Baoule. The sociologists who know the Baoule best are Etienne and his wife [who was unavailable for an AVB assignment]… If recruited Etienne’s role would be to study the Baoule before, during and after relocation…At the same time, he would be available as an adviser to the AVB on the implications for the Baoule of various alternative strategies for relocation and development… I’m pushing his candidacy hard because I’m convinced that a person like Etienne is of primary importance to the Kossou Project (and please note that he already has had some involvement with drawing up the census and advising the AVB).”

My second letter, dated December 26, drew on a recent letter from de la Taille in which he wrote, “I agree on your view … on Etienne and I think everyone here also agrees,” in order to emphasize to [UNDP’s] Saunders that my support for him “is not just a personal whim.” Yet UNDP was unwilling to hire Etienne on a full-time, as opposed to a part-time, basis because of ignorance on why his involvement could be crucial. Nor

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could the AVB be persuaded to recruit him full time. Part of the AVB’s problem was allowing resettlement planning and implementation to be delayed until less than two years prior to the need to move the first villages. Konan (who was Baoule), de la Taille and Jourdanne, who together were responsible for resettlement and development, had only been recently recruited. Though the AVB President Director General was from the central Bandama region, he was unaware of just how complex the resettlement process would be, especially since the large majority of resettlers did not understand why they must move. The AVB communication procedure for announcing the need for resettlement had been primarily for the Ivorien President to bring over 1,500 Baoule chiefs and notables to a July 6, 1969 meeting in the capitol to tell them about the dam and the need for them to move. Recently hired, Konan made his first resettler village tour during August 27–September 3, 1969. He later told me that he believed his number one problem would be to convince the people, the elderly in particular, of the need to relocate. As for the physical removal of the initial 22,000 people, his current staff was only 5 people, none of whom had had special training. One reason why a sociologist like Etienne was essential was the problem of host-relocatee relations over physical and ritual ownership of the land needed for resettlement. The AVB wanted to leave that problem in the hands of host and resettler leaders, while the global experience has been that clarifying and legalizing land division and ownership between hosts and relocates was a project obligation. Butcher emphasized in his second report in June 1970, that “Etienne is fully justified in advocating the transfer of the symbols of power associated with the land— i.e. the Hosts must be persuaded to give up the right to make sacrifices to the land, to pour libation and conduct other rituals involving the ‘Earth Deity’ and/or their ancestors and these rights must be transferred to the newcomers. Both categories of people, the evacuees and the hosts will have to conduct ceremonies of separation from the land they are leaving, and ceremonies of acquisition (for the resettlers) on the new land.” Such land issues were not the only topic that would require involvement of a sociologist like Etienne. Yet, Tom Haighton, UNDP’s Senior Advisor to the AVB President Director General, on meeting with Etienne a year later wrote in his memo on ‘Sociologists for AVB’ that “Mr. Etienne seemed to be disappointed with his part time role … I told him that for UNDP the decisive factor was the extent to which his services were required; if a half time arrangement would suffice, the organization would not pay for a full time release.”

2.16.2 1970 Visit In a 24 February 1970 letter after his own return from the Ivory Coast, while ignoring my recommendation on Etienne, Saunders wrote that my October 1969 “visit is remembered with great satisfaction … we are acting on most of your proposals in your recommendations about staff. It is still very difficult to say what

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will come of the whole effort, but all concerned continue to agree very clearly with your diagnosis that the fate of the whole affair will be settled eventually within the next 12 months.” I suspect that I realized at that time that I would soon be getting a request to return for a second mission before the end of the year. That request from UNDP came in June in a letter noting “many of the recommendations you formulated in your report are being actively pursued. Not all the posts you recommended are filled yet, but enough should shortly be so to justify a return visit by yourself, if this could be arranged, and it would be extremely useful for us to have your views on the way in which the situation is evolving.” Initially I suggested a September visit but changed that to October after de la Taille informed me that he would not be in country in September. As usual, my October 18–28 visit was too short but nonetheless sufficient for a satisfactory completion of my Terms of Reference. Throughout my main emphasis now was on agricultural development because it was the single most important livelihood pillar for raising living standards in the lake basin. Within agriculture, I stressed extension and training involving short courses. While the AVB had a strong Bureau of Studies complemented by the technical expertise of its staff, I did not believe that there was: sufficient commitment, both within the AVB and within the ministries of the Republic, to agricultural development, and more specifically to agricultural development at the village level. Unless this commitment exists, and unless it is backed up with adequate finance at all time and with adequate personnel at all levels, I think the development of the lake basin will be unsuccessful.

That underlined paragraph in my report was asking a lot of the AVB so long as it remained dependent on the Ministry of Agriculture for extension staff and training. As initially recommended by an FAO consultant, the only solution was for the AVB to develop its own unified extension service within the Direction du Development et de l’Amenagement. I emphasized that point in my October 27 end of mission meeting with President Director General Aoussou Koffi and his senior staff on 27 October, 1970 when my main point was that “successful development will be possible only if a very strong unified extension service was created; this meant both animation rurale (working from below) and vulgarization (working from above).”44 Furthermore, “all information reaching villages must be co-ordinated within AVB … relating to agriculture, fishing, maintenance of houses.” Another serious problem, common to most mega dam projects, was the reduced land per capita available to the host population, the resettlers, and the 60,000 project affected people who lost land but not their housing. To avoid land degradation and lower living standards, some form of agricultural intensification would be necessary, yet virtually impossible within a few years.

44

Here I supported FAO’s Agmon’s conclusion that the extension service must be within AVB and must be unified. The interpreter at the meeting was Madam de la Taille and Haighton wrote the summary that I am quoting.

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Two solutions were under consideration. One involved some resettlement on the irrigation project to be constructed below the dam. While I thought that small-scale irrigation within the lake basin “may well be a possibility in the future,” I emphasized in the October 27 meeting “that development plans be kept as simple as possible immediately following relocation; and that primary emphasis be placed on helping people to regain their former self-sufficiency at the earliest possible moment.” For similar reasons I was against the AVB’s inclination to rely for a number of years on World Food Programme (WFP) assistance for the initial 22,000 resettlers;45 indeed, “Over-dependence by AVB on WFP would lead villagers to expect too much from AVB;” a situation which I had noticed was being encouraged by the AVB’s radio program. The second solution to the inadequate availability of arable land involved an AVB adaption on a larger scale of a form of voluntary semi-mechanization that G. Gleizes and associates had been implementing with about 50% of households in six Baoule villages outside the resettlement area. Where better soil productivity existed (perhaps 25% of the land in the region) land was grouped so as to allow some tractor operations. A five crop rotation was recommended with yams as the first crop, appropriate cash crops for the next two years, and green manure crops during the last two years so that households involved must accumulate sufficient profits to support them over the entire five year period, as well as cover tractor operations and use of chemical fertilizers during the first three years. Gleizes’ system was ingenious and worth a try but not at the expense of my belief “that the most important single priority at Kossou is to regain self-sufficiency for the people at the earliest possible date” (1969: 29). As for Gleizes’ efforts, by the time that the AVB was dissolved in 1982, his semi-mechanized system had failed while the households involved had returned to their customary system of yam cultivation and crop and land rotation.46 Second to village agriculture, my second priority at the October 27 meeting was the use of short courses for training resettlers to fish the reservoir. The fishery was also a UNDP priority since the initial Lagler 1969 mission as well as an AVB priority at least by 1970. The main disagreement was over who should fish the reservoir and on the type of training needed. The problem was similar to what I had encountered with other UN- assisted African man-made lake projects where the majority of fishery experts were more interested in the fish (especially yields per hectare and total sustainable productivity) than the fishers. In the Kossou case, Lagler and the CTFT (the key French fishery agency in the Ivory Coast}47 wanted to further train expert fishers from other Ivorien fisheries in 45

Some WFP assistance would be necessary because of the inadequate time available for their physical relocation and for the re-establishment of people’s former self-sufficiency, especially since delayed physical removal to distant village sites kept resettlers from re-planting their main crop of yams during February-March, 1971. 46 The AVB’s system of semi-mechanization was subsequently terminated. 47 This was Centre Technique Forestier Tropical (CTFT).

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relatively long courses at an existing training facility at the inland town of Bouake, while FAO’s Agmon and I wanted short courses for resettlers, either at a training center by the reservoir which could also be used for agricultural training, or in the fish camps. I also suggested that the AVB temporarily exclude outsiders from the lake fishery that should be seen as part of an integrated development program for the resettlers and the host population.48 At the time of my arrival in October 1970, UNDP had already drawn up a Lake Kossou Fishery proposal for submission to the Governing Council in January 1971 that emphasized the Lagler/CTFT approach since only 300 fishers would be trained over a three-year period. In my October 27 meeting with the AVB President Director General, I agreed with Lagler’s professional opinion that production in the reservoir could approach 20,000 tons and support 5–10,000 local fishers, but I disagreed with his training recommendation. Rather “training should be chiefly on the lake itself. A course might thus be completed within six weeks, half the time it would take at CTFT Bouake. In five to ten years it was possible that 10% of Baoule around the lake periphery would be fishermen.” Furthermore, “AVB should not wait for FAO49 to initiate training, but should use its own money for a start, possibly contracting with CTFT before FAO moved in. Experience showed that if local people were not fishers, their training must start as soon as the lake-fill begins.” In his reply the AVB DG said that he had accepted Agnom’s proposal “to draft an animation rurale/vulgarization project“and “what did I think of the AVB’s present efforts?” I replied that “a promising start had been made and the right type of animateurs (not too educated) was being recruited. In the future AVB should allow villagers themselves to put forward candidates for training as their future animateurs, or at least give them some part in selecting candidates so as to have a feeling of participating in the operation. The AVB has learned much from other projects … Many successes had been achieved; however, in technical fields. The big problem now was extension and the first job of the [part-time] operational sociologist should be to examine the work of the animateurs/moniteurs.” In his reply, the AVB DG shrewdly noted that “AVB intended to give opportunities to Baoule but if they did not take them the fishery resource still would have to be exploited.” After my return to the United States in late October 1970, unknown to me the AVB’s Aoussou Koffi (with whom I had established a good relationship) made a June 1971 request to UNDP’s Ivorien Resident Representative that starting in October–November 1971 the AVB would find further annual visits from me “extremely useful.” In August, I received a letter from Michael de la Taille hoping that Fishers from other countries were excluded but I do not believe the fishery was ever restricted to the hosts and resettlers as in the Kariba case. 49 UNDP intended FAO to be the Executing Agency of its October 1970 Lake Kossou Proposal. I was also concerned about delays in UNDP’s approval process due to agency re-organization following the publication of Sir Robert Jackson’s report on A Study of the Capacity of the United Nations Development System. 48

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I would consider such a visit and a phone call from UNDP as to my availability before the end of the year. Under the erroneous impression that there was ambivalence about a third Scudder visit, I replied that my schedule was such that a 1971 visit would not be possible. Now I wonder what I would have said if I had received timely information of Aoussou Koffi’s June request and had become aware of Haighton’s current opinion that I “clearly had a very beneficial effect on Mr. Koffi’s thinking and on AVB priorities” such as forming its own agricultural extension service.”50 Between the end of October 1971 and a September 23, 1973 UNDP Telefax (advising me that a 1973 mission to the AVB was considered necessary) my records contained no further information from UNDP on Kossou.

2.16.3 1973 Visit According to my October 23, 1973 UNDP Special Service Agreement, my broad 18 day November Assignment was “to survey the overall activities of the Bandama Valley Authority in view of the integrated development of the Kossou Region.” Since my 1970, visit the two-year UNDP pre-project (IV-20) had come to an end in December 1971, with Tom Heighton’s role as Adviser to Aoussou Koffi shifted to the Ivorien UNDP Resident Representative as coordinator of subsequent UNDP Projects. The two main ones were the previously discussed Lake Kossou Fishery Project (IVC 26) whose Project Manager was my Kariba colleague Andre Coche and the Assistance to Village Construction Programme (IVC 27) for resettlers. Several smaller projects dealt with consultants for specific needs including Sociology, Preventive Health, a Documentalist, and assistance in Pedology. My biggest disappointment in country was that Aoussou Koffi was no longer in charge of the AVB having been replaced51 by Akoto Yao who had neither the experience nor the type of support that Aoussou Koffi had from the Ivory Coast’s first President. Another disappointment was that Genviere and Michel de la Taille were no longer in the Ivory Coast, having left for a UNDP FAO project in Vietnam following our last correspondence in February 1973. Once again, however, I lucked out for my new interpreter, Ida Paquin, was the Assistant to the UNDP Resident Representative, and who accompanied me throughout my visit. She also did the French translation of my report, although thereafter the Resident Representative “excoriated certain parts. He also insisted that the French version be established in the ‘impersonal’”. Subsequently we corresponded through March 1973 but thereafter lost contact. 50

July 30, 1971 Haighton letter to the UNDP Ivorien Resident Representative, a copy of which I received during my 1973 visit. My suggested program would have included accompanying Aoussou Koffi and a group of senior Ivorian senior officials on a visit to Lake Volta. 51 Aoussou Koffi’s next position was as the head of Air Afrique that was owned by most of the countries in West and Central Africa.

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During my first meeting with Akoto Yao, I learned that, ironically, the AVB was in the process of shifting emphasis from the physical relocation of resettlers, to becoming a regional development organization at the very time that UNDP, most unfortunately, had decided it did not have the budget, nor the ability to become further involved in the overall development of the Lake Kossou basin. As for me, I found Akoto Yao’s Terms of Reference both challenging and pertinent. First, since physical removal was drawing to a close, I should examine the condition of the relocatees as to whether conditions were adequate for the future development of the area. Second, since the AVB was now a regional development agency, how best fuse together the hosts and the relocatees through development projects? Third, since Kossou Lake was in the middle of the country and bound to have long term effects, what kind of studies should be carried out to assess long term impacts. In addressing these instructions, I divided my time between the AVB’s savannah and forest regional directorates where we visited 12 new AVB villages, two villages under construction, one Baoule community soon to be resettled, and two fishing camps. My conclusion at my final meeting with Akoto Yao and his staff was that only if the AVB’s ongoing transition into a regional development agency succeeded, could the AVB’s successful physical resettlement process be complemented by adequate resettler and host livelihood development. Already I had noticed that two key ministries to which the AVB had handed over activities were failing to provide essential assistance. The Ministry of Public Works “has shown its inability to maintain satisfactorily new roads that had been handed over by the AVB (TS 1973: 4). As for the Ministry of Agriculture, how could it take over the AVB’s larger semi-mechanization programme when the Ministry had dropped its own program that included Gleize’s semi-mechanization experiment with the result that the villagers involved have reverted back to their traditional crop rotation and techniques (TS 1973: ibid)? Furthermore, the Ministries of Education and Health and Population were having difficulties providing teachers and medical facilities and staff. On the other hand, the challenges as a regional development agency that the AVB was now facing were such as to preclude a successful outcome. The situation was made especially difficult because of recent and major budget reductions. Furthermore, according to information that I received from AVB and UN staff, there was “considerable outside opposition to the AVB becoming a regional development agency for the nation’s heartland” (TS 1973 “Commentary for UNDP Only”: 2). Already “various ministries wished to restrict the AVB’s charter to relocation alone and were jockeying among themselves to take over certain tasks and projects from the AVB” (ibid), with three ministries interested in acquiring AVB fisheries activities.52

52

Those ministries were the Ministry of Agriculture (Department of Fisheries), the Ministry of Animal Production (marine and lagoon fisheries) and the Ministry of Scientific Research.

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In regard to the relocatees and hosts, the major challenge would be to help the majority to maintain their previous livelihood not only because there was now less land for more people but also because the AVB had never been given the authority to allocate economic control and ritual authority to resettlers to use what was formerly host land. The recommendations that I made, all assumed what could not be assumed; namely that the AVB would become a functional river basin authority with an indefinite existence through time and with an adequate professional staff with job security which would include ample host and resettler recruits as extension workers. Granted land scarcity, my most important recommendation involved the spider-like lake’s vast drawdown area of perhaps 10,000 hectares for agriculture, livestock management, and aquaculture based on small earthen dams across the many streams and gullies that drain into the reservoir. Keeping in mind, Lake Kossou’s presence in the country’s heart land, UNDP’s Carruchi was of the opinion that drawdown area cash and subsistence crops alone could support tens of thousands of people (over 40,000 was one guess). Then there also was the potential of using the drawdown area for fattening for market cattle in route to Abidjan and the coast from the grazing lands north of the Ivory Coast. The drawdown potential was such that I recommended the commencement of appropriate studies as soon as possible; studies which would also include the possibility of some regularization of the annual drawdown at the expense of a percentage of hydropower generation. As for marketing studies, they should include lake transport to achieve an integrated land and water transport system. Of all such activities, only the development of the Lake Kossou fishery had been impressive, though I was now concerned about its sustainability due to the fact that the reservoir had yet to reach 50 per cent of its expected cover. Toward the end of 1973, there were approximately 2,000 local fishers—the majority of whom had received some AVB training while others were self-taught. By June, 1973, for example, “up to 800 local fishermen had been trained by AVB fish monitors and then equipped with FAO designed boats and six to twelve nets, the cost to be repaid over the next ten to sixteen months” (TS 1973: 22). In 1973, however, I was not willing to give up on the AVB primarily because it was “by far the best Ivorian agency to tackle the integrated development of the Central Region of the Bandama. Though the task ahead is an incredibly complex one, that is fraught with difficulties which may well be beyond the capabilities of the AVB, I am personally convinced that the AVB does have a reasonable chance to pull off a development coup.” (Ibid: 2). During the remainder of my five page 1973 “Commentary for UNDP Consideration Only”, I drew attention to the section in my report that dealt with a possible second phase IVC 26 on fishing. As for IVC 27 on housing, which I also considered a good project, I recommended the expansion of the current emphasis on self-help housing for the host population “which could play a major role in reducing the contrasts between relocatee and host communities.”

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2.16.4 1974–1979 My next contact with the Kossou Project was when I received a March 3, 1975 telegram from the Ivorian UNDP Resident Representative that the AVB requested my visit in May–June to assess their proposed integrated regional development scheme for one of the AVB’s two regions. That would have been interesting to assess because I was told that the proposed scheme was based on some of my recommendations during my 1973 visit, but I was unavailable before the scheme was to be submitted to UNDP for $1.8 million in July. Though I submitted the name of an alternate, I have in my files no further information from UNDP on the UN’s involvement in the Kossou project aside from a January, 1978 query from my old friend Charles Clay, who was still based at FAO’s Rome headquarters as Coordinator of the UN’s African Lakes Projects, concerning my availability for a possible Kossou visit in about March. That was when I was about to start my third UNDP assignment in the Sudan at the request of Charles LaMuniere who was at that time UNDP Resident Representative in Khartoum. Clay’s cable was my last official contact with the Kossou project.

2.16.5 1980–2014 Since 1980, I have received occasional reports referring to the Kossou project and surrounding areas. Most useful are several FAO reports on the Lake Kossou fisheries and a 2007 Ph.D. dissertation by World Bank social scientist Fabio Pittaluga on “Poverty, fishing and livelihood on Lake Kossou, Cote d’Ivoire” which was based on research carried out while he was with FAO’s Department of Fisheries. From an environmental point of view, most interesting is that to date the reservoir covers no more than 50 percent of its expected surface area due to insufficient rainfall! As a result relocates have been able to reclaim about half of the area from which they were either involuntarily removed or had lost land to the project, an opportunity that I assume has been by far their most important development benefit from the Kossou Project! Aside from renewed customary cultivation of unflooded areas, during the dry season (November–July) thousands of hectares of reservoir drawdown were available for vegetable cultivation by local women. Earlier government and AVB attempts to introduce semi-mechanization, on the other hand, have failed. Though not mentioned as a project cost by Pittaluga, in the 1980s the major adverse impact on resettlers was the government’s termination of the AVB and its programs as a river basin authority in 1982. What programs remained were handed over to various government departments, presumably with smaller budgets and less capacitybuilding abilities.

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Thereafter, according to Pittaluga, the following adverse local and national events had major impacts on resettlers and hosts alike: Declining rainfall, a serious drought in 1983 and associated “wild fires” which brought many farmers “to their knees” as fires reduced woodland and savanna vegetation as well as coffee and cacao plantations on both sides of the reservoir (2007: 73). At the national level, World Bank structural adjustment policies and joining the World Trade Organization adversely affected an agricultural economy based on coffee and cocoa which had dominated the Ivorian economy and which “crashed in the late 1990s” (ibid: 16). Kossou Lake Basin problems included increasing land scarcity associated with the resettlement process (ibid: 196),53 population increase, a return of urban youth to their rural villages because of “Steady reduction in income streams” (ibid: 74), infrastructure deterioration, and increasing school dropout rates as the national economy deteriorated. National unraveling following the death of First President and Father of the Nation, Houphouet-Boigny, in 1993 associated with increasing inter-ethnic strife, “coups, currency devaluation, an economic recession, and beginning in 2002 the civil war in Cote d’Ivoire” (ibid: Page 77, footnote 10). The most detailed data between 1975 and Pittaluga’s seven months of fieldwork in 2001 and 2002 deals with fishing. Following the government’s eviction of about 650 immigrant fishers from other countries in 1975, increasing numbers of younger resettlers, hosts and other Ivoriens began fishing the reservoir using a wide range of techniques including gill nets and beach seines. According to FAO data, yields varied, the most being around 7,000 tons per annum. Before its dissolution in 1982, the AVB, with UNDP/FAO help, trained 1,623 fishers that with self-learners used 1,305 AVB canoes and over 15,000 nets. Presumably because the reservoir continued to be under exploited through the mid-1980s while the government wanted increased fish landings, skilled immigrant fishers (from Mali especially) were again tolerated with 62% of 1,350 fishers Malian by early 2001 (ibid: 16). Toward the end of the 1990s, however, “Lake Kossou took a completely new meaning when the coffee-cocoa economy collapsed and young Ivorians saw it as an opportunity being stolen from them by Malien fishers”(ibid: 13), with 1,400 immigrants subsequently expelled by local people in August 2001 (ibid: 75).

53

Three of ego’s 7 study villages were resettled. All three had electricity, water pumped from deep wells and project houses. Three of the other four had refused relocation to AVB sites. Their houses not being inundated, they accepted cash compensation which did not “offset” their economic losses which presumably were flooded land (166), nor did they receive from the AVB electricity and piped water from deep wells (ibid 102 and 165–166).

Chapter 3

The International Research Activities of the Institute for Development Anthropology and Increasing Concerns About the Socio-Economic and Environmental Costs of Large Dams for Free Flowing Rivers and Riverine Communities: 1976–1995

3.1

Introduction

David Brokensha, Michael Horowitz and I, while attending a meeting on West Africa in Arizona in 1976, decided to form an Institute for Development Anthropology. Opinions among knowledgeable colleagues were that the three founders would not succeed because of their very different backgrounds and personalities. A South African by birth and Catholic convert while a Ph.D. student at Cambridge, Brokensha had been a Colonial civil servant and District Commissioner in Tanganyika. Over the years, he and partner, Bernard Riley, had made so many friends among students, colleagues and others that they could, and did, literally travel the world visiting friends. Should arguments between Horowitz and me threaten IDA, then—in the opinion of colleagues—outcomes would require Brokensha’s mediation. Since neither Brokensha nor I were interested in setting up and administrating IDA, while Horowitz was willing to assume both roles, the three of us knew from the start that there would be no IDA without Horowitz’s initial and continued leadership. On the other hand, he was also the most volatile of the three founders. While Horowitz was Jewish by birth, I was either an agnostic or an atheist depending upon the circumstances. I was also a ‘lone wolf’ who joined Caltech’s faculty because I would be the only anthropologist on the campus and could also spend more time in the field than my two colleagues. Despite such different cultural and personality backgrounds, the three of us shared important characteristics and interests. All of us were professors at major universities—University of California Santa Barbara in Brokensha’s case and State University of New York, Binghamton in Horowitz’s. We also had shared

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experiences and interests including working with, or researching, poor communities in Africa. We believed that the large majority of Africa’s poor wanted development, and were eager to work with local communities, governments and international organizations in helping the poor and their communities achieve their aspirations. Moreover, all three of us had considered institutionalizing development anthropology in some way. In Brokensha and Horowitz’s cases, both had considered building a development anthropology program within their departments (over which both had served as chairs) but had found their colleagues to be unsupportive; in Horowitz’s case even after he had been promised financial support to proceed. In 1960, anthropologist George Appell and I began discussing the possibility of setting up a consulting firm for bringing an anthropological perspective into development policies. The fact that our efforts over four years failed are worth recounting because they help explain why all three founders wanted IDA to be a completely independent non-profit organization (NGO) as well as emphasizing the type of difficulties that Horowitz could expect and would have to overcome in establishing IDA in Binghamton. Our efforts may also help explain some of IDA’s more important features. After two years of detailed discussion and planning between Appell and myself, our interaction suffered when I was employed by the American University in Cairo. In Egypt, I met Francisco Benet who was UNESCO’s Representative for the Social Sciences. During our initial meeting not only did we both realize that we wanted to organize our own firm, but I realized that Benet was well ahead of Appell’s and my thinking. Already Benet had worked for an engineering firm as an anthropologist during which he had come to the conclusion that to be effective in late developing countries one must have one’s own organization. Later in 1962, we sent Appell a draft organization chart showing a small firm with a salaried staff of six or seven not all of whom need be permanent, at least at first. The chart, however, was meant to represent a fully operational firm that could cover as many as 17 fields including Anthropology, Architecture and City Planning, Engineering, Hydrology and Irrigation, Nutrition, Public Health and Soil Science. On the Organization Chart the most important field staff, at Benet’s suggestion, were the Junior Research Officers on Call. They would be drawn from graduate students who were finding difficulties in financing their Ph.D. research—“we would hire them, equip them and send them out on contracts under our supervision and with the full understanding that they will be able to get a Ph.D. thesis from their research. Since a mutual benefit deal we will not have to pay them much so that will cut our operational expenses greatly.” In an accompanying letter, I wrote Appell that after receiving his comments and suggested revisions, “we plan to see the Ford Foundation Representative in Cairo to discuss” financing possibilities. If all works out well, “It seems to be that January, 1964, might be as good a time as any for the three of us to consider full time employment … As for pilot projects, the logical thing is for each of us to draw up a pilot project for possible submission. Francisco’s will be in Iran, mine probably in Rhodesia.”

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Later in April, Benet and I completed and sent to Appell a 26 page mimeographed Memoire titled “Creation of a Firm of Social, Natural and Engineering Scientists for Studies, Surveys and Applications in the General Field of Regional Development.” During the not-for-profit firm’s preliminary phase only the three founding members would be involved. Working on a non-salaried basis, “we hoped that we would secure a grant of about $150,000 which would allow the firm to incorporate and recruit basic personnel and to underwrite the partial costs of its first project.” Over half of the Memoire then outlined a possible project in Peru. Appell’s 8 page typed reply came from Kudat, North Borneo where he and his wife Laura were doing field work for his Ph.D. dissertation. The first page dealt with the type of fieldwork difficulties all of us can expect. In Appell’s case, he and Laura were still recovering from the combined effects of food poisoning and amoebic dysentery. The next seven pages dealt with the firm. Appell’s main point was that the major difference between the three of us at this point was that Benet and I had a much broader view of the firm in regard to the range of disciplines and topics covered as opposed to just “anthropology and ecology.” He was especially worried about how we would administer such a firm without becoming primarily administrators ourselves: “there would have to be someone who would draw all these diverse disciplines and their projects together under one organizational roof and see that the firm was successful financially.” On the firm’s organizational structure, Appell’s preference was that we start small, perhaps with a big project financed by a foundation … while letting the organizational structure grow in response to the type of contracts received. Structuring the firm around graduate students, however, had his full support; indeed his own idea had been “to put graduate students in the field when we land a contract for a period of 18 months to two years with a research project supervisor visiting the student toward the end of the field work to help wind up the contract process.” With Appell’s comments in hand, Francisco and I met with the Ford Foundation’s Cairo representative. Not only did he seem genuinely interested in our plans, but he gave us the impression that our firm could fill a gap which the Ford Foundation was genuinely concerned about. He also warned us that our chances of being considered for a grant would be small until our firm had a legal status and that he would be willing to make incorporation enquiries for us while on his return to New York in a few months. Subsequently, Benet and I invited social anthropologist Robert Fernea to join our discussions so we could profit from his experience in financing through the Ford Foundation, and implementing through the American University in Cairo, the $100,000 Survey of Egyptian Nubia before the construction of the Aswan High Dam. While in Cairo the three of us wrote and mimeographed a seven page document titled “A New Conception for Regional Development,” which presented the rational for programs for controlled socio-economic change that “must be guided by social and natural scientists who will define the contexts within which engineers, architects and other technical specialists work.”

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During the remainder of 1962 and well into early 1963, communications on the firm temporarily stopped. A major problem was that now the four of us were all in different countries. Back in France with UNESCO, Benet used his Paris location to expand his contacts with a wide range of individuals, some of whom were far more distinguished than we were, and with existing organizations that might be interested in working with us and perhaps sponsoring, at least initially, our firm. Once again Benet was well ahead of Appell, Fernea and myself in his thinking and planning in ways that, for the first time, had become clearly unresolvable and interlocking issues between us. Benet started one letter by stating that “we are on the eve of setting up the association, that is to say, that things have advanced more than you may suspect” in regard to three issues. The first dealt with whether or not we incorporate within an overarching organization such as the International Social Science Council or the Maison de l’homme (France’s Centre of Social Studies). Both had shown interest in our ideas and Benet had scheduled further talks for which he sought our mandate for reaching an agreement of association if possible. Such an agreement would require our incorporation within Europe that Benet now thought would be essential if our firm was to be truly international. Since any such form of association would be unacceptable to Appell and myself, as would be incorporation outside of the United States, the evolution of Benet’s thinking created a potentially unresolvable conflict. The second issue dealt with staffing our firm. Benet now believed that we should drop our concept of being the firm’s founders in order to recruit, initially as equals, the best people available including some, such as Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth, who were much older and distinguished than we were. Benet’s thinking here created another potentially unresolvable conflict. Benet’s third issue, which I was ready to endorse, was that we should select global mountain habitats as our specialty since most development agencies focused on lowlands. Furthermore, already Benet had come up with contractible projects for the Peruvian Andes, the Zagros in Iran, and a small mountain range, the Alpujarras, in Spain. Benet ended his letter stating, “I know there are many points in this letter which disagree with your views and even with your plans. But I do not think for a minute that most of the strategy that I propose … should exclude your own ideas and projects. I am all for carrying different ideas and approaches simultaneously.” During the rest of 1963, it became increasingly clear that our views were incompatible on the type of organization each of us had in mind. Though Benet and I had “hinted at a logical solution” to our differences which would be “a loose affiliation between two outfits—one Old World and one New World”, correspondence with Benet came to an end during early 1964. I had hoped that the two of us could meet in Europe when I was in route to attend in Egypt a January Symposium on Contemporary Egyptian Nubia but I received no replies then or later concerning the possibility of future meetings. That was unlike Benet. My only explanation was that Benet’s hopes of receiving overarching support from a parent agency in France were never realized. While he had praised my September 1963 willingness to accept

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such sponsorship, he also had written in the margin of his letter that he was getting “pretty impatient” with his French contacts. In 1966, Fernea notified me that Benet had been killed in an automobile accident in Iran.

3.2

The Global and US Context in Which IDA Arose

Toward the end of the Second World War in 1945, planning was under way to establish the World Bank in 1944 and the United Nations in 1945. In April 1948, the United States initiated a four year long Marshall Plan to aid the European recovery. Within the US private sector, engineering firms expanded their water resource development activities internationally. Drawing on earlier experience in Uruguay, Harza built its first post-war mega dam in Iraq in 1963. Environmentally oriented firms included England’s Hunting Technical Services in 1953 and the United States’ Environmental Defense Fund in 1967. American universities also opened institutions for international development purposes with the University of Wisconsin’s Land Tenure Center opening in 1962 and Harvard’s Institute for International Development in 1974. IDA partners and rivals for funds, Development Alternatives Incorporated was founded in 1970, Chemonics in 1974, and Associates in Rural Development in 1977. As for post-war anthropology as a discipline it “had little lasting impact on development theory and practice” until the mid-1970s (Hoben 1982: 351).

3.3

3.3.1

The Critical Role of the United States Agency for International Development (AID) in the Rise and Fall of IDA Introduction

AID was one of many reasons for IDA’s impressive success for more than 20 years. Analysis of those other reasons will require most of this history. On the other hand, a strong argument can be made that serious reductions in AID funding was the largest single reason for IDA’s eventual failure. Other factors that were involved will be dealt with as they occurred during IDA history. Those involving the founding directors, for example, included inadequate adaptive management of IDA policies to changing circumstances as well as personality defects.

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3.3.2

The Political Economy of the Agency for International Development (AID) Under Democratic and Republican Administrations and Presidents

3.3.2.1

1970s

During John F. Kennedy’s presidency, the US Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 which combined existing foreign assistance within a single organization—USAID. During the 1970s AID’s focus shifted “from technical and capital assistance programs … to a “basic human needs” approach (https://www. usaid.gov/who-we-are/usaid-history). No doubt influenced by World Bank president (Robert MacNamara)’s 1970 policy-changing Nairobi speech, 1973 and 1975 amendments to AID’s Foreign Assistance Act led to Congress’s New Directions mandate “for promoting more equitable income distribution and employment opportunities for the ‘poor majority,’ to agriculture and rural development, to food crops, and to the use of more labor intensive ‘appropriate’ technologies in agriculture and in capital projects such as road construction” as well as to required local participation in such development (Hoben Op. Cit: 357). Two other circumstances aside from the New Directions mandate made the mid-1970s a very opportune time to establish the Institute for Development Anthropology. One was Horowitz’s recruitment by AID as social science adviser for an 18 month assignment in West Africa in 1973 and 1974. That assignment provided him with the opportunity not just for extensive travel, but also to meet and influence a wide variety of AID personnel in the field and in Washington. One of those influenced was Robert Berg. Berg was AID’s founding director of Evaluation and had drafted AID’s important Social Soundness Guidelines that became operational in the fall of 1975. He had also designed and then headed up AID’s Office of Evaluation in 1979 (Berg 2012: 74). Perhaps AID’s most innovative employee in those years, Berg assembled a “dream team” of AID employees to help him operate the new office of evaluation. Berg also formed “an advisory group to meet with [him] once or twice a year (basically on demand) consisting of the smartest people [he] could identify from outside the Agency with whom [he] could raise basic issues in an off-the-record setting.” Two of the six members of this group “were Michael Horowitz, a leading development anthropologist … and Thayer Scudder … So we had the people and the facilities and we were ready to roll. I figured with all the talent I had that my job was the care and feeding of geniuses, and that was pretty much the truth” (Berg Op. Cit: 76–77). It is hard to imagine a more fortuitous situation for IDA’s first four years with its most important financial donor agency. Unfortunately for Berg and AID, soon after the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the Republicans appointed John Bolton as AID’s Assistant Administrator for Policy (AID’s number three position). With Bolton, who subsequently became America’s Ambassador to the UN, Berg knew

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that his “role in evaluation was over. I knew that the staff I was leaving behind was in an impossible position working for an ideologue who had absolutely no regard for impartiality” (op.cit: 91). By 1980, IDA, fortunately, was well underway both institutionally and financially. But Berg’s 2012 interview not only illustrates how fortunate that IDA was founded in 1976, as opposed to 1980, but also how AID policies could change radically between US administrations.

3.3.2.2

1980–1992

These 13 years were IDA’s most effective. Though periodically we had cash flow problems and worrisome indebtedness to local banks, by the mid-1980s IDA was fully staffed and financially supported by an AID Cooperative Agreement on Human Settlements and Natural Resource Systems Analysis (SARSA) and several AID Indefinite Quantity Contracts (IQCs) through which we could compete for a wide range of AID “Requests for Projects.” Most used was SARSA. A Cooperative Agreement funded by AID’s Office of Rural Development, Science and Technology Bureau, and shared with Clark University, SARSA was awarded in 1983 and renewed for another five years in early 1988. Received in 1982, our first IQC dealt with Rural Development and Evaluation. In 1987 and 1988 two more IQC s were received. The first dealt with Environment and Natural Resources Management and was a joint venture with Louis Berger International and Dames & Moore. The second, in Rural Development, was a Joint Venture shared with Development Alternatives Inc. and Research Triangle Institute.

3.3.2.3

1993–1994

In 1993, “things began to fall apart.” In a 5 January, 1993 Horowitz memo to Brokensha and me, Horowitz wrote that “that because since 1990, as you know well, revenue—whose generation is the primary responsibility of the Senior Research Associates—has experienced a sharp secular decline, from $1.7 million to ca. $900,000 million in 1993. There are practically no more savings that can be made on the expense side … We cannot afford further downsizing on the support staff, who are hard pressed now to respond to research staff demands.” On the front page of the spring 1993 edition of the Institute’s Development Anthropology Network (also referred to as DAN) was a Box titled “Contributions to IDA” that requested tax deductible contributions. That was the first such public request for funding that IDA had made aside from “A Note on IDA Funding and an Appeal” on the last two pages of the first issue of the Network in 1981. Again, national policies and politics were a major part of IDA’s problem. Though the Democrats’ William J. Clinton Administration had been in power since January 1992, the White House had not chosen a new AID administrator until J. Brian Atwood was appointed in April 1993. Approved by Congress in May 1993,

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Attwood’s first priority, and that of many AID supporters, was the need to re-organize the efficiency and productivity of what was considered a troubled agency. Indeed, in an early meeting with AID colleagues, Atwood was said to have stated, “We need to save the agency, and we don’t have much time. Confidence in A.I.D. is so low that we couldn’t get a new authorization bill if we tried” (Horowitz memo to IDA staff: 6 April, 1993). In his 12 July, 1993 letter to Brokensha and me, Horowitz reported “the word out of Washington is not favorable to AID.” One report from an AID employee, and former IDA staff member, is “that AID expects to reduce its overseas presence by about 50% … Since half of all USAIDs [missions] are in Africa, that continent will take the biggest hit. Southern Africa will do best—apparently under the ‘potential market for US exports’ theme—smaller missions will be closed altogether, and new regional offices will be established … More than ever, it appears prudent for us to search intensively for support outside of AID … It can be done, and I will devote a great deal of attention to it, but I need your help, encouragement, and above all moral support.” AID’s re-organization was formally announced on October 1, 1993, with implementation expected by January 1994. Of most importance to IDA was integration of the Bureau of Research and Development, from which IDA had received most of its funds, into a new Bureau of Global Programs, Field Support, and Research that would also incorporate the previous Bureau for Private Enterprise and elements from each of the Regional Bureaus. On October 29, 1993, Peter Little, SARSA’s director, informed IDA Directors and fellow Senior Research Associates that far too much heavy pressure had been placed on SARSA’s core funds “during the past 4–5 months, a period where we have expended on average more than $30,000 per month—as high as $50,000 in one month (about 100–125% higher than what is our usual monthly expenditure). At present, we have about $50,000 remaining from FY 1992 core funds and we are not likely to see additional funds until March or April 1994 … It also should be remembered that the core funds are also supposed to support writing up of synthesis reports, publications, and cost-sharing arrangements with certain projects … all obligations that we cannot meet under current conditions.” The 1993 Directors Meeting was held in Washington, DC, over a five-day period in November. All three Directors were present. Horowitz “presented a clear and comprehensive picture of IDA’s gloomy financial situation, with decreasing revenues and increasing expenditures (Table 3.1).” In response to the gravity of the situation the Directors endorsed immediate measures to reduce costs, including: Terminating, except for a bare minimum, periodical subscriptions to the IDA library. Terminating the telex address. Adjusting working time for senior support staff. Having the fringe benefit rate more accurately reflect expenses.

3.3 The Critical Role of the United States Agency … Table 3.1 IDA revenue from 1989 through 1993

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Year

Total Revenue

Change from 1988

1989 1990 1991 1992 1993

$1,645.298 $1,757,337 $1,300,596 $1,187,831 Less than $1 million

+1% −21% −28%

The directors also “decided vigorously to explore all feasible sources of funding. Brokensha and I will join Horowitz in playing more active roles in fund-raising.” On 13 December, as recommended by the Directors, all regularly employed staff met to discuss the financial situation in connection with planning for 1994. Discussion included both the recurrent gap between income and expenses and the imminent exhaustion of IDA’s $100,000 bank line of credit. Staff changes announced included termination of the IDA librarian on 20 November, 1993, termination of the position of information management specialist as of 1 January, 1994, and a voluntary adjustment of the editorial associate’s working time from 80 to 60%. Unanimous support was also given to cutting IDA’s contribution to staff TIAA-CREF retirement plans from 10 to 5%, and to cutting the amount of time charged to vacation by 20% for the Administrative Officer and the Senior Research Associates with all other staff receiving a 10% reduction. During the first half of 1994, Brokensha and I concluded that IDA’s best years had come to an end. In a January 27 note to me, Brokensha wrote from England “As we agreed in our phone conversation yesterday, the next few months may well be decisive for IDA. I’ll be keeping in touch with you as I hear of any changes. Please will you do the same.” In a long reply to Brokensha on February 24, 1994, I wrote I have been rethinking both the importance of IDA and my own IDA involvement. In regard to importance, ideally we will have a major role to play IF we could get a major endowment that would allow us to have a greater impact on policy… However, unlike the situation in the mid-1970s when we started, we are no longer relatively unique…Without the funds to chart new directions of our own choosing, we really are not that different from such other consulting agencies as Associates in Rural Development, Development Alternatives Inc., and Harvard’s Institute for International Development—all of which “have recruited a good number of social scientists, including anthropologists, who can do the type of work we can do.

While we both agreed to stay on as figurehead IDA directors (I actually had been IDA’s President during 1994), by the end of 1994 our active involvement in IDA came to an end. In my case, with one exception (a consultancy in Mozambique that had an unrealized potential for a large grant), I also stopped being a consultant to any agency as opposed to being a member over a 20 year period, first, with the World Bank’s Panel of Environmental and Social Experts (POE) for the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, and then, for the Nam Theun 2 dam POE in Laos.

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IDA also lost by the end of 1994 two of its remaining three senior research associates, while the third, Muneera Salem-Murdock, accepted in November 1995 an appointment as Regional Coordinator for Africa and Asia/Near East and Economic Growth Adviser at AID’s Office of Women-in-Development. Previously, Peter Little had notified the Directors in March, 1994 of his plans to take a year’s leave of absence to try out a faculty position at the University of Kentucky. While he continued to occasionally consult through IDA, his shift to academic employment, now at Emory University, was permanent. As for Michael Painter, “he accepted a two year appointment in Botswana beginning in January 1995.” (Development Anthropology Network Vol 12, Nos. 1 and 2:47).

3.3.2.4

1995–2003

During the next 9 years Horowitz, with strong support from Sylvia Horowitz and daughter Stephanie Horowitz, made a valiant attempt to continue IDA’s work, an effort that will be summarized toward the end of this history. Once more, however, AID’s dominance by the White House and Congress led to a financial crisis during the administration of George W. Bush when IDA funds from AID’s IQC BASIS (Broadening Access and Strengthening Input Market Systems) ran out in 2003. The result in Horowitz’s words was that IDA became “a totally (George) Bush-wacked organization.”

3.4

1976–1979: Establishing IDA as a Non-government Organization (NGO)

In spite of advice received from experienced colleagues that the Directors not attempt IDA’s founding without a substantial grant from a foundation or other sources, we decided that initial small grants from AID and other donors to organize and evaluate informational and training workshops, complete short scopes of work for rural roads, and carry other short development-oriented studies, would be sufficient. Among our first projects was a 1976 workshop on “Problems and Prospects for Development in the Yemen Arab Republic” (Salem-Murdock 2016).1 Other Workshops dealt with such topics as Anthropology in Development, Social Soundness Analysis, Community Forestry and Pastoralism. We could easily have been wrong about their financial sufficiency for establishing IDA. During our Second Annual Directors Meeting in November-December 1977, Horowitz “drew attention to the dwindling funds, pointing out that it has been costing IDA about

1

According to Salem-Murdock, Richard Tutwiler, who had just returned from doing dissertation field work in Yemen, played a major role in the workshop.

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$1000 per month to keep going…What IDA needs is a grant of about $40,000 a year for three years to allow [the institute] to become self-supporting and to achieve its objectives” (Minutes, Second Annual Director’s Meeting 1977: 5). The Institute for Development Anthropology, as a Not-for-Profit Corporation under the Laws of the State of New York, submitted its filing papers on June 21, 1976. As both IDA President and Treasurer initially, Horowitz was responsible for relocating IDA from his university office to its own office in downtown Binghamton and for recruiting staff. As part of that process, he made a special effort to incorporate within the IDA family prominent individuals, professions and institutions within the city of Binghamton. That included accountants, State University of New York, Binghamton administrators, legal and insurance advisers, and local banks. Though Sylvia Horowitz was available to sign required legal documents—for example, the 23 June, 1976 Certified Copy of Corporate Banking Resolutions whereby the Marine Midland Bank was designated as the Institute’s Bank—as IDA “secretary,” she emphasized that “The fact is, Michael did [the organization] all himself. I was busy getting a Ph.D. (1978) and taking care of the house and kids, who were 12, 14, and 16 in 1976.” As Sylvia recalled, Horowitz moved IDA from the university “early on. First, he got a telephone that was only for IDA” for “It was necessary to keep the institute totally separate from the university. The move out of the university made everything clearer. I’m guessing it was the first year” (S. Horowitz 2016). During that time, IDA received mail through a Binghamton post office Box Number. Though initially only “somewhat involved with the newly founded institute which operated from Michael’s office at the university” (Salem-Murdock 2016), the first of the seven key IDA staff members was Muneera Salem-Murdock who, a second year Ph.D. candidate in the Anthropology Department, had received one of the AID fellowships. The second key staff member, Vera Beers,2 was not hired until 1980 that illustrates how dependent IDA’s development during the second half of the 1970s was on Horowitz’s leadership. Throughout that four-year period (1976–1979) frequent memos circulated between the three directors who discussed and agreed upon key IDA organizational issues. Especially important were the directors’ annual meetings that were held once or twice a year. Early on three prominent social scientists agreed to serve as IDA Advisory Councilors. They were Columbia University’s Conrad M. Arensberg, University of California at Berkeley’s Elizabeth F. Colson and University of Sussex’s T. Scarlett Epstein.3 Most crucial, over the years an international College of Fellows was recruited not just to carry out worldwide IDA consultancy projects but also to provide a forum for discussing and formulating policies for designing, implementing and

The other five key staff members, with over 10 years as IDA employees, were Vivian Carlip, Peter Little, Michael Painter, Thomas Painter, and Sylvia Horowitz. 3 Useful in writing this section, was an 56 Page undated mimeographed paper on “The Institute for Development Anthropology and Rural Development.” 2

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monitoring “development from below” and for integrating achievements, new procedures, and perspectives into existing methods and theories. Complementing the College of Fellows was a broader Roster of Consultants and Intermittent Employees who became IDA Associates. While the College of Fellows tended to include primarily social scientists, the Consultancy Roster included experts in all disciplines that might be relevant to a specific region and set of problems. IDA’s 13—member research team for evaluating Botswana’s Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project, for example, included biologists, engineers, hydrologists and social scientists, while IDA’s Senegal River Basin Project included an agriculturalist, an economist, and a hydrologist. In all such cases, IDA made a special effort to recruit host country and expatriate graduate students. Not only did some of those recruits subsequently become members of the College of Fellows and/or Roster of Consultants, but IDA’s four key research staff members were all recruited while they were graduate students. IDA also made a special effort to recruit consultants who spoke local languages. While the Roster in the first half of the 1980s included individuals with field research experience in at least 80 countries, those personnel spoke over 100 languages. Eventually, two stories of a building at 99 Collier Street in Binghamton were rented with space provided for short—and long—term visitors, for meetings and for what may well have become the best research library for “grey” rural development literature. Serving the various offices were such communication equipment as telex and facsimile telecommunicator and reproduction, photographic, computational and recording equipment. While Horowitz was concentrating on establishing the Institute, he was also involved with IDA colleagues in various projects that initially dealt mainly with Africa. Of most important was a 3-day multidisciplinary Workshop in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, at which 80+ participants representing various donor and host country organizations, as well as AID officials and academics, systematically examined the social and ecological assumptions that explicitly and implicitly influence development interventions in the pastoral livestock sector in Africa (“The Institute for Development Anthropology and Rural Development” Ibid: No date: 49). The Institute’s perspective was presented in Horowitz’s Sociology of Pastoralism and African Livestock Projects that AID published in 1979 as AID Program Evaluation Discussion No. 6, while the Workshop’s findings were also published by AID. Later on Horowitz hired Indiana University graduate student Peter Little to assist with a second key workshop on pastoralism and development, held in Marriotsville, Maryland, in November, 1981. That was the beginning of Peter Little’s employment with IDA, first as a graduate student and then a post-doctoral Research Associate in 1983.

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Horowitz also directed a 1979 Workshop on Social Analysis of Development Projects in the Sahel that was held in Nouakchott, Mauritania. That workshop was designed to assist AID officers and contractors in the Sahelian countries in identifying, designing, implementing, and evaluating programs and projects that are socially sound, that involve the poor in meaningful ways, and in which the poor are the prime beneficiaries (Ibid: 6). AID’s Office of Evaluation was so impressed with the Workshop’s report that it “was circulated as an Airgram to all AID missions” (Ibid). As a Director, Brokensha was responsible for drafting as “an urgent matter” an IDA Brochure for “wide distribution “to all I.Q.C.’s and other agencies and firms” (Minutes of the Second Annual Director’s Meeting 1977). Brokensha was also responsible for examining relevant newsletters, a responsibility that led to the publication of IDA’s first issue of the Institute’s Bulletin: Development Anthropology Network in December 1981. With colleagues Bernard Riley and graduate student Peter Castro, Brokensha also laid the basis for IDA research proposals and projects dealing with community forestry. As with projects involving Horowitz and myself, Brokensha dealt with topics on which he and Riley had carried out field research in Kenya prior to IDA’s founding. With an AID grant, they prepared a paper on their findings that was instrumental in AID hosting a major three-day workshop in June 1978 on “The Firewood Problem in Africa.” Next AID commissioned “a comprehensive desk study looking at use patterns, problems associated with current and past interventions, and a review of possible ways of resolving project design issues. Brokensha and Riley joined five other authors, including their then-graduate student, A. Peter Castro, in preparing the report, The Socio-Economic Context of Fuelwood Use in Small Rural Communities. Issued as A.I.D. Evaluation Special Study No. 1 in August 1980” (Brokensha and Castro, 1980). My main responsibility during the 1976–79 period was to receive funding for, and carryout, specific IDA research projects. The first was a detailed analysis with the assistance of 11 colleagues (including 4 Navajo Native Americans) on the effects of compulsory relocation by the United States Government on Navajos due to the Navajo–Hopi Land Dispute in the Arizona and New Mexico Joint Use Area. Mandated by the US Congress, the results of the dispute were the second largest forced removal of rural Americans since that of Japanese-Americans at the beginning of the Second World War. Study results, No Place To Go: Effects of Compulsory Relocation on Navajos, were published in 1982 as the second volume in IDA’s Monographs in Development Anthropology. My major project in the 1970s was an unsolicited research project on the agricultural settlement of new lands that AID funded in 1979 with a grant of approximately $148,000. My third project was the first of four AID-funded evaluations between 1979 and 1989 of Sri Lanka’s mega Accelerated Mahaweli Project.

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3.5

3.5.1

IDA’s Project on the Development Potential of New Lands Settlement in the Tropics and Subtropics: May 1979–October 1981 Introduction

The New Lands Settlement Project illustrated an early attempt for IDA to pursue three of the Institute’s major goals. These were to carry out theoretically important and policy relevant research, present the results in writing and at a well-organized workshop, and have the opportunity to apply what had been learned on specific projects. IDA’s research on social forestry, on pastoral systems, and on river basin and area development provided similar opportunities. In the sections that follow, the results of the land settlement research are discussed, along with the IDA Report on the April-May 1982 workshop in Binghamton, and followed by a discussion of applications to two of the world’s largest dam-related resettlement projects (Sri Lanka’s Accelerated Mahaweli Project and India’s Sardar Sarovar Project) and to West Africa’s Onchocerciasis Control Program. In 1977, IDA submitted to AID’s Rural Development Division, Bureau for Science and Technology, an unsolicited research project for a global evaluation of the development potential of new lands settlement in the tropics and subtropics. Within AID, the IDA proposal interested Dr. Alice Morton who played the major role in soliciting the interest of a number of AID’s country missions and in securing approval and funding in May 1979. AID required two proposal amendments. Because the project was considered to be too ambitious, the first amendment required that site visits and research be restricted to Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Though the project was over-ambitious, I thought the AID’s requirement that Latin America be left out (perhaps because I had no research experience there) was a mistake. I tried to correct that weakness by emphasizing the written literature on Latin America and by discussing the project’s findings with such Latin American land settlement experts as Michael Nelson and William Partridge. AID’s second amendment was excellent. It required recruitment of two senior consultants trained in agronomy and agricultural economics. One was tropical agronomist Andre Guinard who had been Director of Studies in Paris of the French parastatal Bureau pour le Developpement de la Production Agricole (BDPA). The other was Randolph Barker—an agricultural economist employed at the CGIAR Rice Research Center in the Philippines. Project execution involved three components. The first was a systematic review of 100 land settlements in 35 countries, followed by field research in four countries and site visits in another five countries. Analysis and write-up required the most time with AID agreeing to a project extension from May 1980 to October 1981. Four types of new lands settlement were involved:

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1. Spontaneous settlement of households with minimal external assistance 2. Spontaneous settlement facilitated by government and other agencies 3. Voluntary settlement of households on land settlement projects sponsored by government and other agencies 4. Involuntary household and community resettlement sponsored mainly by government and private agencies. Detailed field research was undertaken in Egypt, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Sudan. Tulsi Uprety, a Nepalese graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, was funded to study the spontaneous settlement of Nepalese from the over-crowded Himalayan foothills into the lowlands (the Terrai) close to the Indian Border that could be compared with studies of similar movements from the Andes into the Amazonian Basin. In Egypt, two research assistants at the American University’s Social Research Center received IDA grants to re-interview, in the Kom Ombo resettlement area, approximately 100 Egyptian Nubian households who had been interviewed in 1963 before their resettlement in connection with the Aswan High Dam. Unfortunately, those interviews were lost during transmission to the United States. The project picked for study in Sri Lanka was Minneriya because it was considered to be the country’s most successful land settlement scheme. Minneriya’s selection proved to be most fortuitous because the cash cropping of chiles and other crops was associated with the emergence of what may well have been Sri Lanka’s most successful rural town. Kapila Wimaladharma, Additional General Manager of settlement operations in the Mahaweli Development Board, was funded by IDA to complete a one year field study that was to include a survey of both farm and non-farm occupations in order to provide useful data to compare how successful family cash cropping can support the emergence of a significant number of non-farm occupations as in market towns in Matta Grosso, Brazil. In the Sudan, three IDA grants were given for research in Khashm el Girba where the government resettled Sudanese Nubians whose homeland had been inundated on completion of Egypt’s Aswan High Dam. The Khashm el Girba development project was especially interesting because the government subsequently included the larger host population of different ethnicities. Mukhtar Ibrahim Agouba, a recent Ph.D. recipient, received a 1979 grant to compare the livelihood of Nubian resettler and host households. Mohammad El Hassan El Tayeb’s 1979 assignment was to complete a census of non-farm employment within the settlement scheme. Arriving in 1980, Muneera Salem-Murdock received additional assistance from IDA for her Ph.D. research in the Khasm el Girba area that dealt mainly with the Skukriyah who were the dominant host ethnic group. In addition to visiting colleagues in the four research areas, I joined Professor Sediono M.P. Tjondronegoro, Chair of the Social Economics Department at Borgor Agricultural University, who organized our visits to projects in South Sumatra and Central Sulawesi. In Malaysia, I visited several Federal Land Development Projects (FELDA) before moving on to the Philippines to visit University of California,

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Santa Barbara, graduate students Miriam Chaiken and Thomas Conelly who were doing their Ph.D. research among spontaneous settlers in Palawan. A 406 page report was submitted to AID in October 1981 with a summary paper published as AID’s Program Evaluation Discussion Paper No. 21 in September 1984.

3.5.2

Settler Behavior and the Multi-stage Settlement Process

In my opinion, the most important research result was the discovery that worldwide the large majority of settlers behave in the same way during the settlement process: a conclusion, with major planning and implementation conclusions regardless of land settlement type. Moreover, household and community responses are not only predictable, but can be lumped over time into four general stages (also applicable to large dams resettlement) in the case of “successful” land settlement at the household and community levels.4 These are first a planning stage, which is followed by a transitional stage during which a majority of settlers are risk adverse as they cope with a new environment and, more often than not, with new situations, neighbors and host populations. The third stage of development only begins once settlers begin to feel at home in their new environment and are ready to take risks by expanding their horizons to include diversifying the income generating portion of their household production system and the education of their children. As for the fourth stage, that involves external managers such as project authorities handing over responsibilities to local government institutions and to the settlers themselves or in the case of spontaneous land settlement, handing over from the first generation to the second generation. In testing and/or utilizing the four-stage framework (described in more detail below), major warnings, not adequately heeded by academic colleagues and planners, are necessary. First, where more than one ethnic group, or where hierarchical societies, are involved, minorities may become major beneficiaries (Partridge et al. 1982) at the expense of the majority. Second, to date there are still too few long-term studies of “successful” cases of land settlement to adequately test the four stage hypothesis. Third, only a minority of studied land settlement cases have been successful in the sense that the livelihood of a majority of households has improved, at least in regard to the first and second generations, over the years. The proportion of successful cases would be much larger if, since the origins of agriculture, the global spontaneous occupation of new lands was considered. On the other hand, the success rate with historically more planned spontaneous settlement would be lower simply because the best lands had already been

4

My use of stages was influenced by the research of Robert Chambers and Michael Nelson (see Scudder 2005: 33) both of whom used three stage frameworks.

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occupied, while project—initiated planning for volunteers, and for compulsory resettlement in connection with government policies and projects, would be the least satisfactory because of the increased complexities involved (De Wet 2006). In the first statistical analysis of resettlement in connection with large dams, “living standard improvement involved only three (7%) of 44 cases” where there was sufficient data for analysis (Scudder 2005). Fourth, because each land settlement case is unique in regard to environment, culture and history, the second and third stages may be reversed or merged, and the third stage may never occur as has been the case with the large majority of community resettlement cases in connection with large dams. The Planning Stage: In spontaneous settlement, it is the householders who make a major planning decision, which is to leave one habitat for another. Where the planner represents an externally imposed project, the IDA experience is that the pioneering of safeguard policies by the World Bank and their wide acceptance by other institutions improved the planning process. The August 2016 decision of the Bank’s Board to weaken environmental, socio-economic and cultural policies is, however, a major setback. The worst planning occurs where settlement is a by-product of a major development project. IDA is aware of no cases where such planning begins before a project already has had negative impacts on affected households. Negative impacts occur from the start of the planning process at which time, in contrast to neighboring areas, various services such as agricultural extension and new construction of such social services as schools and clinics are stopped in anticipation that the communities involved will be moved. Concerned project authorities also are apt to tell future resettlers that they should not build new houses, clear new fields and start new businesses or, if prompt resettlement is anticipated, even to plant crops. As a result, by the time pre-project surveys begin, the majority of future resettlers are already worse off. The Transition Stage: Bearing in mind that that the Planning and Development Stages may be reversed or combined in a few cases, the transition stage is the most stressful for a majority of settlers. Following arrival they must adapt to a new physical environment, to new neighbors, and, since few areas now remain uninhabited, to a host population. In project planned settlements they must also adapt to project officials and, more often than not, to being settled in larger communities or towns. IDA and my other research suggests that a majority of settlers respond for one or more years as if they were members of a closed system. To the extent possible, they cling to the familiar with their principal goal being to re-establish a subsistence-oriented household production system in an unfamiliar environment. The more complex the transition expected of them, the more likely is physiological (with higher death rates in the more extreme cases), psychological, and cultural stress; the last two being especially difficult for the elderly and for uneducated women. The Development Stage: If and where it occurs, the development stage completes the necessary transition from a subsistence household economy to a

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household economy based on cash cropping, sale of livestock, non-farm household business and other non-farm employment. More attention is also paid now to community activities with more than incidental attention paid to building schools for children, forming burial societies, building community structures, especially for religious use, exploring institutional access to credit and savings institutions, and increasing contact with the outside world through acquiring cell phones, TVs and motorcycles. As familiarity is gained with the new habitat, new names may be applied to various environmental features and creation of song, theatre and stories about the settlement process and the new habitat may occur. I have observed that as incomes improved, settlers tended to carry out similar activities and to make similar purchases. Especially important was construction of improved multi-room houses which were furnished in similar ways with a TV, radio and phonograph, a set of stuffed chairs and a couch, a wall clock, large wall calendars with colored pictures of beautiful women, cities and landscapes, pictures of weddings and kin in the armed services, and a sewing machine. The Handing Over Stage: Initially I restricted this stage to handing over from a project authority to local government services and to settler communities and other institutions, and from the first generation to the second generation of resettlers. At the time of the land settlement study, it was not clear whether subsequent impacts of settlement could be isolated, especially where large scale settlements were incorporated within a national and increasingly international political economy. That issue is updated in the next section.

3.5.3

The Importance of Size and the Incorporation of Old and New Towns

3.5.3.1

Introduction

To initiate a process of integrated area development, land settlements should be large enough in area and number of households to stimulate the development of new towns or the enlargement and employment generation of existing towns. Since new land settlements tend to vary in regard to land resources and weather, crops grown, backgrounds of settlers, host populations, villages and towns, and the nature of a country’s political economy, no conclusions could be reached on how large a land settlement should be to initiate a process of area development other than that opportunities did increase along with an increase in a land settlement’s size.

3.5.3.2

The Minneriya Case

Considered the most successful settlement project in Sri Lanka at the time of the New Lands Settlement Evaluation, Minneriya was established as a

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government-sponsored irrigation scheme in 1933. First studied by Jogaratnam and colleagues in 1968 (Jogaratnam and Schickele 1969), the scheme was restudied by IDA’s Wimaladharma (1981) in 1979–80. As an irrigated land settlement project in the tropics and subtropics for cultivating two crops a year, Minnerriya would be considered one of the larger land settlement schemes. The scheme was established by the government in 1933. It included 5,639 allotments, which averaged 5 irrigated acres, for over 5,000 households, plus up to 3,000 spontaneous settlers and second generation households that occupied marginal land or illegally occupied land edging irrigation canals, roads and other facilities. Though rice, a low value crop throughout Sri Lanka, remained the major crop over the years, in the 1970s Minneriya farmers pioneered the cultivation of chilis, onions and tobacco as higher value cash crops— an innovation that, along with larger holdings and reliable water supplies, produced higher settler living standards than in other Sri Lankan settlement schemes. Serving the scheme’s settlement component was the well-situated rural town of Hingurakgoda, which was considered to be one of the best stocked rural towns in Sri Lanka. According to Wimaladharma, this characteristic probably was due to “the significantly higher income of Minneriya farmers, which allows them to purchase a wide range of producer and consumer goods and services … Since many of these [goods] are imports, linkages between agriculture and local manufacturing are not as strong as they could be.” (Scudder Ibid: 188–9) (Figs. 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4). Nonetheless, in Wimaladharma’s opinion, Minneriya’s more diversified farming system had generated significantly more non-farm labor that the other three irrigated Sri Lankan irrigation schemes that Wimaladharma surveyed for comparative

Fig. 3.1 Hingurakgoda as an example of a successful rural town for a land settlement or resettlement scheme

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Fig. 3.2 A typical village shop

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Fig. 3.3 Plowing with cattle and water buffaloes

purposes. In terms of development, however, the situation would have been much better if the government had planned its settlement schemes in relationship to “each other and to intervening commercial centers if major multiplier effects are to be achieved.” (Scudder Ibid: 185).

3.5.3.3

Brazil: The Northern Parana Case

In terms of agricultural output and a gradually increasing ratio of non-farm employment to on-farm employment, due to increasing urbanization, the most successful land settlement studied was the Northern Parana Case. According to Nelson (1973: 121), Northern Parana “is in all probability the most extensive and economically successful in the human tropics of Latin America” (1973: 121). Four years later Katzman reached the same conclusion when he classified Northern Parana as “perhaps the most successful example of regional development planning in Latin America.” (1977: 53). Note, however, in both cases, such wording as “in all probability” and “perhaps” points up the lack of information at the time on land settlement schemes in Latin America, a conclusion that I believed had world-wide applicability. In origin, the Brazilian Government “eager for hinterland development” (Scudder, Ibid: 166) gave a private development company in the United Kingdom permission to purchase in 1920 approximately 2.5 million acres in a relatively unpopulated area for implementing a very large land settlement project. Several years of careful planning followed with no settlement allowed. Included were soil

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Fig. 3.4 Throughout South Asia two-wheeled tractors for plowing and transport identify successful farmers

surveys and a plan of the layout, close to planned urban centers, of future small— holder farms emphasizing the cultivation of coffee as a cash crop along with subsistence crops, of feeder roads, and of a railroad along which towns would be built. When land settlement began several years later, it was phased to coincide with the development of roads, the 150 km long railroad and rural towns. Settlers

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selected to purchase land on reasonable terms were mainly “relatively poor Brazilians who had previously been small holders or laborers on large coffee estates” (Scudder Ibid 167). Meanwhile the railroad was built “at the same pace as land sales, one period’s sales financing the next period‘s [railway] development” (Katzman, Ibid: 59). Following slow development during the 1930s, in part due to the depression, land sales increased significantly thereafter as did population, which increased from 100,000 to 400,000 between 1940 and 1950, and to about a million in the mid-1960s. As for the railroad towns, by 1955 all urban lots had been sold with two towns having over 100,000 residents in the 1960s with the remainder varying in size between 10,000 and 50,000 people. Though I found no figures on the ratio of farm-related jobs to non-farm jobs, by “1968, the population was estimated at about 1.7 million, of which 40–50% was urban” (Nelson 1973: 123).

3.6 3.6.1

Post 1980s Impacts on Land Settlements Studied During the 1982 Land Settlement Review Introduction

Further research after the IDA Land Settlement Review by me and others on various land settlements have found subsequent negative and positive impacts on later generations of settlers that can be attributed to the settlement process, while origins of other impacts cannot be identified.

3.6.2

The Gwembe Tonga Case

Two trends are gratifying and ongoing for a minority of settlers. One is an increasing proportion of educated settlers due to the planned construction of more schools offering better primary and secondary education. The other, more sporadic and complex in origin, is an increase in small business women. Both trends involve increasing the status of women. The best-studied example of both trends is the resettlement in the late 1950s of 35,000 Gwembe Tonga from the Zambian portion of the reservoir backed up behind the Kariba Dam. Before Kariba there were only a scattering of small village schools providing primary education, with less than five schools providing a full primary education sufficient for secondary school entry. Settlement planning included early construction of an increased number of full primary schools, free education for settlers in neighboring secondary schools for qualified primary school graduates, and, within five years following physical removal, the construction of a secondary school in the middle of the resettlement

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area. A sample of the first 500 secondary school leavers was interviewed in the mid-1970s (Scudder and Colson 1980) and again 20–30 years later. Not only did education lead to the formation of an elite in what was formerly an egalitarian society, but some members of that elite assumed national importance as prominent government civil servants and university professors. The increase in Gwembe Tonga small—business women was, at least in part, due to severe poverty since the mid-1970s among that majority who continue to live in villages in the middle Zambezi Valley. In every such village, at least a few women have started small businesses growing and/or trading agricultural and non-timber forest products within and between villages as well as in neighboring towns. In cities and towns on the Zambian Plateau, wives and single women trade a wider range of produce in government markets including foodstuffs made at home or in the market place as well as agricultural produce. Profits are used to build and improve housing, to acquire houses for renting, and to combine with a husband’s earnings not just to educate children and relatives’ children but to acquire farm land and cattle for retirement purposes. As for the most enterprising women, some sell illegal drugs while others participate in the illegal trade between Zambia and Zimbabwe. As for increasing village poverty among the majority since the mid-1970s, only initially can that be attributed to two problems associated with the resettlement process. One was the insufficient availability of arable land within the resettlement area for the second generation whose freedom of action also became more dependent on the resources and good will of first generation relatives. The other was increasing environmental degradation associated with the spreading adverse impact of cultivation around villages, the increasing use of thatching grass, and the cutting of timber for building and fencing purposes, and for making charcoal. After the mid-1970s other factors became influential, the impact of which cannot be separated from the impact of the land settlement process as such. In the Gwembe Tonga case, those factors include the bankruptcy in the second half of the 1970s of the Zambian political economy with the country going from being one of the wealthiest countries in Africa to one of the poorest in the world until recovery began in 2000. Other influences the importance of which cannot be accurately measured include the impact of the HIV AIDS epidemic and climate change.

3.6.3

The Northern Parana Case

A complicating question that the Land Settlement Review inadequately dealt with was the extent to which Northern Parana area development actually evolved through time in the interests of that majority of initially lower—income settlers who successfully purchased and developed their small holdings as family farms and who (I initially assumed) successfully handed them over to the second generation. That may have been the case with those who had purchased land in the 1940s, but by the

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1960s macro-economic changes within the settlement area had occurred that were not in the interest of small holders. According to Katzman, “the proportion of small-scale farm operators decreased between 1940 and 1960 in good part because of insufficient credit to meet production costs, especially in connection with the application of fertilizers to soils exhausted under coffee cultivation” (Scudder, Ibid 170). Larger-scale operators began to buy and consolidate small-scale holdings, which are currently utilizing less labor—intensive activities such as mechanized soybean cultivation and cattle ranching. According to Margolis, a 486 hectare coffee farm would employ approximately 300 workers, while a mechanized soy bean farm of similar size would employ only six workers and a cattle ranch only 2 workers (Margolis 1980: 232). This trend has been sped-up since the late 1960s by climate change in the form of coffee-killing frosts (Ibid: 231). If disparities between rich and poor continue to expand in the world’s current political economies, initially more successful land settlement projects will end up in the hands of the rich. That appears to be a global trend that I am currently researching. One can observe it, for example, by merely flying slowly over the Delta of California’s Sacramento River. There large-scale agribusiness not only has replaced family farms but also has adversely affected the small towns and non-farm occupations that arose to service those farms. Moreover, in our statistical analysis of resettlement in connection with 46 large dams, John Gay and I found that the influx of wealthier and politically more sophisticated immigrants posed a problem for settlers in connection with access to land and water resources that is more serious than conflicts with host communities (Scudder, 2005). In the Middle Zambezi Valley case, for example, corrupt Gwembe Tonga leaders have been receiving “gifts” from immigrants who illegally acquire communal lands for farming as well as for tourist resorts along the shores of the Kariba Reservoir and the Zambezi River below the dam.

3.7

The IDA April–May 1982 Binghamton Workshop on the 1981 New Lands Settlement Evaluation

Though a workshop was held on the results of the IDA New Lands Settlement AID Grant, it was a major disappointment in comparison with what had been planned. In October 1980, I presented to AID a proposal, subsequently budgeted by Horowitz at $90,000, for an international workshop to be held a year hence in Egypt, Indonesia or Sri Lanka over at least six days. Participants, in addition to approximately 15 from AID (with special emphasis on relevant country missions) and three

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World Bank staff, would be 23 world class experts from 15 countries like Indonesia’s Tjondronegoro, Malaysia’s Bahrin and Sri Lanka’s Wimaladharma, all three of whom supported the idea of the workshop and stated their own desire to participate. Two months later, following my well-received seminar to 33 AID personnel on IDA contract results (though the convener complained that the Asia Bureau, where so many major settlement projects exist, sent no one), SARSA’s project officer (Robert Simko) wrote IDA that two AID subject bureaus (Research and Development and Berg’s Evaluation) were definitely interested in participating in the workshop and possibly providing up to $70,000 in funding. On that assumption, IDA continued working on detailed planning, with funding cut back in early 1981 to a more manageable $53,945 by focusing the workshop on South and Southeast Asia. IDA now recommended Sri Lanka as the best location for a September 1981 workshop, and where Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Lands and Land Development was interested in being the host country representative, for approximately 30 people with Horowitz and I representing IDA. The updated proposal with revised budget was sent to Simko on March 9, 1981 with IDA’s request for AID to confirm its intentions within a month. In the meanwhile, I would continue contacting and corresponding with potential world-class participants. Alas, major funding from AID was not forthcoming. Rather AID assistance was only sufficient for a 30 April-I May, 1981 workshop that 18 people attended in Binghamton. Half of those present were from IDA and Clark University, three from AID, and six from US Universities. Though I was not present, apparently theoretical and policy implications of the IDA Land Settlement Study for integrated area development for more extended periods of time, was not discussed. Rather detailed discussion occurred on specific land settlements familiar to the participants. Be as that may, no further follow up occurred from AID aside from ongoing support to field evaluation of the Mahaweli Project through 1989 and Bolivia’s San Julian Land Settlement Project. Such lack of long-term follow-up by donors has continued to be a major problem for IDA and a significant reason for IDA’s demise as subsequent analysis of the Institute’s more important projects will show. On the other hand, the fact that I never got around to preparing for the publication of the Land Settlement Review may have been partly responsible in this case for lack of donor follow through on lessons learned. Though submitted in October 1981, AID considered IDA’s 401 page final report too long to distribute. Moreover, the report’s 46 page Executive Summary was not published for another three years (September, 1984) as AID Program Evaluation Discussion Paper No. 21.

3.8 IDA’s Initial Land Settlement Experiences with the World Bank

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IDA’s Initial Land Settlement Experiences with the World Bank

At the time of IDA’s founding, the World Bank’s involvement in Land Settlement projects exceeded that of any other national or international development agency. Major projects included Malaysia’s FELDA Projects and Indonesia’s Transmigration Projects both of which tended to emphasize large-scale cultivation by smallholders of single crops such as oil palm. IDA’s contact with the World Bank dated back to September 1976 when a form letter to Horowitz and myself was received from Michael Cernea (recruited in 1974 as the Bank’s first full time anthropologist-sociologist) as to whether we “were interested in the possibility of consulting for the World Bank.” Having heard that I had previously worked for the Bank, Cernea also asked me for information on the nature of my Bank assignment. Later that year Cernea asked me to comment on a draft of the Bank’s forthcoming Issues Paper on Agricultural Land Settlement and then in 1977 requested me to present a seminar on “Sociological Variables of Settlement Projects” at the Bank’s In-House Training Workshop in Sociology (Horowitz was also asked to present a seminar on pastoralism in the same series). So IDA was actually in contact with the World Bank on land settlement issues even before submitting the Global Evaluation of Land Settlement proposal to AID. Needing more time to prepare a seminar on a topic that I had yet to study in detail, I replied that I could substitute an “off the cuff” commentary on involuntary community resettlement in connection with Bank-assisted large dam projects.5 That was accepted and delivered on May 25. Shortly after the seminar, I followed up with a May 31 nine-page memo to Cernea that critiqued the Bank approach to land settlement projects in that “far too little emphasis is placed on settlements as sociological systems.” Indeed the word ‘community’ or phrases dealing with the internal organization of settlements did not occur once, to the best of my recollection, in any of the written [project] appraisals” on which I was asked to comment. I was especially critical of the Bank’s involvement in Brazil’s Sobradinho large dam project, writing that “It is my contention that if the planning for reservoir relocation and subsequent development of the relocatees is delayed until after construction begins at the dam site, it is too late to design and execute an adequate relocation and development program.” I followed up on the Sobradinho situation in a July 31, 1977 memo to Cernea by stating that “the problems that arose there, and the associated human suffering, were largely unnecessary. The Bank appears to have learned very little over the past ten years from past experiences with relocation I deferred the requested paper on “Sociological Variables of Settlement Projects” until after the completion in 1981 of IDA’s Global Evaluation of Land Settlement Projects. It was subsequently published in the first and second editions (1985 and 1991) of the Bank’s Putting People First: Sociological Varies in Rural Development (edited by Michael C. Cernea).

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and resettlement. This situation will continue, I fear, until better use is made of existing knowledge and of the few available experts. I hope your efforts along these lines will prove successful.” The detailed paragraphs that follow are important because they illustrate the nature of the positive impacts that Horowitz and I have had on the World Bank but also the problems for professional organizations like IDA in dealing not just with the World Bank but other international organizations. Following the May seminar, Cernea understandably was interested in my expanding on my critique of Bank dam resettlement projects and on my suggestions for improving appraisals and implementation of future dam projects. In a December 12, 1977 reply to a Cernea letter of December 3, I wrote: No, I have not done anything further on my Bank seminar following my 7 page summary of discussion arising from my seminar and of points from reading of Bank appraisals. The task is not so easy that one can just bang out a few ‘do it yourself points’ without being dangerously superficial. And I also remain uncertain as to what would happen to whatever I wrote. Bank people are busy; too busy to feed back their comments to frustrated consultants. Too busy often to even send back retyped drafts of manuscripts. Hence, I never received from the Bank the final copy of my summary comments after I corrected the draft and phoned in the corrections to your secretary. Hence, I do not know if my summary was ever corrected and circulated to conference participants. Motivation is not very high if one does not know what is going to happen to one’s efforts (and in this case, I never received from the Bank a list of Seminar participants). You see, Michael, I did not do the settlement paper for the fee—that, I gave to IDA to pay for our ever increasing operational expenses. I did it, hopefully, to have some impact on Bank thinking. I wonder if that is possible? Anyhow, I am hesitant to do anything further unless I can see a bit more clearly what its utility might be.

Cernea’s March 23, 1978 reply did provide the type of information that IDA needed for dealing with the Bank: After … you gave such a good presentation, I wonder why you have this rather downbeat tone in your letter. On the contrary, I believe that you provided a contribution to the Bank understanding of certain major social issues related to resettlement projects. Moreover, there has been a lot of follow-up on that seminar. At least three subsequent missions to different countries with river dam projects took social scientists on board.

The above paragraph was followed by detailed comments on the recruitment and activities of sociologists on the above projects concerning “what we achieved as a follow-up to the workshop.” He then noted that the most recent Bank-wide sociological workshop had been Horowitz’s “on Sociological Variables of livestock development projects in West Africa. It was another successful event with, I do hope, long lasting effects.” Furthermore, in a recent evaluation of the sociological workshops initially skeptical Bank staff “now strongly believe in the need for ‘greater emphasis on the role of sociologists in Bank project work’… Here, once again, gratifying evidence of your contribution.” In clarifying that IDA staff could have an impact on World Bank actions and policies, Cernea’s March 23 reply was sufficient (despite the Bank’ ‘Holier than Thou’ attitude and tendency to use and, on occasion, misuse a consultant’s work

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without proper acknowledgement) to convince me at the time that Bank involvement in IDA activities and projects was important. My May 24, 1977 seminar also stimulated Cernea’s interest not just in improving the Bank’s appraisal and implementation of land settlement projects, but also in drafting the Bank’s initial Safe Guard Policy on involuntary resettlement that was published as Operations Manual Statement (OMS 2.33: Social Issues Associated with Involuntary Resettlement in Bank Financial Projects) in 1980.6 When Cernea asked me for the names of knowledgeable experts that the Bank could hire to help with drafting, I suggested FAO’s David Butcher who had written the first resettlement manual in 1976 based on two large dam projects in West Africa. An inter-agency transfer was arranged and Butcher wrote the first draft OMS 2.33. Subsequently, he was hired by the Bank on a full-time basis. The history of OMS 2.33 development between 1977 and 1980 illustrates the opportunities and constraints under which Cernea, David Butcher7 and other Bank social scientists operated. The main opportunity was to pioneer the approval by the Bank of the first safeguard policy dealing with involuntary resettlement, a policy that led to similar policies by international and national donors as well as by such host nations as China. The main constraint was the unwillingness of World Bank management to agree to a resettlement policy that would enable a majority of affected households to become project beneficiaries. In commenting on a 1979 OMS 2.33 policy draft, my comments to Cernea emphasized that “the planned benefits to the relocatees should be higher than their previous standard of living or the minimum above the poverty line, whichever is higher; hence I consider this policy statement to be inadequate. This is simply because the costs of compulsory resettlement to those involved … following removal are known to be very high psychologically, physiologically, economically and socio-culturally. The relocatees are making a major sacrifice in the assumed interests of national and regional development. Accordingly they and the hosts should participate more directly in the benefits.” At a later date Cernea told me that Bank Management was unwilling to approve a benefit-sharing as opposed to a compensation policy which research already had shown that, while better than no compensation, was still inadequate to restore the prior standard of living of a majority of those resettled. That unacceptable view of the Bank’s Management has continued until this day in spite of the Bank’s own reports that emphasized the importance of benefit sharing. Though again rejected by Management, the benefit sharing position was especially emphasized by Robert Picciotto, at the time Director General of the Bank’s Operations Evaluation, who wrote “Emphasis Should Shift from Income restoration to Income Improvement” 6

Eventually the Bank approved a series of 14 Safe Guard Policies which dealt with a range of issues dealing with economic evaluation of investment operations, the environment, project affected people, water resource management, pest management, safety of dams, projects in disputed areas, and projects on international waterways. 7 Recruited to the World Bank from FAO, Butcher, who had written a FAO manual on dam resettlement in West Africa, played a major role along with Cernea in drafting OMS 2.33.

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(Picciotto et al. 2001: 135) and “Summary … Above all, displacees must be beneficiaries of the project” (Ibid: 140). OMS 2.33 was a major advance that was subsequently widely copied by other development institutions. But OMS 2.33 and subsequent revisions up to the present contained one unacceptable omission, which was failure to insist that a majority of resettlers be made beneficiaries in projects whose purpose, after all, was development.8 Such a requirement is especially relevant for large land settlements where the large majority of resettlers usually are already poor people. That requirement was eventually recognized even by the private sector’s leading agency, the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD), which was emphasized in its 1995 Position Paper on Dams and the Environment. Yet the World Bank even today continues to allow donors to pursue an impoverishing “restoration policy” for the majority of resettlers.

3.9 3.9.1

USAID and Sri Lanka’s Accelerated Mahaweli Project (1979–1989)9 Introduction

IDA’s research on the Accelerated Mahaweli Project (AMP) began the same month (May, 1979) that AID funded IDA’s Global Evaluation of New Lands Settlement. It followed from previous discussion of the Global Evaluation with AID’s Alice Morton and other AID staff that led to my selection to advise AID’s Colombo, Sri Lanka, mission on possible involvement as a donor for the government’s land settlement component of the Accelerated Mahaweli Project. Mahaweli was among my favorite projects. It was planned as Sri Lanka’s largest and most expensive TVA-type integrated regional development project in the middle of the country with five major dams. As for Sri Lanka, it was one of the most beautiful and violent countries in which I have worked. Responding to severe Buddhist discrimination against a Hindu minority of about 15% since independence, the Tamil Tigers had revolted and were in the process of refining suicide bombing in retaliation (Scudder 2010: 50–55), while unemployed Buddhist youth periodically resorted to violence against their government. During six visits, I was extremely fortunate to be working throughout, including co-authoring the last four reports, with Kapila Wimaladharma. Though our The statement in the February 1980 OMS 2.33 was “the Bank’s general policy is to help the borrower to ensure that, after a reasonable transition period, the displaced people regain at least their previous standard of living.” 9 Largely based on chapter 5 in my 2005 The Future of Large Dams and on an unpublished 2016 text that I used for a March 14, 2016 lecture at the National Academy of Sciences’ Sackler Colloquium on Coupled Human and Environmental Systems. 8

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expenses were covered by AID, we reported to the Minister for both Mahaweli Development and Lands and Land Development as well as whomever of his superiors he wanted us to meet including President Jayawardena. Our assignment was to monitor the welfare of over 50,000 households settled10 on 0.2 ha home lots and annually double cropping one hectare irrigated holdings.

3.9.2

Project Monitoring

As monitors we pioneered our own version of interviewing the same households (50 were eventually recruited) during each visit. We also developed our own version of Opportunity Sampling whereby we analyzed any project-related activities that we thought might have development importance. While traveling through the four major project areas we frequently would stop suddenly to investigate whatever might seem to be significant or to investigate project-related activities about which we had been informed. Unpredictably, on one occasion the events investigated involved driving through several road blocks to reach the spot where a road bomb, detonated near a Mahaweli village, had killed several security personnel. Wanting to know how the government would respond, we were shocked to see that in retaliation for being near the site of the explosion, the government had burned at least 20 settler houses in the area surrounding the explosion. The elderly owner of one said that security personnel required him and his wife to pile their belongings in one room after which they were torched to ensure the house would burn to the ground. On another occasion, when told that a government tactic to warn settlers of the importance of reporting suspicious events was to tire-necklace and incinerate headless youths at a prominent crossroads, we sought out one such cross-road. We were only able to count the seven victims by counting their fourteen thighbones. Household interviews were complemented by a rapid assessment of the owners’ home plot gardens, farming equipment, housing, furnishings, lighting and cooking means, and water and sanitation facilities which allowed us, with some confidence, to know during revisits whether the household’s living standards had improved between visits, had remained about the same, or had declined. We also asked sample members to compare their situation with other members of their water user association and collected more detailed data on crop sales and other income earning and project-relevant activities (Figs. 3.5 and 3.6). Our ready reply to critics of such a monitoring procedure was that the purpose of monitoring was to provide project personnel with timely data (before my departure from the country) for adaptive management of the project’s land settlement component. Furthermore, none of our major “conclusions” were subsequently shown to be wrong including, as examples, the first reporting that the Mahaweli project was Wanigaratne and Heath refer to “over 94,000 households” in their 2004 paper.

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Fig. 3.5 A sample family

Fig. 3.6 Another sample family

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failing to realize its development goals for settlers, the first reporting of increased suicides among desperate settlers, and the first reporting of a serious increase in malaria cases. The World Bank was sufficiently interested in our monitoring techniques that subsequently I was asked to write one of the case histories presented in the Bank’s Rapid Appraisals Methods (Kumar ed: 1993). In the Introduction, Dennis J. Casley, former chief of the Bank’s Operations Monitoring Unit and perhaps the Bank’s best known statistician, wrote: Of the eight appraisal cases in the book “of them all, I consider the first by Scudder to be both one of the most important and one of the most controversial. It is important that such an effort to monitor and evaluate the Mahaweli Program is a rare example of a sustained, consistent input over a number of years despite many problems, including the common one of needing to survive the danger of being the messenger who bears bad tidings. Many such efforts have been cut off from funding and access when early results embarrassed the executing and funding agencies. It is controversial, in that the small sample was selected in about as non-random a way as would be possible to devise and was then maintained almost without rotation over a number of years. The author presents very clearly the dangers of such biased samples, but on balance believes other advantages accrued.

I can live with that assessment, along with Wanigaratne and Heath’s 2004 statement that our “concerns raised in the early 1980s about the likely economic stagnation of the irrigated program area have been fully borne out by more recent evidence, supporting the case for policy makers to make greater use of quick assessments to track poverty trends.”

3.9.3

Mahaweli Project Outcomes

3.9.3.1

Introduction

In the first draft of my The Future of Large Dams, the Mahaweli case history received equal emphasis with seven other large dams. In the final draft it was the only case history that required an entire chapter because “it best illustrates the complexities and unexpected events that accompany the often lengthy planning and implementation of major projects involving large dams” (Scudder 2005: 138). Though I was characteristically over-optimistic in the 1980s about Mahaweli’s potential for regional development, in our third report (November, 1983) we wrote in the introduction that “The Accelerated Mahaweli Programme is a grand concept … simply because it has such potential for improving the living standards of Sri Lankans at the household, village, district, regional, and national levels. We believe …that there is a very real danger that this potential is not being realized, and will not be realized in the future” (our underlining). That was what we told the Minister for Mahaweli Development, whose unofficial advisers we had become, when he invited us to debrief him at his home in Colombo.

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3.9.3.2

AMP as an Organization

While we outlined in our reports a range of critical issues that needed to be addressed, as familiarity with the AMP increased so too did the number of critical issues involved. As I wrote in an unpublished 1993 conference paper, the main constraints lie with government agencies and officials. That was especially the case between 1979 and 1984 with the Director General of the newly created Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka. His appointment accelerated the politicization of the AMP in ways that imposed constraints on the development of settler institutions. Especially constraining to institution building was the chairman’s insistence that Mahaweli officials at the local level must be either the chair or president of the major farmers’ organizations such as water user associations. At the same time his fundamentalist religious views delayed for over five years the diversification of the settlers’ production system into livestock management (dairy cattle and fowl especially) and into commercial fishing in the major reservoirs and the many tanks (ponds holding irrigation water). Even more serious were the political intentions of some senior Mahaweli officials to use the AMP as a mechanism for enhancing the control of the Sri Lanka majority (Singala-speaking Buddhists) over the Tamil-speaking Hindu minority by splitting the Tamil homeland in northern and eastern Sri Lanka with a Mahaweli Project wedge of Singala—speaking Buddhist settler communities. We had intentionally included two Tamil-speaking villages among regularly visited communities. In an area dominated by the Tamil Tigers at night, the Tigers did not interfere with our interviewing although occasionally they were seen standing in doorways listening to discussions. President Jayawardena had informed the various international donors that the AMP was to be a nationally unifying project with the proportion of Hindu (12.6% in 1981) and Muslim settlers to be no less than their national percentage. In fact, government efforts, including rounding up village youths for interrogation and internment, were underway in the Tamil-speaking area, and in the two villages in which we were working, to terrify potential Hindu settlers. On one occasion, on arrival in one of the villages, a Hindu mother threw herself at my feet to implore me to help her and other villagers get the government to return their sons. Some years later we interviewed one of those involved. He had been tortured and obviously permanently injured.

3.9.3.3

Planning

One major planning mistake, due to a lack of surveys of the host population living within AMP boundaries, was the assumption that the large majority of AMP settlers would be carefully selected young volunteers with several small children from

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Fig. 3.7 A scene along the Mahaweli River showing the over emphasis on rice

electorates throughout Sri Lanka. That would defer the second-generation problem by giving each family sufficient time to move beyond subsistence with their rising disposal income then catalyzing a development process that would provide employment for their children as they matured. By 1983, however, nearly 75% of settlers were those resettled in connection with dam construction and the laying out

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Fig. 3.8 A dry season scene along the Mahaweli with rice also the dominant crop

of major irrigation systems. Such project—affected households included the full range of family types including a significant number of adolescent children. For most such families the second-generation problem arose within a few years, before agricultural diversification had occurred and while incomes were still low. Another major mistake was to plan the AMP as a means for Sri Lanka to gain self-sufficiency in the production of rice—a low value crop, the double cropping of which would increase the difficulty of settlers diversifying their production systems in order to raise their standard of living. In 2004, a World Bank survey in one of the major Mahaweli systems found that “(T)he bottom 40% of households have become slightly better off since the early 1990s while the better-off have been treading water. This reflects the absence of development dynamism that Scudder and his colleagues predicted over 30 years ago” (Wanigaratne and Heath 2004: 12). By that time, the irrigation system design and the double cropping of paddy for over 20 years “have possibly created soil and other conditions that do not lend themselves to the cultivation of other field crops” (Ibid: 8) (Figs. 3.7, 3.8 and 3.9). As a result of these and other constraints, we concluded during our last visit in 1989 that a majority of settlers had yet to move beyond subsistence.11

11

Wanigaratne and Wimaladharma reached a similar conclusion after a restudy of our opportunity sample in 2001.

3.10

The World Bank and India’s Sardar Sarovar Project

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Fig. 3.9 This successful farmer has diversified into chillies

3.10

The World Bank and India’s Sardar Sarovar Project

As a World Bank consultant,12 I made three trips to India in the 1980s in connection with the Sardar Sarovar Project and I have followed project developments ever since. During my middle visit in 1985, I worked with Lakshman Mahapatra who was a distinguished Professor of Anthropology. Like Sri Lanka’s Accelerated Mahaweli Development Project, the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) was designed to be India’s largest river basin and regional development project. The Narmada, India’s holiest free flowing river, was to be transformed by thirty large dams of which four would be multipurpose, 21 for irrigation and five for hydropower. The 138 m high Sardar Sarovar dam13 was intended to be the key feature to provide water for irrigating 1.8 million hectares in four states and providing 1,450 MW of hydropower. Planning took well over 25 years. When the three states along the Narmada could not agree on how benefits would be divided, the Government of India appointed a Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal (the Tribunal) in the late 1980s. Illustrating the complexities involved, it took the Tribunal over ten years to produce a final report in 1979 that was acceptable to the three Narmada river states and

12 See pp. 392–397 for my analysis of the role of the World Bank in the SSP between the 1970s and 1994. 13 When constructed to 138 m, the Sardar Sarovar Project can be expected to require the relocation of the highest number of people involuntarily moved from a single project outside of China.

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Rajasthan (which was to receive irrigation water) and another eight years before dam construction began in 1987. Not only did the Tribunal’s report allocate benefits and financial costs between the four states, but it also detailed the conditions under which resettlement from the reservoir basin was to be carried out. Gujarat, as the main beneficiary, would be responsible for all resettlement costs in the three riverine states. The report’s provisions were to be legally binding on all four states for a forty-five year period. If implemented as planned, SSP would create, as a single unit of 1.9 million hectares, the largest irrigation project in the world. An estimated 600,000 farm families would be direct beneficiaries. Water from the reservoir would be funneled into a river-sized main canal that would extend 460 km to Rajasthan where, it is claimed, 100,000 farm families would receive irrigation water and 31 branch canals would supply water to locations along the way. Though primarily for irrigation, the conveyance system would serve other purposes as well, including water delivery for domestic use to thousands of water-scarce villages and to the urban industrial sector.14 The construction phase for the dam and power complex was intended to take 8 years, the completion of the main canal 13 years and the completion of the irrigation system 20 years. Total cost in 1983 U.S. dollars was set at 6.3 billion. The institutional structure for the SSP was dominated by senior engineers drawn largely from the irrigation sector of the economy. It involved the Government of India (GOI) as well as agencies in the four states. At the center, based in New Delhi, was the Narmada Control Authority (NCA). In spite of efforts to broaden its membership, members in the 1980s were all engineers who were appointed to represent the four states and the Government of India. With the states insisting that project monitoring was their responsibility, the NCA’s main responsibilities were to ensure compliance with the Tribunal’s stipulations and to play a coordinating role in basin development. At the state level, departments of irrigation were to be the major implementing agencies. In Gujarat, as the major beneficiary, a second department—the Narmada Development Department—was spun off from the Department of Irrigation to deal with the SSP. An inter-ministerial committee (The Narmada High Power Committee), chaired by the Chief Minister, was established to provide guidance. For planning purposes a Narmada Planning Group, chaired by the Minister of Irrigation, had been set up in 1981 at the request of the World Bank. In 1988 a parastatal organization, Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd (Nigam), to which Narmada Development Department staff were transferred, was established to undertake the necessary construction and resettlement planning and implementation activities. The above figures relate to plans, but one must also ask what proportion of drought-prone areas will benefit if they are implemented. Jain quotes sources that cultivable areas left out of the SSP command area include 98% of Kutch, 91% of Saurashtra, and 82% of North Gujarat (Jain 2001: 39). It is also important to ask what constraints financing the SSP’s irrigation component will place on funding other options for providing water in areas left out.

14

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Numbers of People Affected at the Dam Site and in the Reservoir Basin

Though Gujarat was to receive the major benefits from the SSP, approximately 70% of resettlers lived in 193 villages in Madhya Pradesh, of which at least 36 would be totally inundated. The number of affected villages in Maharashtra was 36 and in Gujarat 19. Starting with the Award of the Tribunal in 1979, the number of affected households has been consistently underestimated. Even today, what figures are available cannot be trusted. According to the Tribunal, the estimated number of resettler families in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra was 6,603. Though no figures were provided for Gujarat, a 1983 state government estimate based on the 1981 census was 1,900 families for a total of perhaps 8,500 families in 1979. Figures reported to me in 1983 were 10,758 families of which 7,500 was the Madhya Pradesh estimate versus 1,900 from Gujarat (the same 1983 one) and 1,358 from Maharashtra (Scudder 1983: 28, Table 3.1). Of that number, perhaps 23% were landless in Gujarat, 30% in Maharashtra, and 47% in Madhya Pradesh. All 55 villages in Gujarat and Maharashtra were tribal. In Madhya Pradesh the tribal population was estimated at 40%, with peasant villages replacing tribal ones in the upper portion of the SSP reservoir basin. I pointed out in my 1983 report to the World Bank that those figures underestimated the total number of families that would eventually have to move since they did not consider additions from population increase and because governments invariably underestimate resettlement requirements. In 1992, the Independent Review instituted and funded by the World Bank following widespread and consistent protests, estimated that the total number of families to be resettled from Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra exceeded 25,000. Since they constituted approximately 85% of the total estimated population to be relocated, approximately 30,000 families would be involved if all three resettlement phases were carried out. The current estimate is 41,000 families!

3.12

My Experiences with Indian SSP Officials

During my four visits to the SSP project I reported primarily to the Chief Engineer, I. M. Shah. I had no doubt that Shah took his job seriously, including keeping tabs on my activities in the field and restricting them to the extent possible. On one visit, he had made arrangements that I be housed in a neighboring city where he told me I “would be more comfortable” rather than at the Dam site and near villages to be resettled. The plan was to transport me from the hotel to the dam site in time for lunch and then, after a discussion there, to return me to the hotel. I learned about this plan only when my driver stopped at the hotel and began unloading my luggage. We continued to the dam site lodging only when I refused to leave the car.

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On another occasion my interpreter and I wanted to visit a tribal village on the edge of the Narmada River. Early in that morning we were not allowed to set off alone but were joined by several four-wheel drive vehicles that contained immaculately dressed SSP officials, some of whom had assistants to carry their briefcases, as well as I. M. Shah himself. Helped by my interpreter’s advice, we picked the most distant village that could be accessible for a one day visit on foot. We arrived alone in a village whose setting and production system reminded me of the Kariba Dam’s Gwembe Tonga. The only Indian official who eventually arrived (but fortunately after interviews had been finished) was I. M. Shah. In spite of his efforts to restrict my field access, I respected I. M. Shah, especially his devotion to the Sardar Sarovar Project, as well as the other Indian engineers except for their lack of concern about the SSP’s resettlement component and their disrespect for tribal communities. On one occasion when we were relaxing together, one engineer asked me if I knew what SSP’s tribal people needed. When asked what, he replied “sterilization.” As for my constant emphasis on the need for the project to acquire enough arable land to improve the livelihood of SSP’s tribal and peasant resettlers, Shah’s reply was that such land just was not available in overpopulated India. Mahapatra and I did not believe that, but we needed evidence which we understood that the non-government organization (NGO) Arch Vahini had collected. Arch Vahini’s director, Anil Patel, had asked to meet Mahapatra and myself at the dam site where he was having a meeting but, with the Bank’s approval, they were prohibited from meeting us. That evening, however, Mahapatra informed me that a meeting could be arranged for me to be taken to Arch Vahini’s headquarters when I would be staying at a friend’s house in the city of Ahmedabad prior to returning to New Delhi. A few nights later at midnight a man on a motorcycle arrived to pick me up. Riots were ongoing in Ahmedabad at the time so it took nearly an hour to reach the Arch Vahini office. Once there, I learned that, yes, indeed Arch Vahini had such data, because in various villages the children of richer farmers wanted higher education to meet their middle class objectives that did not include the family farm. But Arch Vahini was unwilling, due to distrust of the World Bank, to share the details of which farmers in which villages were willing to sell how much land. Arch Vahini did agree, however, that I return the next night to continue discussions that again were non-productive. During that second meeting, however, I informed Anil Patel that with my Bank colleagues I would be meeting in New Delhi with the Assistant Director of India’s Department of Irrigation. If we could not convince her that I. M. Shah was wrong, we would have no hard evidence that land for resettlers was available to be purchased by the Government. On departure, I left the name of the hotel where I would be staying in New Delhi and I made a final request to be provided with the necessary data.

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My Experiences with Indian SSP Officials

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The morning of the day for meeting the Assistant Director, I awoke to see that an envelope had been pushed under my hotel door. Inside was an ample listing by name and village of what would be host farmers willing to sell substantial portions of their arable land for resettlement purposes. At the meeting, after the Assistant Director asked I. M. Shah to explain why the problem was simply the unavailability of sufficient land to meet World Bank resettlement requirements, Carlos Escudero, the World Bank lawyer to whom I had given the Arch Vahini data, handed the data over to the Assistant Director who was furious over the implications of Shah’s report that land for resettlement was unavailable. SSP was essentially Gujarat’s project, with Gujarat getting practically all of the benefits from water for irrigation, and for village, urban and industrial water supply. Yet it was Gujarat’s own SSP officials who opposed meeting their commitment to implementing the provisions of the 1979 Tribunal and the 10 May 1985 agreement between the states, the Government of India and the World Bank. I. M. Shah, as chief engineer responsible for dam construction, I found to be an especially tragic figure in that, as I told him in 1985, he was destroying his own project. On the other hand, Shah’s decisions in effect were based on the strong support for the SSP, and lack of concern for the resettlement component, of whoever was the Chief Minister of Gujarat as well as being the Chair of the Narmada High Power Committee. That was especially the case when Narendra Modi was Chief Minister.

3.13

Negative Reactions to the SSP Resettlement Process 1982–2015

Because the project authorities ignored the Tribunal’s resettlement provisions from the start, resettler opposition began to build up in the early and mid-1980ies with a hardening of negative attitudes between 1985 and 1989. While resettlement was always seen as involuntary, in 1985 many resettlers were at least willing to consider removal. By 1989, the resettlement activities of SSP officials had deteriorated to the extent that the attitudes of the majority had become anti-dam. During the 1980s, Arch Vahini and other NGOs had begun representing resettler interests. Initially their focus was on improving the resettlement process according to the Tribunal and the Guidelines of the World Bank. As it became increasingly clear that the political will to undertake a credible resettlement program not only was absent, but that the project authorities were willing to use the police to harass resettlers, the activities of most NGOs had shifted to project opposition by the second half of the 1980s. That was especially the case with Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) that was largely founded by Medha Patkar—subsequently a member of the World Commission on Dams whose history is well told in Leslie’s 2005 Deep Water.

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Following a 1993 meeting called by its Minister of Water Affairs to consider resettlement complaints, the Government of India formed an independent Five Member Group (FMG) to assess a wide range of SSP issues. During the two years of its existence, the FMG made a special effort to assess the effectiveness of the Central Government’s Narmada Control Authority in ensuring that the resettlement provisions of the Tribunal were being implemented. Though the FMG’s goal required access to resettlement sites in the three states, the Government of Gujarat not only refused to cooperate in any way, including provision of information, but even passed a special resolution prohibiting entry. Inability to visit resettlement sites in the SSP command area, however, did not keep the FMG from learning that the Narmada Control Authority was ineffective, and that resettlement activities were inadequate and were falling behind the construction timetable. After receiving the Five Member Group’s second and final report in April 1995, the Supreme Court “clamped a ban on further construction of the dam till R&R was improved. The ban continued for nearly four years” (Jain 2001: 85).15 Under pressure from the strong political and economic forces behind the dam, and the development paradigm that it represented, the Supreme Court gave an interim order in February 1999 that allowed the dam’s height to be increased from 80 to 85 m in height. On October 18, 2000, the Court by a two to one majority gave an order mandating construction to go forward in stages to the dam’s full height of 138 m in spite of further deterioration of resettlement implementation contrary to the requirements of the Tribunal, various state resolutions, the High Court of Gujarat, and the Supreme Court itself. So prejudicial and ill-informed16 was the order of the majority, that the third justice disassociated himself from it—“I have read the judgment proposed … I regret my inability to agree therewith.” Opposition immediately followed from all levels of Indian society including former judges in India’s judicial system, former national and state ministers and civil service secretaries, and prominent religious, human rights and social leaders, and, of course, from affected people and NGOs. While requirements, such as resettlement and rehabilitation six months before inundation, continued to be ignored by the project authorities, the main response of the Supreme Court during 2001 was to issue contempt notices to the most prominent SSP opposition leaders when they questioned the Court’s decision. Again outrage was expressed by different levels of Indian society as well as by such prominent outsiders as author Salman Rushdie who asked in an August 7, 2001 Jain was a member of the Five Member Group “whose composition and terms of reference were decided” by the Government of India and whose reports were also requested by the Supreme Court (Jain 2001: 91). A former member of India’s Planning Commission and Indian High Commissioner to South Africa, Jain joined the World Commission on Dams in 1998 as Vice-Chair. 16 In support of this statement, see L.C. Jain’s 2001 Dam vs. Drinking Water—Exploring the Narmada Judgement. 15

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New York Times Opinion17 “Can it be that the Supreme Court of the world’s largest democracy will reveal itself to be biased against free speech and be prepared to act at the bidding of a powerful interest group—the coalition of political and financial interests behind the Narmada Dam?” In May 2002 the dam was further heightened to 95 meters. Rising waters during the July–September monsoon devastated crops and houses in still—to—be resettled villages. Further ignoring noncompliance with its requirements, in September 2002 the Supreme Court closed the door to further legal challenges by dismissing, without reviewing the issues, a NBA case challenging the legality of raising the height of the dam beyond 90 meters. The following May 2003, further heightening to 100 meters was approved. The 2003 monsoon began with heavy rains in July with flooding worsened when water was released from the upriver Tawa Dam. By the end of August, 13,000 yet—to—be resettled families had been adversely affected by flooding. 3,000 of those families lived in Maharashtra’s 33 affected villages; 10,000 families lived in over 80 villages in Madhya Pradesh. Throughout the 2000–2013 period, the project authorities made promises to carry out their legally required R & R responsibilities after fasting threatened the lives of protestors or after visits by prominent persons. Once fasts ended and visitors left, promises were either ignored or dealt with in a token fashion. In the meanwhile, police in both Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh continued to abuse village and NGO protestors while the three governments continued to deny benefits to categories of people covered by the Tribunal. In June 2014, “The announcement of the final clearance by the Narmada Control Authority (NCA) for raising the dam height to 138.72 meters was made by Gujarat’s Chief Minister … days after her predecessor Narendra Modi took over as the Prime Minister … . Heartfelt gratitude from the people of Gujarat to Hon. PM Narendra Modi. The decision pending has come so swiftly … As the Gujarat government hailed the decision, social activist Medha Patkar, who heads the Narmada Bachao Andolan, cried foul and said it was not taken in a democratic manner. The government has neither given us any hearing nor has it taken any time nor made any attempt to know the ground reality, before deciding to go forward with the Sardar Sarovar Dam construction to its final height” (http://indianexpress. com/article/gujarat/gujarat-gets-approval-to-raise-narmada-dam-height-medhapatkar-upset/). In September 2015, the Former Chief Justice of the Delhi Court with a number of distinguished colleagues and the Narmada Bachao Andolan were instrumental in the establishment of a four member Independent People’s Tribunal on Sardar Sarovar Claims and Realities of Development and Rehabilitation. Granted the importance of the Supreme Court’s 1994 decision to delay dam construction for four years due to resettlement noncompliance, the four members were all retired Justices from the High Courts of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh (two members) and Karnataka.

“A Foolish Dam and a Writer’s Freedom.”

17

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Their report, based on review of the May 2015 report of the Central Fact Finding Team’s visit to the SSP submergence areas in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra and the Tribunal’s own visits to affected villages in five sub-districts, was released in November 2015. In their unanimous conclusion, the four justices found that the finding of the Fact Finding Committee “stands corroborated by the Tribunal’s finding” and “we are of the opinion that the claim of the Central Government and the Government of M.P., Maharashtra and Gujarat before the Supreme Court that the rehabilitation was fully or substantially completed is false … The tribunal, therefore, humbly expresses its opinions and advises the petitioners that they may approach the Hon’ble Supreme Court for review of the order dated 12.6.2014 under Article 137 of the Constitution of India and pray the Hon’able Court to re-examine and determine the rights of the PAFs, oustees, landless persons and other adversely affected persons living in the Narmada Valley.” Ensuring the implementation of those rights will require, for example “with due urgency … to identify and provide cultivable and irrigable land to about 6000+ oustee families…,” provide alternative livelihoods “to thousands of landless workers, fisher folk, potters, small shopkeepers, artisans etc. who are only being offered meager cash compensation.” Also needing attention are undeclared project —affected people (especially where intentionally omitted by the government in Madhya Pradesh), those submerged before rehabilitation, and the absence of “field verification by the NCA.” The above is where the situation stands today. On the last page of its report, the four justices stated “We may again reiterate that the Tribunal is fully aware of the fact that its verdict and/or direction are not enforceable.”

3.14

Mahaweli and Sardar Sarovar: Further Thoughts on Two Mega Dam—Inspired Regional Development Projects

I doubt that either project would be considered cost-effective today after their economic, environmental, and social-cultural impacts were analyzed. In this section just one reason not previously emphasized is stressed. That is the extent to which the decision to implement each project was primarily political rather than based on a careful process of options assessment. As far back as 1966, the US National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council, with Gilbert White as chair, emphasized in their report on Alternatives on Water Management “that there may be many alternatives to water development for promoting regional growth”(NAS-NRC 1966: 60). Where mega dams are involved, the stage of options assessment, in my experience, has been bypassed because the decision to proceed has been made by the head of state. The decisions to proceed with both the Accelerated Mahaweli Project and Sardar Sarovar were largely political as was the decision in 2014 by the current

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Prime Minister of India to complete the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in spite of the fact that the Prime Minister, as a former Chief Minister of Gujarat, knew that the resettlement and rehabilitation of thousands of families had been intentionally ignored. Such political decision-making can also jeopardize a project where a change of government or in party politics occurs. In Sri Lanka when the United National Party’s (UNP) Jayawardene decided to not stand for re-election in 1988, three of his colleagues, including the Minister of Mahaweli Development, competed to take his place with the then prime minister selected and winning the presidency. Seeing the Minister of Mahaweli Development as his main rival in the UNP, the new president’s “efforts to marginalize him included … downgrading the AMP at the very time that additional finance and effort were needed to complete the project” and in spite of the fact that the AMP “continued to be Sri Lanka’s largest and most important development project” (Scudder 2005, 158). Rather the President, “pushed his own project—100 new houses for low-income Sri Lankans in every electoral district” (Ibid).

3.15

AID’s SARSA and Indefinite Quantity Contracts

3.15.1 SARSA The Cooperative Agreement on Systems Approach to Regional Development and Sustainable Resource Assistance (SARSA), managed and directed throughout by IDA Senior Research Associate Peter Little, was by far IDA’s most important contract in regard to both financial assistance and projects requiring detailed long-term research in host countries. An initial five-year agreement, titled Cooperative Agreement on Settlement and Resources Assistance, was terminated on June 30, 1984 and replaced by SARSA I on July 1 1984 for a five-year period. SARSA I was then renewed by AID as SARSA II in 1989 for another five years.18 Under the Cooperative Agreement, important multi-year project and research activities were undertaken in the early 1990s, including multi-country studies of contract farming in Africa and peri-urban economies in Africa. The SARSA cooperative agreement was issued through Clark University with IDA as a subcontractor and Virginia Tech added as a second subcontractor during SARSA II (1989). Cooperatively or separately, the three institutions were to work “collaboratively with developing country institutions, AID/W Bureaus, and USAID Missions to strengthen and expand resources to enable the participants to:

The US Government fiscal year goes from October 1 through September 30 the following year.

18

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a. carry out long-term, priority research programs on specific research themes; b. produce and selectively distribute key materials (papers, reports, handbooks) on research topics; c. maintain a network of relevant experts; d. conduct periodic training workshops on key issues/topics; and e. upgrade their staff and strengthen their institutional base in order to conduct research programs.”19 The key advantage of SARSA for IDA is that it supported multi-year activities and provided core support for staff, library, and publications. Funding through AID would occur as two types of annual amendments to the Cooperative Agreement: core funding as determined by the SARSA Steering Committee with the consultation of the AID Project Manager and Add-on Funds (called Buy-ins) provided periodically “to support specific efforts defined by AID missions and bureaus.”20 Core funding during the last year of SARSA I was $200,000 and $500,000 for each of the five years of SARSA II. “Buy-in” funds were expected to further the SARSA II research agenda, with Clark, IDA and Virginia tech encouraged to seek relevant Buy-ins from AID/Washington and country missions. A difficult period in Clark/IDA cooperation occurred during the 1984 transition and throughout SARSA I that warrants further discussion since it illustrates the type of administrative problems that can occur during the lifetime of Cooperative Agreements involving multiple institutions. Part of the problem was due to the nature of the agreement between AID and Clark which did not mention IDA as a subcontractor so that the Memorandum of Agreement between Clark and IDA was the only instrument that formally notes IDA’s “participation in the Cooperative Agreement.”21 At the very beginning of SARSA 1, a financial misunderstanding led Clark in error to deduct in the mid-1980s $93,000 from IDA’s Core funding. In a July 11, 1985 letter to Clark’s Director, Vera Beers wrote “You can imagine my dismay yesterday when I … discovered that there was a discrepancy of some $93,000 between what I know to be the Institute’s current balance in the [IDA SARSA I] core” and Clark’s records. Though the error involved was quickly found and corrected, Vera’s letter emphasized “how the whole episode was nevertheless disturbing and, quite honestly, rattled both Peter [IDA’s SARSA manager] and me most of the day.” Also “disconcerting” was the fact that $25,000 was taken off the top of IDA’s SARSA core “for Clark’s administration of the Cooperative Agreement” and that “the ‘burden of proof’ falls on the Institute no matter where the problem lies.”

“Systems Approach to Regional, Income and Sustainable Resource Assistance (SARSA), Memorandum of Understanding among Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, Institute for Development Anthropology, Binghamton, New York and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia.” 20 Ibid: 3. 21 Horowitz’s 8 May 1988 memo to IDA colleagues. 19

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It was a continuation of such problems during SARSA I that led to essential clarifications in SARSA II’s 1989 Memorandum of Understanding between Clark, IDA and Virginia Tech. Especially important was emphasis that future activities would be resolved by a four person Steering Committee. As equals, each of whom would have one vote, decisions would be made by a majority of Clark, IDA, and Virginia Tech’s representatives following discussions in which there would be no vetoes. The AID Project Manager, who will chair each of the eight meetings per year, will not be a voting member of the Steering Committee.22 Another concern, which adversely affected both Clark and IDA was uncertainty as to whether SARSA I would be followed by SARSA II or, if a decision had been made to implement SARSA II, a lengthy several-year delay would precede the approval of SARSA II. Clark’s SARSA Director at the time stated Clark’s concern (which was similar to IDA’s) in a February 15, 1988 letter to the key AID office in Washington: Since we can’t find the time to sit and talk, I feel the urge to express both my exuberance and anxiety about the future of SARSA. My enthusiasm is expressed in the successes of the recent year; and my major “lie-awake-in-the night” anxiety is that SARSA will be delayed or terminated, thus jeopardizing the plans we already have in place and those promises and commitments we’re about to enter into. I sincerely hope that your office is moving along in getting SARSA II into place; we need the encouragement, and having some meaningful dollars for the next year is a real necessity to get the new programs off the ground. I only speak here of Clark’s initiatives and plans (including those in which IDA is actively participating). The project -list of IDA, I feel, is equally as impressive.

Following a 28 June 1989 meeting at AID’s Washington’s headquarters, Horowitz summarized for AID, Washington (with copies to Clark and Virginia Tech) IDA’s understanding of the new Principles Governing the SARSA II Cooperative Agreement with special attention not just to future procedures involving Clark but also to unacceptable occasional vetoes of activities and procedures by an AID’s SARSA project manager: Before summarizing our understanding, let me reiterate our appreciation for many of the positions you took at the meeting. As you know, in addition to matters of equity, IDA has been concerned with the increasingly arbitrary, negative, and autocratic style with which SARSA has been managed. We are heightened by your assurance that the remaining months of SARSA I and the entire period of SARSA II will proceed on a basis of collegiality, comity, and collaborative decision-making. The three IDA representatives who attending the 28 June meeting took special notice of your clear direction that henceforth, except where AID rules unambiguously require, there will be no further unilateral decisions made on the part of the [AID] project manager, ending the recurrent presentation of fait accompli to the cooperating institutions. We also recognize your efforts to ensure that there will be no external trashing of cooperative agreement work or personnel; that project management will seek positively to improve cooperative agreement research, not negatively to attack, embarrass, or otherwise denigrate it to persons outside AID and the cooperating institutions.

See “Principles of Project Management for SARSA II” (14 July 1989).

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By October 1988, IDA had prepared its SARSA II Work Plan for Fiscal Year 1989, the consensus being “that a new SARSA II project will be in place, late in FY 1989” (IDA 1988 Work Plan for Fiscal Year 1989: 7). In the meanwhile, fiscal year 1988 as SARSA I’s final year, would concentrate on drafting synthesis papers on SARSA’s three major core activities which dealt with natural resource management, rural-urban dynamics, and settlement–resettlement. SARSA II became effective on September 28, 1989. The total budget for Clark, IDA, and Virginia Tech was $6,600,000 of which $2,600,000 was for core funding and $4,000,000 for buy-ins, while other AID Regional Bureaus and Missions had the option to make additional buy-ins. Table 3.2 shows the budgets for three specific IDA contracts, which are subsequently described in general terms. The purpose of the Figure is not just to familiarize the reader with what was involved in IDA research projects, but also to show how Vera Beers and her staff handled financial issues.

Table 3.2 IDA budgets for studies in three countries Total Salaries Overhead Fringe Allowances Supplies Travel Per Diem Housing Other Shipment Field R/A Hires Visas, Etc. Office Communications Other Duplication Postage Supplies DBA insurance

Bolivia

Tunisia

Senegal river basin

126,000 43,091 23,614 7,115 6,077 4,900 10,700 8,325 7,300 17,153 10,000 26,835 4,950 150 24,000 1000 13,423 1,000 500 1,578 900

237,938 89,178 48,870 8,101

575,022 13,009 7,500 23,344

51,550 38,260 25,377

88,900 17,760

72,000 6,835 19,000

3,538

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In connection with the approval of SARSA II, AID on November 15, 1989 required IDA, Clark, and AID’s funding bureau to undertake a management review covering SARSA I and the initial months of SARSA II. In December 1989, the participants visited Clark in Worcester during December 12–15, 1989, IDA in Binghamton in January 8–10, 1990, and AID at various times in Washington after November 15, 1989. The scope of the review was to evaluate SARSA I’s financial and administrative management in order to provide guidance for the implementation of the SARSA II cooperative agreement. In effect, that meant looking at the type of complaints that Clark and IDA had previously made. In IDA’s case, the key recommendations for SARSA II were the following: That AID “incorporate the Annual Work Plan that has a detailed budget, into the cooperative agreement by amendment” and “Incorporate the Principles of Management into the cooperative agreement by amendment.” That Clark “prepare a Memorandum of Understanding, or other subcontract document, for each subcontractor and submit to the AID Grant Officer for approval” and “Incorporate the Principles of Management into the subcontract document with IDA and VPI (IDA Memo: Management Review of the SARSA Project 16 February, 1990: 11).

Meanwhile on-going field research activities were continuing in Bolivia and Senegal and new initiatives were undertaken in Africa through multi-year, multicountry studies of contract farming and peri-urban economies, both directed by Peter Little. The combined funding for these two activities was close to $500,000 and resulted in numerous seminars and publications, including a co-edited book by Peter Little and Michael Watts titled Living under Contract: Contract Farming and Agrarian Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa (University of Wisconsin Press 1994). The SARSA I and II Bolivian and Tunisian activities are summarized below while IDA’s Senegal River Basin research is summarized within the major section on River Basin Development.

3.15.2 IDA’s Studies in Bolivia “During FY89, SARSA will enter a new phase in its continuing research on settlement and regional development in Bolivia. This research was begun in 1984, when a SARSA team composed of U.S. and Bolivian researchers [under the management of IDA Senior Research Associate Michael Painter] conducted a study of smallholder settlement and regional development in the eastern lowlands of Santa Cruz Department. SARSA subsequently conducted research on regional development issues in several areas of the country. This work involved assisting the Bolivian Ministry of Planning and Coordination in the design and pilot implementation of a regional development information system, linking the Ministry, in the seat of national government, with the country’s nine departmental development corporations.

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Beginning in August 1988, SARSA initiated a two-year study of the pressures for migration out of the Associated High Valleys. A combination of economic stagnation and deterioration of the natural resource base upon which agriculture depends has caused the region to become a net exporter of people. Migratory destinations include the cities of Cochabamba and Buenos Aires, Argentina, commercial agricultural areas in eastern Bolivia, Argentine, and Chile, and the Chapare. Migration is also an important source of smallholding settlers moving into Bolivia’s lowland areas. The SARSA study will seek to improve an understanding of the interplay between economic stagnation and environmental destruction as driving forces behind out-migration. The data gathered will be used in support of the USA/Bolivia-sponsored Associated High Valleys Area Development Project, to monitor the impacts of development activities, and to provide an information base that will facilitate the planning of new activities under the project. The research will also complement the work done in lowland Santa Cruz by providing an opportunity to study conditions in the home region of a major portion of the settlers arriving in that area” (IDA Work Plan for Fiscal Year 1989: 4–5).

3.15.3 IDA’s Long-Term Studies in Central Tunisia23 Under SARSA I, and subsequently SARSA II, IDA began several of its major long-term research projects. Two, both under Horowitz and Salem-Murdock’s direction, were especially important. The first, underway by 1984, dealt with water resources and utilization in Tunisia and was one of IDA’s two most successful projects in terms of national development at least during the short term. It is summarized in the section that follows. The second, the Senegal River Basin studies, will be summarized under the major section on River Basin Development. By the early 1980s, long-term IDA research was underway in close cooperation with AIDS’ Office of Development in Central Tunisia, AID’S Action Plan for Water Resource Development, and subsequently with various government departments. Especially important would be the development of high technology thematic maps for the location of multiple potable water supplies. Other AID projects relevant to formulating a national water program for Tunisia in which IDA was involved were Water and Sanitation for Health (WASH) and Irrigation Support Project for Asia and the Near East (ISPAN). Muneera Salem-Murdock initiated IDA’s involvement that subsequently was shared with Horowitz. A wide range of interrelated research projects were completed between 1983 and 1991 of which the most important dealt with the organization and functions of water user associations (WUA). Of follow-on importance was the influence IDA had in convincing the

23

Most of the descriptive information that follows was provided in various issues of IDA’s Development Anthropology Network.

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Tunisian government to plan, implement and monitor a national policy for establishing WUAs in appropriate governorates. An early IDA product was a December 1983 interim evaluation that recommended the establishment of WUAs to regulate access to water, to provide for the ongoing costs of pumping and well maintenance, and to undertake water-related health education. During 1985, IDA was invited to undertake a study of water resources in Central Tunisia to help design and implement a socio-economic methodology for locating new deep water points, to strengthen the WUAs being created, and to establish a central government unit to provide WUA technical and financial backstopping. In 1989, toward the end of IDA’s involvement in Tunisia, from 20 July to 20 August, the Institute conducted a training program in the US for five Tunisian officials involved in Water User Association creation under the Self-Management Unit of Kaserrine governorate’s Office de Developpment de de Tunisie (ODTC). IDA senior research assistant Curt Grimm and two IDA Associates accompanied the trainees to various projects including a project on the Navajo Reservation. Concluding seminars were held at IDA’s Binghamton headquarters. In January, 1991, and funded by AID’s Office of Women in Development, IDA’s Research Associate Susan Davis started a six week study to examine how new WUAs had impacted on women, men and children in two study governorates. Though women benefited from WUAs, unfortunately they had no institutional involvement in them. In June 1991, two IDA Associates helped the government define a national strategy for the creation and monitoring of WUAs. They monitored WUA formation and functioning in 21 communities in six Tunisian regions, most of which were funded by the German Government that now was actively involved with 200 WUAs. IDA’s last monitoring visit after an 18-month study was to occur in Jan–Feb 1992. Over two years IDA also worked closely with the Tunisian Rural Engineering Division of the Ministry of Agriculture to create a draft national strategy to be presented in June 1992 during three national seminars organized by the Ministry of Agriculture. A strong national commitment for WUAs had been made with the expectation that 2,000 WUAs would be operational throughout rural Tunisia within a year.24 Subsequently AID/Tunisia asked IDA to “publicize the success achieved by the five year, $10 million Central Tunisia Rural Potable Water Institutions Project that ended in June, 1991. IDA’s Curt Grimm was to collect data on the various activities that would be published in two reports in which one will emphasize IDA’s social/ community orientation instead of the strictly technical/engineering emphasis found in most water projects. According to a listing of IDA publications, however, only

According to Horowitz, Tunisia by 1994 had “more than 1,400 officially recognized potable water-user associations” (Development Anthropology Network Vol 12, Nos 1 and 2. Spring and Fall 1994:7).

24

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one report was published. That was Grimm and Redjeb’s 71 page “Cost Benefit Analysis of Tunisian Rural Water User Association Creation and Support” (IDA Working Paper 86) which was published in1991 in French and English.25 As for other components of IDA’s Tunisia research, in June 1985 Salem-Murdock and IDA Associate Susan Davis initiated a research program that dealt with production on Central Tunisian rain-fed and irrigated lands and impact on employment including off-farm employment. Associate Philip Boyle arrived later to spend a year with AID colleagues in Tunisia, while Associate Barbara Larson began a new AID-IDA collaboration on Monitoring and Evaluation (DAN Vol 5, No 1 Spring 1987: 20). In Summary, the government’s Action Plan for the National Strategy to Create and Monitor Water User Associations in Tunisia was a product of the success of AID Tunisia’s Central Tunisia Potable Water Institutions Project for demonstrating a model for “increasing beneficiary participation through the creation of Water Use Associations (WUAs) in Kasserine and North Gafsa Governorates. Interest, at the national level, prompted the Government of Tunisia to seek help26 in formulating a national strategy for creating WUAs.” Having provided the funds for IDA to help prepare the Action Plan for an operational national strategy, AID/Tunisia was also appreciative of the results IDA achieved. In a 9 February, 1988, Memorandum to SARSA’s Oversight Officer in Washington, Aid Tunisia’s Rural Development Officer wrote the following assessment: The mission requested the Water Resources Study to provide the Central Tunisia Development Authority (CTDA) with improved data for locating potable water wells under the subject project and for other development purposes. Under the study, CTDA assisted by SARSA technicians developed a methodology using 1:500,000 thematic maps, to identify water-short areas and to select well locations. This methodology provided CTDA with its new site selection criteria that were approved by USAID/Tunisia by 20 May 87 … The study also provided CTDA with related anthropological, economic, demographic and hydro-geologic reports. The initial set of six maps was delivered to CTDA on 15 September 87, and subsequently distributed to various concerned regional agencies including the Kasserine Governor … who advised that he had already presented his set of maps in October 87 to Prime Minister Ben Ali [subsequently Tunisia’s, second President 1987–2011]. He said that his 20 min presentation favorably impressed the Prime Minister. On 5 Jan 88, SARSA delivered the second set of 15 maps to CTDA … Since the new thematic maps are designed first and foremost for planning, they should prove very valuable to CTDA and other development agencies. In addition to planning potable water supply, they can be used for (1) planning other services and infrastructure such as schools, roads, and dispensaries, (2) identifying locales suited for developing as market centers, (3) designing a program for artificial aquifer recharge, and (4) developing livestock, agricultural and related demonstration programs.

25

Previously seven other IDA Tunisian Working Papers had been published. Especially from AID and Germany’s German Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau (KfW).

26

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Both CTDA and USAID appreciate the time and effort that the SARSA team made to produce a quality product under the Water Resources Study… Since 1983 the Institute for Development Anthropology has continuously demonstrated that it can provide excellent services.

3.15.4 Aftermath of IDA Water User Association Research in Central Tunisia An all too common constraint on IDA’s ability to help governments to actively involve project—affected people in planning, implementing and monitoring activities, and to incorporate participants’ socio-cultural systems, is lack of government interest and/or government interference. While effective government involvement initially occurred in the Central Tunisian case,27 subsequent government political involvement occurred in Central Tunisia that seriously weakened the participation of local communities in their own water user associations. According to the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) “in Tunisia … heads and staff members of WUAs are in fact appointed by the higher administration (e.g. local representative of the Ministry of Interior28) or the cells of the ex-ruling party… Elections are held but candidates often have to be anointed by the state” (IWMI October 2012: Box 6.I, page 51). In Tunisia’s Siliana and Zaghouan governorates, IWMI, referring to a 2012 study by the International Fund for African Development, reiterated that WUA performance in Tunisia “is influenced by political interference. At the local level, El-Omda, who is a representative of the government, is the main link between the government and the farmers. He is involved in the management of natural resources and also in the political, social and economic life of the community… Before the revolution of 14 January 2011, local representatives of the ruling … party … had a determinant role in the decision-making and management of any activity related to the functioning of WUAs.” Even the budgets of WUAs “were under the control of the [party] delegate, who would sometimes use its funds for some unrelated activity… The [party] delegate and el Omda played also a role in appointing the heads and administrative committees of WUAs, proposing candidates who would support the interests and the orientations of the party, irrespective of their management capacity. They also interfered in the choice of potential beneficiaries of credit and financial subsidies”

27

According to the World Bank, which implemented an irrigation project in Kasserine Governorate between 1983 and 1990, “During project preparation, appraisal and execution, the Borrower, convinced of the necessity to increase agricultural production in the irrigated areas through the project, was strongly committed to achieving the project and completing it within the deadline and the estimated costs (World Bank March 17, 1993:16). 28 Also involved were the Ministries of Agriculture and Finance.

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while the WUA Board “was rarely renewed. Consequently, the [party] delegate and el Omda insured a control over the irrigation sector by exerting various pressures and intervening in the electoral process and the day-to-day management of the WUAs” (IWMI October 2012; box 6.1).

3.15.5 Conclusions of AID Evaluations of SARSA I and II “An interim evaluation for SARSA I was completed in 1987 … According to the 1987 evaluation, ‘SARSA research and researchers have been of high quality and have produced information of high utility to the development community and to USAID Missions.’ However, the evaluators noted that the ‘intended integration of geographic and anthropological perspectives had not materialized to the degree anticipated’ and that “a less than fully formulated and integrated long term research strategy” resulted in ‘somewhat uncoordinated and at times unrelated’ field research” (AID undated Scope of Work for a Mid-term evaluation of SARSA II: 2). On November 1, 1993 a draft AID SARSA II evaluation was released (Mid-Term Evaluation SARSA II. Project Number 963-5452: 2–6). According to the “evaluators assessment of the applied research conducted… is that a large part of the work done as part of SARSA II is of high intellectual quality and is very useful in informing and guiding the efforts of USAID, other donors and of host governments… Among the highlights accomplished by the project are the following: (1) The strengthening of the applied anthropology capacity at IDA has been especially impressive as measured by the quantity and quality of output and practical relevance of the research and documents produced. IDA has been successful in generating a large number of USAID Add-Ons, especially for SARSA II-related work in Africa. Long-term research in Tunisia on the provisioning of water use and on the social and ecological effects of the Manantali Dam … are important, well-developed case studies illustrating the possibilities and utility of social science research. Work on household income strategies in Burundi and on the estate sector in Malawi was responsive to the needs of REDSO and the missions and contributed to the formulation and direction of projects and policies. (2) Some of the SARSA II research on natural resource management (NRM) has made a significant contribution to our knowledge of this area. In particular, IDA work in Latin America and Africa has helped to elaborate and refine the political ecology analytical framework. This framework elucidates the way in which political, economic and social factors at both the micro-level and the macro-level affect the utilization and (often) the degradation of natural resources. Their river basin studies reflect another unique and holistic contribution to a better understanding of NRM issues within a cultural and social context.

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(3) IDA has a good record of collaborating with host country institutions and researchers and assisting in the development of human resources in several of the countries in which it has worked. Graduate students from several countries in which SARSA II projects were carried out have received degrees or are studying for advanced degrees at Binghamton University. Several are being advised by IDA personnel who are formally or informally associated with the anthropology program … The review team met with several impressive U.S. and foreign students pursuing graduate degrees in development anthropology who work closely with IDA staff. These students are also being awarded prestigious competitive grants from such sources as the Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, and the Fulbright Program to do field research overseas. (4) IDA has followed a clear trajectory of producing case studies that are assembled, along with similar work of other scholars, into synthesis documents. The synthesis work of SARSA I on resettlement schemes and on lands at risk has been followed in SARSA II by a synthesis volume on contract farming (based on work done in SARSA I) and a volume on the social causes of environmental destruction in Latin America. The comparative and collaborative work on peri-urban areas in Africa is leading in the direction of a synthesis volume. (5) IDA generally does well in responding to USAID and other donor needs, procedures, and arrangements. It has become an institution that is well-known for having the capacity to address sociocultural aspects relating to development. (6) IDA and Clark have established good working relationships at the administrative and management levels. The frictions that were noted during the SARSA I evaluations have evaporated. Clark and IDA jointly develop work plans and engage in budgetary planning. In regard to areas requiring improvement, “IDA should devote time to codifying and disseminating what it has learned from its political ecology approach, particularly in showing how the data from household surveys can be linked with other levels of analysis.”

3.15.6 Indefinite Quantity Contracts AID’s Indefinite Quantity Contracts, unlike SARSA, had both major advantages and major disadvantages. Aside from funding a large range and number of IDA’s short-term projects, a major advantage was to widen IDA’s reputation among IQC partners as well as with other NGOs, private sector companies, universities and foundations. During the 1980s IDA, with partners Development Alternatives Inc. and Research Triangle Institute, received AID’s Rural Development IQC three times. An important contract, it facilitated “short-term work for USAID overseas missions

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in the design and evaluation of rural and regional income generation and resource management projects” (Bulletin 1988: 19). Emphasizing AID’s satisfaction with the previous two Rural Development IQCs, dealing with income generation was “a special feature this time” (Ibid). Work orders under the second contract ranged from evaluating an onchocerciasis program in the Volta River basin to presenting a workshop on the management of African rural development projects and involved activities in Peru and Pakistan as well as in Niger, Gambia, Senegal and Tunisia” (Ibid). The major cost of IQCs were, however, financial. Vera Beers stated the situation best in a 12 November, 1993 memo which started with the type of financial problems associated with a sample IQC. The IQC is killing us. Unfortunately, we are tied into the current DAI/IDA joint venture IQC until January 31, 1995. Although we can attempt to be as non-responsive as possible, we do have some obligations to our joint venture partner. Even keeping a very minimal involvement is costly. We recently sent Constance McCorkle to Mali. I had to give her a $5000 advance and buy her plane ticket. Constance will not be back until mid-December which means that our invoice will not be submitted until January. Payment will lag by 3-4 months meaning that from the time of expenditure until the time of recovery at least 6 months will elapse. We do not have the resources to live with this. Although you have all, at one time or another, indicated that we should drop IQCs, there has never been a unanimous verdict. Since there are differing opinions among staff members as to the value of having an IQC, it is imperative that the Directors take action on whether we are to continue bidding for them or not. We also need guidance on how to proceed under the currently existing IQC. To avoid problems I am requesting a written policy decision.

3.16

River Basins: Impacts of Dams on Free Flowing Rivers and Project Affected People

3.16.1 Introduction After a slow start as one of the smallest of IDA projects in terms of funding, analysis of the impacts of dams on free flowing rivers and dam project-affected people became perhaps IDA’s most important single topic. The small project referred to above was a lecture that I gave at the World Bank in 1977 on the largely negative impacts of World Bank-assisted dams on people resettled from dam sites and reservoir basins. Three years later, Horowitz completed a 1980 UNDP contract on Social Analysis of Impact of Development Planning for the Kagera River Basin in East Africa. Three projects followed in 1981 dealing more generally with river basin development in Africa and one dealing with small holder development in Sri Lanka’s Accelerated Mahaweli Development Project, which was the country’s largest project then as well as now.

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Thereafter IDA river basin development contracts continued to involve some of the world’s largest national and international river basins including the Senegal in West Africa, the Tana in Kenya, the Nile in North-East Africa and the Narmada in India.

3.16.2 My May 1977 World Bank Seminar on Involuntary Resettlement in Connection with Bank-Assisted Projects In my opinion the above seminar was one of the few times in my career where analysis of adverse project impacts on low income people had a major impact on development policy and implementation (see pp. 165–168 this volume).

3.16.3 Environmental Flows and My 1978 Lecture on “River Basin Development and Local Initiative in African Savanna Environments” at the August Wenner-Gren Conference on Human Ecology in Savanna Environments The release of environmental flows from dams for the benefit of downstream ecosystems and project—affected people has become a frequently recommended and seldom—used technique. Its use in the distant past may well have been more frequent. In ancient Ceylon, the ruins of dams in the Mahaweli Basin include drains in the lower reaches of foundations that presumably were used to pass sediment and water downstream at the beginning of the flood season. During the 19th Century cascades of Sri Lankan dams were used on some tributaries for the same reason. When the Aswan Dam was first built in 1902, environmental flows were also released from the dam’s lower reaches; not just to reduce siltation above the dam but presumably also to pass some of a silt load, averaging about 100 million tons per year, to replenish the Nile Delta and to benefit flood recession agriculture along the lower Nile and in the Fayum Depression. The growing importance of hydropower later in the 19th century not just for provision of electricity, but also for providing profits that could be used for year-around irrigation and other uses, in effect terminated the use of environmental flows from large dams. One exception, presumably because no hydropower was generated, was a controlled release from South Africa’s Pongolaport Dam, which was primarily for the benefit of flood recession agriculture, grazing, riverine forests and other vegetation and fishing.

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Representing both Caltech and IDA, my 1978 lecture recommended “A Scenario for Dam Construction Beneficial to Local Populations: “This option involves the regularization of drawdown [during the annual flood] within the reservoir behind the [Zambezi’s] Kariba dam, synchronized with simulation of a downstream flood. Properly executed it would increase significantly the production of crops, livestock, and fish by lake-basin and downstream residents. It would also have the advantages of increased social equity and reduced environmental impact, although its major justification would be economic, with the tradeoff between reduced power generation and increased agricultural production (including fisheries) favoring the latter. Such an option has neither been analyzed in detail nor experimented with in tropical Africa, and a major need for the future is to widen the range of simulated and actual water-use alternatives to include drawdown regularization and flood simulation” (Scudder 1980: 400–401).

Little did I know that subsequent IDA contracts with AID through SARSA would allow IDA to pioneer research that temporarily convinced Senegal’s OMVS to allow occasional flood releases for downstream users in the Middle Senegal River Valley between 1988 and 1993. More recently in Central Africa, Richard Beilfuss was currently emphasizing the importance of environmental flows in current Mozambique government planning for further dam construction on the Lower Zambezi.

3.16.4 IDA’s Comparative Analysis of the Role of Institutions in African River Basin Development In July 1984, Clark University and IDA negotiated under SARSA a $26,428 contract to prepare issues papers to help AID African Missions work with host countries in the development of their river basins. Results were presented in April 1985 at an AID-sponsored workshop in Washington, DC at which several other recipients of AID water resource development funding were also present. Participants later published their contributions in SARSA’s June 1985 Problems and Issues in African River Basin Planning. Two months later, Clark and IDA received from AID through SARSA $100,000 for a more ambitious ‘follow-on’ phase two analysis of African River Basin institutions. “So as better to evaluate institutional performance, the SARSA team studied the full range of organizations involved in river-basin development. These varied in scale from multilateral donors and international river–basin authorities to farmers’ organizations, private voluntary organizations, and private sector firms. At the same time, the scope of the study was expanded to include the river-basin development record to date and strategies for the future. The justification for this broader focus was the need to measure institutional performance against actual outcomes and to relate those outcomes to policy goals” (DAN, Spring 1988: 16). Field work followed over three years in West, Northeast, East, Central and South Africa. As with other projects, IDA personnel were joined by senior African colleagues including Kenya’s John Kimani (former chief planner of the Tana and Athi

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River Development Authority) and Charles Okidi (from the University of Nairobi’s Institute for Development Studies) and E.L. Quartey (former Chief Executive of Ghana’s Volta River Authority). Research results were presented during a four-day May 1988 conference on “The African Experience with River Basin Development: Achievements to Date, the Role of Institutions, and Strategies for the Future.” Among approximately 50 participants were Representatives from nine African and four European countries as well as from five UN agencies. To stimulate conference discussion, participants had access to nine documents written by SARSA members. Of special interest, one of the more interesting findings was “the extent to which generalizations from one river basin can be applied to others. The large majority of Africa river basins are characterized by seasonal rainfall, with annual river flows often varying by a factor of ten between the height of the flood and the end of the dry season. Partly because of Africa’s aridity, as well as the potential of the riverine habitat, the production systems of millions of people are dependent on annual flooding” (DAN op. cit: 16). My 323 page overview of the African Experience was published under SARSA auspices in July 1988. The conclusions were not complimentary as indicated by the introductory section of the last chapter. Especially important for future IDA research in the Senegal River Basin of Senegal, Mauritania and Mali was a section under water management on controlled downriver flooding from dam reservoirs. “A. INTRODUCTION The development of Africa’s river basins is justifiable only if it can lead to the integrated development of each basin’s human, land, and water resources in a way that is environmentally sustainable. The narrow focus of most planning studies, and of most development, on river basins as hydrological systems has tended to restrict development, on the one hand, to water resource management, and, on the other hand, to national accounting in terms of electricity generation and crop production on large-scale irrigation projects. Local, regional and environmental accounting has been ignored, with adverse effects on riverine habitats and communities and on national development goals.” The water resource bias “is illustrated by the fact that river basin development usually is the institutional responsibility of ministries, commissions, and authorities concerned not with planning and integrated area development, but rather with energy, irrigation, and public works… The same bias exists among multilateral … donors. Still the main proponent of large-scale dams in Africa, the World Bank places such projects under its energy division… while in the 1980s the Bank’s energy division has ignored the Bank’s own environmental and resettlement guidelines in regard to the recently completed Kiambere Project [in Kenya]” (Scudder 1988: 275–276). “B. THE RECORD TO DATE The most important single conclusion resulting from this assessment is that African nations have been developing the hydroelectric potential of their rivers

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at the expense of their ecological resiliency, human populations and agricultural potential (agriculture being broadly defined to include livestock management, forestry and agro-forestry, and fisheries in addition to crop agriculture).” “E. THE ENHANCEMENT OF RIVERINE HABITATS AND PRODUCTION SYSTEMS.

3.16.5 Improved Water Management While more favorable policies are a requirement, the key to the enhancement of riverine production systems is improved water management. While local economies are dependent on annual or biannual flooding, all too frequently those economies are adversely affected by ill-timed flooding, excessive flooding, or inadequate flooding … As a result, the question arises as to whether or not the construction of major dams for the release of a controlled downriver flood, which could also be combined with drawdown regularization in the reservoir basin, might be the best management tool. The recent completion of the Manantali Dam provides an exceptional opportunity to provide answers to such fundamental questions. Dam construction was completed in 1987, with the reservoir beginning to fill during the 1987 rains. Due to funding constraints, the first turbine will not be operational until 1993 at the earliest. Starting in August–September 1988, a controlled downriver flood will be released for the benefit of downstream users, and especially for flood recession cultivators in the Middle Valley. It is of great importance for the riparian states and for the rest of Africa that the impacts of this controlled flooding be carefully studied over the next five years. This is because Manantali provides the first opportunity in tropical Africa to monitor and evaluate the impacts of controlled flooding from a major mainstream dam and to compare those impacts with the expected costs and benefits of other development outcomes, including hydropower generation and irrigation without controlled flooding.”

3.16.6 IDA’s Research on the Left Bank of the Senegal River Basin’s Middle Valley (1987–1992) 3.16.6.1

Introduction

Once, again in my life serendipity played a major role. AID’s Director in Senegal was Sara Jane Littlefield who previously had been Director in Sri Lanka when I was involved in Mahaweli Project research. Because of growing interest in dam construction in the Senegal River Basin, AID Senegal recruited me and Muneera

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Salem-Murdock (fluent in both Arabic and French) through IDA to provide advice on possible AID involvement in the development of the Senegal River Basin. IDA’s future projects in Senegal and Mali originated in our March–April 1985 visit. IDA’s work in the Senegal Basin was funded through SARSA under two closely linked but separate AID “buy-ins.” AID/Mali supported resettlement planning and research among 11,000 Malinke villagers relocated in connection with the Manantali Dam. AID/Senegal funded research in the Middle Valley under the Senegal River Basin Monitoring Activity (SRBMA). SRBMA I (1987–1989) was directed by Horowitz and Salem-Murdock while SRBMA II (1990–1992) was directed by Salem-Murdock. Both activities included detailed interdisciplinary research on the Middle Valley’s indigenous systems of household production, marketing, labor migration, and natural resource management, and with the downstream impacts on those systems of the new water regime following the construction of the Manantali Dam. SRB II “would allow IDA to monitor impact of different flood patterns on the production systems of the Middle Senegal Valley” (Salem-Murdock 1996: 129).

3.16.6.2

The Purpose of the Senegal River Basin Monitoring Activity (SRBMA I & II)

“The main research priority in the Senegal Basin is the stablishment of a practical information management system to deal with more than $50 million of studies and surveys that have been carried out in the region dealing with different—often contradictory—assumptions, areas, times, and topics. Bill Phelan, project Research Assistant in Binghamton, and consultant Michael Burton, are taking prime responsibility for developing the system … The new system will facilitate the Institute’s evaluation of various “master” plans that have been proposed over the years. Andre Guinard will focus on the agricultural dimension of these plans, and Hubert J. Morel-Seytous will assess several hydrological models. We also plan to review available demographic information… The results of these studies will be presented in the form of options to major decision makers involved in the Senegal Basin” (DAN. Spring 1987: 18). The “new system” was seen as “a rare opportunity to influence planners’ thinking before … thoughts are hardened into concrete plans and implementations. As consulting river-basin development specialists we expect to offer a wider range of options than is usually considered in these enterprises to engineers …This range will include building upon rather than destroying local production systems” (DAN January 1986: 19).

3.16.6.3

The Senegal River Basin: With Special Emphasis on Senegal’s Middle Valley’s Left Bank

Approximately 3,000 km2 in size, the Senegal River Basin includes Guinea (11% of the basin), Mali (53%), Mauritania (26%) and Senegal (10%). The Senegal River’s three main tributaries are the Faleme (which contributes about 50% of the flow of the river), the Bafing, and the Bakoye. All three tributaries rise in Guinea’s Fouta

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Djallon mountains where annual rainfall is known to exceed 2,000 mm as opposed to only about 150–350 mm in the Middle Valley and Delta. En route to the Atlantic Ocean at St. Louis in Senegal, the three tributaries flow though increasingly arid lands. By the time they form the Senegal River upriver from Bakal, Senegal, the 10–25 km wide floodplain borders on desert. Toward the end of the rainy season (in August most years), the river “overflows its banks and floods the broad alluvial plain of the Middle Valley [in Mauritania and Senegal], where crops are grown in the dry season after the waters have receded. The valley’s agricultural production systems traditionally followed the seasonal rhythm of the river: rainfed cropping and pasturing on the uplands, followed by flood-recession farming and grazing on the lowlands. Over the period 1946–1971, it is estimated that on average 312,000 ha were flooded every year on both banks of the river, and 108,000 ha cultivated” of which 65,000 ha were cultivated on the Senegal side (Adams 2000: 5 based on OMVS-IRD 1999). According to Horowitz and Salem-Murdock: Matam …, where our field research in Phase I … was concentrated, has an average annual rainfall of about 350 mm, with the large variations about that norm that are typical of arid and semiarid regions. Between June and September, when precipitation allows, farmers grow millet on the sandy uplands (jeeri) adjacent to the Valley. Rainfed millet provides only modest yields even in good years, but it makes only modest demands on labor and capital. Its harvest period—September–October—also corresponds with the annual flooding of the lateral fringe plain(waalo), as the river … overflows its main channel and … soaks the clay verisols of the plain. As the water recedes, farmers sow waalo fields with sorghum and other plants, which receive all of their moisture from the ground: there is no further rainfall. In a very good year, as much as 240,000 ha of waalo along the left (Senegalese) bank … may be cultivated, and flood recession waalo yields per hectare are at least equal to those from rainfed jeeri yields, and in years of very low rainfall may exceed them. All floodplain lands are allocated under traditional tenure systems, which limits their accessibility, whereby rainfed fields, despite increasing population, remain more readily available… In step behind the farmers are the herders. During the summer rains, livestock are moved onto the jeeri uplands on either side of the valley … where animals graze rainfed pasture. The completion of the millet harvest on the jeeri signals a return of the herds to browse the millet stalks and manure the fields. As these sources of forage become exhausted, animals move onto uncultivated parts of the waalo that are colonized by nutritious grasses and shrubs, and after the recession harvest around February-March, they spend the rest of the dry season browsing sorghum stubble. Access to the floodplain allows for a far greater density of livestock than can be sustained on rainfed pasture: each hectare of floodplain land has an estimated carrying capacity of.5 TLU (tropical livestock units), some five-to-ten times the estimated carrying capacity of adjacent Sahelian rangelands (van Lavieren and van Wetten 1990, p 10). In years of normal rainfall, the Senegal valley yields an average of 2,830,000 tons of fish to some 10,000 full-time fishers and a large, though unknown, number of part-time or intermittent fishers (Reizer 1980) … While the French had introduced large-scale commercial irrigation on the Senegal River even before independence, the emergence [of government induced] small village rice schemes … began in the middle 1970s as a response to the drought of 1969-1974. Successive years of poor rainfall and poor flood predisposed people to join these schemes

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and today – despite the high labor and capital inputs required, and despite frequent downtime due to pump failures and poor maintenance of the canals – they remain interested in irrigation’s potential to provide some insurance during drought. Thus irrigation has been a welcomed fifth addition to the productive spectrum of the valley … When households have small surpluses or urgent needs for cash, produce from these five activities is sold in local markets, mainly by women.29

Since 1975, Senegal’s irrigation program along the river’s left bank from the Delta to the border of Mali has been the responsibility of a State Corporation. According to Stagliano, only 45,000 ha (of that total, 82% were in Senegal) had been brought under irrigation in the Senegal River Basin by the mid-1980s, of which 37,000 ha were state managed or state directed. “Development costs were high ranging in 1985 dollars from $1,500 per hectare for small perimeters to over $10,000 for larger ones. At that time no irrigated farm in the river basin has ever achieved self-sustaining status, and no farm could be cultivated on a yearly basis without external or government assistance” (Stagliano Op. Cit: 13).

Approximately twenty years [2008] later: “Irrigated agriculture has developed, but has been adopted at a slower pace than anticipated—only about 130,00 ha (40,000 in Mauritania, 90,000 in Senegal and 100 in Mali) of the 375,000 ha potential has been developed … . These new irrigated areas are primarily smallholder schemes of less than 100 ha, particularly in the floodplain areas with larger schemes concentrated in the delta. Actual investment costs to utilize the regularized river supply have ranged from US 1,500—$6,500 per ha with rice being the main crop … . The national objective to shift farmers from low output and highly variable recessional agriculture toward market-oriented productive irrigated agriculture was indeed an important and ambitious objective. The reality, however, of undertaking this and its impacts on local stakeholders was quite different than expected. Although engaging in irrigated agriculture is more profitable on a per-hectare basis than recessional agriculture … it is clear from several studies…that farmers in the region preferred recessional agriculture because it required little labor and few inputs. It is also less risky, and the minimum output per household consumption was guaranteed. This is in contrast to high-production irrigation activities; despite their higher profitability, they have high organizational and transaction costs and marketing risks. Moreover, farmers were able to traditionally mitigate the risk of crop failure and food scarcity by pursuing a diverse portfolio of crops and domestic animals to smooth household consumption patterns” (Yu 2008: 20).30

“The flood makes two other environmental contributions. First, it sustains a fairly dense woodland dominated by Acacia nilotica, woodlands that host a fairly rich display of wildlife. The tree is under heavy assault … as a principal source of charcoal for urban consumers, and as a supplier of fuelwood and poles for construction … Second, the flood recharges the shallow aquifer (Hollis 1990), which is tapped by dug wells to provide water for human and animal use, and which supports small-scale hand-watered gardens, most of which are owned and managed by women” (Horowitz and Salem-Murdock Ibid: 180). 30 Yu makes no reference to Salem-Murdock and Horowitz’s work even though his main source (Saarnak, 2003) refers to both IDA authors. 29

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3.16.7 The Organisation pour le Mise en Valeur du fleuve Senegal (OMVS) The origins of the OMVS as Africa’s first international river basin authority goes back to 1968 when the Organisation des Etats Riverains du Senegal (OERS) was formed by the four river states. After Guinea withdrew in 1971, OERS was dissolved and replaced by OMVS in 1972.31 The treaty for cooperation between the three states “establishes three permanent legal bodies which are collectively known as the OMVS but are distinct in decision-making power … and provides for arbitration procedures in case of disputes. The final recourse is to the International Court of Justice” (Stagliano 1988: 1). As far as river basin farmers, herders, fishers and labor migrants were concerned, as well as IDA, OMVS was the key institution involved in development decisions. For that reason, a detailed analysis follows. Until readmitted, Guinea was not involved for the OMVS’s first 25 years. That was most unfortunate for Senegal’s Middle Valley since insufficient finance was available to complete the necessary hydrological surveys in the three tributaries that rose in the Fouta Djallon. According to Niasse, In the OMVS’ “institutional set up, the highest management body is the Conference of Heads of State and Government. This body deals with the broad political issues, as well as key issues pertaining to inter-State cooperation and strategic development choices. The Council of Ministers exercises oversight roles and can be seen as steering committee of the programme. The Council of Ministers is composed of one Minister (generally hydraulics) from each of the member states. The High Commissiariat is responsible for the implementation of decisions made by the Council of Ministers. With regard to the staffing of the High Commissariat, the rule is that the senior positions of High Commissioner and of Secretary General be reserved for nationals of member countries other than Senegal, which is justified by the fact that the OMVS headquarters are in Dakar, Senegal. Other top level positions …are distributed equitably between member countries…”

An innovative body within the OMVS organizational set up is the Permanent Commission for Water [CPE] that is an advisory body composed of representatives of member states (generally government senior experts). CPE is in charge of defining the principles and modalities of water allocation between the various sectors. As for mobilizing funding, “The Convention on the Modalities for Funding of Common Infrastructures, adopted in 1982, clarifies the mechanism for sharing costs and benefits of the OMVS programme among member States. The cost and benefit sharing arrangement is to be adjusted periodically. The current sharing arrangement is as follows:

31

Established under a 1972 Convention, OMVS was complemented by two other conventions declaring the Senegal River as an international watercourse: the 1972 Convention on the Status of the Senegal River and the 1978 Convention on the Legal Status of Common Infrastructure.

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• Mauritania: 22.60% of costs of investments and also of benefits to be generated; • Senegal: 42.10%; • Mali: 35.30%. From 1973, the OMVS emphasized two large dams. To stop salt water intrusion from the Atlantic and provide reservoir water for two-crop irrigation during the dry season, Diama Dam was completed in the Delta in 1985.The Manantali Dam was completed on Mali’s Faleme River in 1988. According to Stagliano, Manantali’s purpose was to regulate river flow of 300 m3/s at Bakel (lower limit of the Upper Basin), thereby permitting doubled cropped irrigation of 255,000 ha, and a minimum flow of 100 m3/s at Bakel, year round, to assure navigable conditions. The third function of Manantali is production of 8000 GWh/year of electricity. Together the two dams were designed to provide the same three major functions, which were provision of water for high-cost two-crop irrigation, for hydropower (with functional turbines not installed in Manantali until 2002), and for yet—to—be initiated river transport from the Diama Dam reservoir to Kayes in Mali.32 Some National and International Donors subsequently included benefits for river basin residents as a fourth function; a function that the OMVS has never taken seriously. Subsequently named the OMVS Consultant Committee, the first meeting of OMVS donors was in1974. “The financing package for Diama and Manantali was secured by early 1981. The amount committed to construction of the two dams, but minus the Manantali power plant, was slightly over $700 million (at 1980 exchange rates).”33 Together Saudi Arabia and Kuwait provided $250 million followed by European Community—FEDX with $92 million. AID and the World Bank subsequently made smaller contributions for environmental, socio-economic and other specific purposes.

3.16.8 Middle River Policies in Senegal (1970s–2008) According to IDA’s Hollis, OMVS’s general policies for Senegal were largely influenced by the fact that “Eight of the ten worst drought years [of the 20th century] occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1983 and 1984 the aggregate flow in the river for the two years at Bakel” was less than two-thirds of the annual average flow from 1904 to 1984. Those policies emphasized the double cropping of high cost irrigation rice in the delta area upriver from the Diama Dam and in the Middle Valley, the generation of hydropower from the Manantali Dam, and river transport between St Louis and Kayes in Mali.

Terminal ports were to be constructed at St. Louis and at Kayes in Mali along with “seven river ports between the two terminals, and a permanently navigable river channel” (Stagliano Op. Cit.). Costs, especially for the removal of riverbed rocks in the upper channel, have been a major constraint. 33 Stagliano, Op. Cit. 6. 32

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According to Adams, however, by the early 1990s, the development of the Senegal River was in a state of crisis, having achieved neither its economic nor social objectives. The Master Plan for the Integrated Development of the Left Bank (PDRG), drawn up in 1990 and adopted by the Senegal Government in 1994, seemed to recognize this fact. Its introduction presented a highly critical account of the past twenty years, and stated that “towards the end of the 1980s, so many setbacks and fears for the future caused something of a change of direction.

Adams’ text continued: in the end, there was a rethink of the development strategy chosen, the idea of maximizing irrigated areas being replaced by one of integrated and harmonious development seeking to achieve the best compromise between social imperatives (self-sufficiency in food for the local people), economic imperatives (a return on investment) and ecological imperatives (restoration and protection of the environment).” And it concluded: “The ‘Master Plan’ arose from this context, and aims to define a development strategy for the left bank over the next 25 years (Republique du Senegal, 1994). In at least one area – that of the annual flood – this strategy was indeed new. Out of a list of five possible scenarios developed during the planning process, the Master Plan opted for scenario A. “This scenario envisioned irrigating as much land as possible without jeopardizing other uses of the water (environment, flood-recession farming, hydro-electric power).34 The plan did, nevertheless, contain an explicit commitment, however cautious, to maintaining artificial flooding on a permanent basis. And, for the first time, it defined a strategy which gave a clear - albeit limited - place to maintaining flood-recession farming as an enduring component of the Valley’s agriculture. In fact, scenario A guaranteed 33,000 hectares of flood-recession farmland and 63,000 hectares of grazing land. The two initial phases of the PDRG were also said to be compatible with scenario B1, which would guarantee 50,000 hectares of flood-recession farming. It is worth remembering that, in the 1946–1971 period, the average area flooded was estimated at 312,000 hectares on both banks and 65,000 hectares on the Senegalese bank. The maximum area of flood-recession farming in the years 1970-1979 was 62,000 hectares; the minimum area 10,700 hectares (OMVS-IRD 1999). But what became of this Master Plan? It seemed to have disappeared without trace. For OMVS, it is as if it never existed. In 1994, after a good flood, the farmers had begun sowing what promised to be an extensive area. Then a second flood, caused by emptying the Manantali reservoir, killed off the seedlings and inundated the cultivated areas for several months; that year’s flood-recession farming had to be abandoned… In fact, the government’s actions gave no indication that it had in any way reconsidered the agricultural policy it had conducted in the Valley since independence – a policy based exclusively on irrigation… For instance, the Minister of State for Agriculture stated in 1997: “The only solution for us is irrigation” (Adams 2000: 13–16).

According to Hollis’ analysis of river flood hydrology, area flooded and area cultivated “suggest that artificial flood A … could flood 100,000 ha of which 50,000 ha may be cultivated … . This implies that the development strategy adopted for Senegal (Vinke, 1996) with 33,000 ha of flood-recession agriculture and about 63,000 ha of briefly flooded pastures should be broadly sustainable.”(Hollis 1996: 162). Duration of flooding need be a little less than 20 days at over 1,500 m3/s.

34

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Meanwhile the World Bank, the World Bank Group’s Global Environmental Fund (GEF), and UNDP were implementing a number of projects designed to “improve” various aspects of Senegal River Basin Development. The first of several major projects was the Bank’s June 1997–June 2003 Regional Hydropower Development Project (RHDP). Though dealing mainly with Manantali electricity generation, distribution and cost issues, the RHDP also contained an Environmental Impacts Mitigation Program (PASIE) to mitigate Manantali and other Senegal River Basin environmental and health impacts. This was included because prior to RHDP approval, the World Bank’s Board felt that “the project design and implementation plan did not fully address possible adverse social, health, and environmental impacts” of the dams “and that no assurance was given as to whether the three governments would continue the required “artificial flood” to maintain traditional agricultural activities downstream, after the hydropower plant becomes fully operational. Therefore, a reservoir management plan was prepared during project implementation, with specific reference to a common Water Charter.” Through OMVS, such a Water Charter was formed which “established water management principles and aimed at protecting the rights of affected populations, to ensure that their livelihoods would not be lost and that the environment on which they were dependent not be lost and that the environment on which they were dependent would not be damaged” (World Bank 2005: 3–4). Costing 19 million US dollars, PASIE had 6 components: • Monitoring, Coordination, and Communication Program (including public participation). • Construction Impacts Mitigation and Monitoring Program (dealing with environmental issues). • Appropriation and Right-of-Way Program (dealing with electricity lines including compensation of affected households and communities). • Optimal Reservoir Management Program (including artificial flood and optimization and management of both dams). According to the Bank, successful support was achieved for “the traditional agricultural sector downstream, through rational management of the Manantali reservoir … With the commitment of member states to the Water Charter” (Ibid: 8) which was finalized and signed by the three governments May 28, 2002 which was three years behind schedule.” The Charter expressly addresses two issues of concern to PASIE, namely, artificial flooding and minimal environmental flows” (World Bank italics, Ibid: 11). • Environment Sanitation Program (dealing with adverse impact of the dams on malaria and bilharzia). • Other Associated Measures (including the limnology unit, traditional fishing system in the reservoir and downstream, health in the reservoir basin, promotion of basin-wide rural electrification and poverty alleviation and income generation) (Ibid: 4–5).

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3.16.9 The GEF 2004–2008 Regional Project: Senegal River Basin Water and Environmental Management By 2002, “There was a growing understanding that the organization would need to transform itself to ensure continued relevance. A new focus on a more holistic approach to river basin management emerged together with the realization of the importance of full inclusion of Guinea into a regional river basin framework … As a result of PASIE, the foundation of an institutional framework for effective transboundary communication and participation emerged. A steering committee and three national coordination committees (NCC), as well as a number of local coordination committees (LCC) were set up. This framework introduced effective local stakeholder participation and elements of decentralized management in the planning and decision- making process for regional water resources management for the first time” (GEF 2009: 1).

3.16.10

Middle Valley Production Systems

By far the best data on OMVS impacts on local production systems are provided by anthropologist Adrian Adams, and by Salem-Murdock and Horowitz’s IDA teams. According to Adams: Before the Sahelian drought, “over the period 1946–1971, it is estimated that on average 312,000 ha were flooded every year on both banks of the river [in the Middle River region], and 108,000 ha cultivated; on the Senegalese side of the river, 65,000 hectares were cultivated (OMVS-IRD 1999). Projects to develop the potential of the river… have never taken this age-old production system into account. Since the 1960s, rainfall and river flooding have declined considerably, and in some years have been non-existent. The drought simplified things for would-be developers by allowing them, to behave as if the valley’s traditional agricultural and pastoral production systems were a thing of the past, and the future belonged to irrigation alone. When Senegal ratified the OMVS programme, this “clean sweep” policy became irrevocable. The planned dams would not stop the rains, but they would make it possible to cut down considerably on annual flooding” (Adams 2000: 5).

3.17

IDA’s Senegal River Basin Monitoring Activity I and II and the Senegal Government and OMVS’ Record with Left Bank Flood Recession Agriculture

3.17.1 Introduction In 1987, a team from the Institute for Development Anthropology (IDA) in the US, embarked on a research programme in Senegal known as the Senegal River Basin Monitoring Activity (SRBMA) which showed that, area for area, flood-recession farming yielded better results than irrigated agriculture for an equal investment of labour and

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money, while minimizing risk. The work of the team, of high scientific quality, successfully defended the idea that a permanent controlled flood released from Manantali, raising the level of the river to that attained in times of natural flooding, was justified in that it would increase levels of production, income and employment, while protecting the environment. They also claimed, contrary to OMVS consultants, that there is no incompatibility between controlled flooding and the production of electricity. Their work became a basic reference for any discussion of the future of agriculture in the Valley (Adams 2000:12). When the results of IDA’s work were presented at a seminar in Dakar in November 1990, they were favorably received by the Senegalese government which, with its Left-Bank Master Plan … was about to opt for maintaining a yearly artificial flood. However, the then OMVS High Commissioner declared that this research was an affront to the authority of OMVS, the only body authorized to decide how the water in the Manantali reservoir should be used. Moreover, the IDA’s hydrology expert was advised that it was “dangerous” to raise questions about artificial flooding, as farmers might begin to think they were entitled to it (Ibid 13).

Nonetheless, delays in completing Manantali turbines between1988 and 2002 enabled IDA’s recently completed research on the overriding benefits of maintaining artificial flows to influence OMVS and other Senegal River Basin policy making institutions to initially agree to allow artificial floods for a ten year period starting in 1987.

3.17.2 The IDA Research Team and Research Results SRBMA I was under the direction of Horowitz and Salem-Murdock. Madiodio Niasse, John Magistro and Christopher Nuttal were the principal IDA field socio-economic researchers. They collected data on household production, consumption, revenues, expenditures, labor allocation, and land tenure and land use in three Middle Valley villages between 1988 and 1990. In summarizing study results in a 1996 IUCN publication, Salem-Murdock emphasized that they were “strengthened by more general economic, hydrologic, … agronomic, and fisheries studies.” As for study results they effectively contradicted the conclusions of previous OMVS consultants including the well-known firm Sir Alexander Gibb that had previously given advice on the World Bank-financed Kariba Project. In spite of difficulties with the OMVS, IDA had a good working relationship with the Senegalese government’s National Planning, Coordinating and Development—Promoting Committee for the Senegal River Valley (CNPCS) and especially with the CNPCS’ executive body—the Cellule Après Barrages (Fig. 3.10). As Salem-Murdock Assessed SRBMA I Results Sir Alexander Gibb’s argument to terminate the annual flood assumed a competition for scarce water resources, based on cost-benefit analysis that presumed an annual given level of water discharge for flood simulation, even in years of extreme drought. Using both their data and their estimates of the volume of water needed to generate a certain type of flood,

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Fig. 3.10 A few farmers are able to afford small petro-driven pumps

IDA asked in how many years between 1904 and 1984 (the period used for Sir Alexander Gibb’s simulation model), would there have been enough water in the reservoir to generate a [flow] that would allow the recession cultivation of 50,000 ha and generate 86 megawatts of hydroelectric power (Hollis 1990a). We found that in 62 of 81 years, there was enough water in the river to have a flood that would inundate 50,000 hectares of cultivable recession land without any additional release from Manantali. Only in three of the 19 deficit years would an amount of water larger than100 m3/sec (during two years), and 200 m3/sec (during one year) be required for the recessions cultivation of 50,000 hectares (Horowitz and Salem-Murdock 1993). At a slightly lower guaranteed power percentage, say 95%, Manantali would have been able to generate 74 megawatts of electricity (somewhat lower than the optimum maximum) and allow for the recession cultivation of 50,000 hectares.” (Salem-Murdock 1996: 127–128).

SRBMA II was under Salem-Murdock’s direction while Madiodio Niasse trained and managed a nine-person, locally recruited research team that expanded the SRBMA I three village sample with another 331 interviews outside Matam over a 12-month period from August 1991 to July 1992. Just as SRBMA I tested certain Sir Alexander Gill assumptions, so SRBMA II tested the PDGR assumption that there was sufficient labor on the flood plain to eventually convert flood plain residents to high-cost irrigation. IDA data collected “revealed that, of the factors of agricultural production, labour and capital are the scarce resources in the middle valley. Furthermore, among the agricultural systems practiced in the area …, irrigation is the most demanding of both labour and capital.” And since, as a major part of a highly

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diversified household production system, labor migration provides for many households their major single source of capital, it is unlikely that labor migrants could be relied upon to provide irrigation’s deficiency of local labor. In summary, “middle valley households generate a far greater proportion of their income from non-farm activities, especially labour migration, than from agriculture, herding and fishing combined. Agriculture will remain a critical component of the production system, however. In normal years, considering the high opportunity cost of labour, households are likely to favor those components of the agricultural system that are less demanding of scarce labour resources: recession cultivation and dryland farming. Adult labour migration is likely to continue, shifting the burdens of agricultural production to women and children. These observations should not be interpreted as a push against irrigation. On the contrary, irrigation is a very important labour strategy for the Senegal River Valley, a strategy that strengthens substantially farm households’ chances of surviving a treacherous environment. New programs, however, should be based on a realistic assessment of the labour situation in the area, rather than on optimistic assumptions of what would be desirable” (Salem-Murdock 1996: 143–144).

3.17.3 The Flood Release Record from the Manantali Dam Following a good natural flood for left bank recession farming and other production activities in 1986, there was no 1987 flood release while the Manantali Reservoir was being filled. The Manantali flood release was adequate in 1988: “harvests would have been good but for an invasion of locusts” (Adams Op. Cit: 10): In “1989 OMVS caused major losses by allowing two floods to take place. An initial natural flood, from the river’s two unregulated tributaries, receded fairly rapidly, and farmers had begun to sow their flood-recession crops when a second artificial flood, released ‘for technical reasons,’ drowned the seedlings in low lying areas. Many farmers, lacking seed and labor, were not able to sow another crop. In 1990, despite drought and the almost total failure of rainfed crops, OMVS decided not to release any water at all, but to retain all the water to test the reservoir’s storage capacity. In 1991, with tests of the reservoir’s storage capacity completed, an artificial flood might have been expected. In the Middle Valley, 1991 had been a year of drought; it was an excellent opportunity to show how the dam could benefit local communities. On two successive days adequate flows were released which, if maintained for about a week, could have provided sufficient flooding for a good flood-recession harvest. But all that OMVS wanted to do was to reach and retain a certain high level of water in the reservoir. To control subsequent inflows, two subsequent releases were made. As in 1989 the second controlled release destroyed previously planted crops (Adams, Ibid: 11).

In September 1992 and 1993, OMVS released enough water … for the lower-lying depressions but not enough to ensure good harvests over the whole of the flood-plain area. “In 1994 the Manantali dam released two successive floods without informing the downstream recession farmers. The second flood inundated

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the newly planted fields which resulted in a massive crop failure” (Saarnak 2003: 106). On the basis of research by Rasmussen et al. (1999) on “the natural and dam affected water flows at Bakel between 1987 and 1996,” Saarnak noted that “it was concluded that the operation procedures of the Manantali dam in three out of ten years have caused a significant reduction of the total volume of the inundation or reduced peak flows at Bakel to a level below the critical limit thereby preventing a successful flooding of the valley. Furthermore, it was concluded that it did not seem as if the dam managers had supplemented the flood in years of limited water flow, even though the dam reservoir had been full. Therefore, the decline in inundations, and thus the reduced potential for flood recession agriculture in the investigated villages during the last decades, is to be attributed not only to the decline in precipitation but also to the management of the Manantali dam.”(Saarnak, Op. Cit: 106). I could find no evidence of controlled releases between 1994 and 2000 and after 2003. With the Water Charter about to be signed in 2002, the World Bank notes “For 2002 and 2003, an adequate artificial flood was released” (World Bank 2005: 25). The overall failure on the part of the OMVS to fulfil its commitments is all the more striking when one considers that starting during the mid-1980s there had been a significant change in the Senegalese government’s position on the flood recession issue. OMVS’ position had always been that artificial flooding should be a temporary measure, lasting only ten years, But as early as 1984, the then Minister of Planning… suggested a more flexible position, whereby the annual flood would be maintained until such time as the farming population of the Valley had gained access to enough irrigated land to satisfy their basic needs. Moreover he said, “It may prove necessary to maintain artificial flooding if its suppression is likely to cause the degradation of natural eco-systems and the destruction of existing agro-pastoral systems of production” (Republique du Senegal 1984).

3.17.4 Postscript It is clear that international efforts by such institutions as the World Bank, GEF, UNDP and IUCN since the mid-1990s have had significant beneficial impacts on, for example, using water releases from the Diama Dam in both the Mauritanian (especially increased wetlands for the benefit of Diawling National Park and local farmers and herders) and the Senegalese portions of the Delta; increased control of bilharzia and malaria; and siting and impact assessment of Manantali electricity networks to Mali, Mauritania and Senegal. On the other hand, aside from controlled releases in 2001 and 2002,I found no evidence to support the World Bank’s statement that under PASIE (1997–2003) successful support was achieved for “the traditional agricultural sector downstream, through rational management of the Manantali reservoir” (World Bank 2005: 8 and this manuscript page 19).

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The West African Onchocerciasis Control Programme

3.18.1 Introduction This section provides an overview of IDA’s Land Settlement Review of the West Africa Onchocerciasis Control Program (OCP). When the Review’s initial recommendations were adopted into the settlement guidelines for the OCP river basins that were signed by 11 countries in 1994, the OCP Land Settlement Review became one of the first examples of anthropology research that had a direct and measurable impact on policy research. Although the results were widely disseminated and discussed, the resulting reports had very little impact on follow-up development planning, monitoring and implementation for two major reasons. First, the OCP’S international Committee of Sponsoring Agencies did not commit to combine socioeconomic development in onchocerciasis-freed river basins with the disease control program. Second, because the financial cost of follow-up planning, monitoring and implementation for the valleys’ development was far more expensive than disease control. Nonetheless, the IDA report continues to have planning relevance since many of the issues that were identified as potential issues have materialized and are key drivers in current government efforts to fight food insecurity and promote development in the OCP-affected river basins.

3.18.2 The Onchocerciasis Control Programme Onchocerciasis (Oncho) is a severe eye and skin disease that historically has blinded multimillions of Africans living in West Africa’s savannah woodland and semi-arid areas. The disease is caused by varieties of a small filaria worm (Onchocerca volvulus) which is transmitted by a small black fly (Simulium damnosum) which breeds in the rapids of free flowing rivers or in the outflow of dams. Africa is the primary location of the disease. At its height, Oncho affected over 17 million people in West Africa. There, the disease caused eye lesions “which may lead to irreversible blindness” so that “in some West African communities about 50% of men over the age of 40 years had been blinded by the disease (http://www. who.int/blindness/partnerships/onchocerciasisdiseaseinformation/en), while in more forested zones in East Africa the main outcome was a serious, seldom-treatable skin disease. During the first half of the 1970s, Oncho was considered a serious health problem throughout West Africa’s most productive areas where alluvial soils, dry season grazing, and fishing were associated with free flowing rivers and their tributaries. Frequent black fly bites to farmers of both sexes, women carrying water for domestic use, pastoralists seeking dry season grazing and water, fishers and

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children could eventually lead to total blindness. Devastating effects on large numbers of families in the most affected areas frequently caused villages to leave the most productive riverside areas for inland habitats of less fertility and less biological diversity. The health and developmental severity of the problem led to four international agencies (WHO, the World Bank, UNDP and FAO) forming a Committee of Sponsoring Agencies (CSA) to initiate the West African Onchocerciasis Control Programme in 1974 as the first major international attempt to control the disease. The CSA was assisted throughout by a Joint Programme Committee of the 11 (initially 7) OCP countries and the 23 (initially 9) donors that acted “as the executive secretariat of the program” (Elder and Cooley, eds. 1995: vii). In 1974, as now, there was no cure or vaccine for dealing with Oncho. During the 1970s, the main tactic was to use aerial sprays to kill the larvae of black flies where they bred in river rapids. In the mid-1980s, larviciding was combined with the use of ivermectin (renamed mectizan after further development), a medication derived from a bacterium that the US drug company Merck created in the 1970s. In 1987, to speed up use and relevant research on ivermectin, Merck donated the medicine to WHO to use in the follow-on Programme for Onchocerciasis control elsewhere in Africa as well as in Latin America where Oncho had spread during the slave trade. While WHO was the executing agency, another global health institution (hosted by WHO but sponsored by WHO, UNICEF, UNDP and the World Bank) also played a critical role in dealing with Oncho. This was the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR). Though designed to focus on people “burdened by infectious diseases of poverty,” the fact that TDR was founded in 1975 led to a close relationship from the start with the West African Onchocerciasis Programme (http://www.who.int/tdr/about/en/). This OCP institutional background was relevant to IDA’s involvement but disappointing because it emphasized that the planning and execution of the OCP from the start was dominated by the disease at the expense of the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of its control in oncho-freed river basins. This need not have been the case. According to Edward Jacobs, head of the World Bank’s Africa Region at the time of the OCP: when Robert McNamara proposed an onchocerciasis control program to the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors in the early 1970s, the Bank’s principal concerns in Africa were poverty reduction and the drought that was devastating much of the Sahel. Thus, although the OCP was established as a disease control program, socioeconomic development was its implicit raison ‘d’etre… Yet we recognize that new settlement and increased agricultural production on previously underutilized but fragile lands may present environmental risks. The stakes are therefore high. There is an urgent need for coordinated sustainable development in the onchocerciasis-freed areas.

Jacobs made that statement at the OCP wrap-up meeting in Paris in 1995 at which he added “If we wait longer, it will soon be too late. Rapid migration into the onchocerciasis—freed areas is already occurring, particularly in the Sahelian zones,

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and substantial increases in agricultural production are already accompanied by deforestation and environmental degradation” (Elder and Cooley 1995: 5). What had happened to the World Bank’s linkage between disease control and socioeconomic development not only during the intervening period but thereafter until the official end of the OCP in 2002? In IDA’s opinion, the fault lay with the Committee of Sponsoring Agencies where the World Bank, UNDP and FAO allowed WHO to over-emphasize the control of onchocerciasis as an end in itself. It was only at the request of the OCP’s Joint Programme Committee, for example, that the CSA became more actively involved in socioeconomic development in the mid-1980s. It was that involvement that initiated “two regional studies in support of development in the area” (Elder and Cooley, Op Cit: 1). The first was a Preparatory Phase Study made by Hunting Technical Services Ltd. (UK) and Organisation et Environment (France). The second, funded by UNDP and executed by the World Bank, was a Land Settlement Review” with $880,000 awarded to the Institute for Development Anthropology.” As for the 1995 wrap-up meeting in Paris, again it was the Joint Programme Committee that “requested the CSA to organize a high-level meeting involving the ministers of agriculture, environment, planning, and health of the eleven participating countries and representatives of the donor community. The main objectives of the meeting were to create awareness at the highest level of the development potential of the OCP area and the relationship between rapid settlement and environmental change, to build a constituency for effective policies for sustainable land settlement, and to adopt a set of guiding principles for sustainable settlement and development of the OCP area” (Elder and Cooley Ibid: 1). At the Paris Meeting, the 11 West African countries made it very clear that further international donor assistance would be needed at least for the rest of the OCP. According to the opening remarks of the President of Burkina Faso We in Burkina Faso remain convinced that it is impossible to disassociate health-oriented activities from those targeting development in the onchocerciasis-freed area. We believe that the basic actions to promote health and development can be handled by a single agency or institution providing coordination and guidance. Such an institution, which could be modeled on the organization and functional structure of the OCP, would have the role of adviser, monitor and coordinator and would be entrusted with ensuring that the riches of the environment were duly respected and safe guarded. The institution would be represented in each country by a national unit within an agency already heavily involved in managing onchocerciasis-freed areas. Each national unit would identify the development activities needed at both the local and national levels (Ibid: 8).

Referring to the purpose of the current meeting “to establish links between the approach to public health, the approach to the environment and the approach to economic development,” the President of Senegal added that “Once again, you [the OCP] are given the opportunity to be pioneers.” (Ibid: 9). As for Mali its “economic situation suggests that the support of its partners in development will also be required” (Ibid: 97). Such support was not forthcoming. Rather the CSA handed over further responsibility to FAO without additional funding.

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3.18.3 IDA Involvement in the OCP Programme The three-year (1988–1990) study awarded to IDA through international competition was the Bank’s first major development research project given to an anthropological organization. IDA’s first project director was Brokensha whose illness led to my replacing him. Della McMillan was Deputy Director throughout the IDA study while Thomas Painter was added as an additional Deputy Director toward the study’s end. Among the 11 OCP countries, four detailed studies were completed under the direction of IDA anthropologists in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali and Togo. Kofi Akwabi-Ameyaw led the research team in Ghana. Della McMillan led the Burkina Faso team, which worked at four sites, as did the research team in Mali led by Delores Koenig. The Togo team was led by Thomas Painter. Working with the environmentalist John Bursink, Painter also oversaw short reviews of the existing literature on settlement impacts in the other seven countries. IDA’s recruitment of colleagues in relevant disciplines from host country universities and other institutions was a major strength of the IDA approach in the OCP case as elsewhere. In Burkina Faso, for example, the team worked with sociologist Jean-Baptiste Nana and agricultural economist Kimseyinga Savadogo as well as with various researchers associated with the former Volta River Authority and with agricultural economist John Sanders. The main purpose of the IDA Land Settlement Review in West Africa was “to isolate the major factors that help or hinder rational settlement-related development, and to present the lessons learned, with recommendations on management planning, and land-use activities, in order to provide for viable, low cost, and sustainable settlement in the oncho-controlled areas.” Environmental factors were also emphasized as well as “how the socioeconomic position of women is affected by settlement” (DAN Vol. 6, No. 2: Fall 1988: 6). An Inception Report of the four detailed country studies was presented in April 1989 “setting out in detail the proposed methodology, which includes data collection and analysis at three basic levels in each country: household, village and region.” National policies and institutions were also studied (DAN Vol. 1, No. 7: Spring 1989: 21). Following IDA policy, a workshop of interested parties was then held in Binghamton in September 1989. In September 1990, seven final reports in English and French were presented in Ouagadougou to the OCP’s Committee of Sponsoring Agencies, the Joint Programme Committee, the individual donors and the eleven OCP project countries. They were “Land Settlement Review: Settlement Experiences and Development Strategies in the Onchocerciasis Control Programme Areas of West Africa: Final Report”; a separate “Executive Summary of the Final Report”; the four country case studies; and a brief overview of experiences in the other seven OCP countries.

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3.18.4 The IDA Reports McMillan, Painter and Scudder summed up IDA’s main conclusions, along with host country, CSA, JPC, donor and host country reactions to the IDA reports, in the Spring 1991 issue of the Development Anthropology Network. Three of IDA’s most important conclusions were controversial in the OCP countries largely for political reasons.35 The first was IDA’s conviction that implementation progress would require security of tenure over land and water resources based on customary systems of land tenure so that participants would be willing to make permanent land use investments. That requirement would be contrary to existing government policies, which were based on national ownership of land, wildlife and forest resources. The second conclusion was that a successful process of development would require policies that would integrate farmers, agro-pastoralists and transhumant pastoralists within a single land use system. That would be necessary because already the increase in farming immigrants was, in certain areas, leading to increased conflict between farmers and pastoralists who previously had been able not just to live together but to profit economically from each other’s production systems. Conflict also was increasing in some areas between governments and transhumant pastoralists whose movements crossed international boundaries. The third conclusion, based on the preference of most settlers for areas better served by feeder roads and markets, was contrary to government preference for development of more isolated areas. Being more expensive, that option, however, would require donor planning, training and financial assistance which donors would probably not be willing to provide over time as they had been willing to do with oncho disease control. The IDA team’s overview included the following list of topics with recommendations that were formulated as stand-alone chapters for country governments. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

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Introduction Overview of OCP Areas The Nature of Land Settlement The Potential of Land Settlement in OCP Areas Importance of Planning the Development of OCP Areas within a National and International Context Land Tenure Lessons learned about Production at the Household and Community Levels Farming Systems Importance of Markets and Service/Regional Centers Integration of Hosts, Settlers and Pastoralism Knowledge and Management of the Natural Resource Base Local Participation, Management and Institutions.

Though not dealt with in detail in the summary article, the IDA study also paid considerable attention to the importance of forest management, especially of the extensive riverine forest fringe.

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3.18.5 Policy Issues Relating to the IDA Reports Following the debriefing meeting in Ouagadougou, the World Bank’s Oncho Unit decided that more time was needed to prepare for a larger, more comprehensive workshop. To address this issue, the OCP coordination unit at the Bank shifted the responsibility for long-term planning for the valleys to the 11 country governments and decided to shift CSA support from the Bank to FAO. What followed was a series of internal World Bank-promoted initiatives to distill the recommendations of the Land Settlement Review into a series of publications and internal memos that could build ownership for its recommendations. Especially important, Katherine Marshall (the Director for West Africa) and Michael Cernea (the Senior Advisor for Sociology and Social Policy) encouraged IDA to submit two of the six reports—the overview and the report for Burkina Faso—to the independent review committee that oversaw the World Bank’s technical paper series. Both were accepted following extensive editing and revision. The final revision of the overview was released in 1992 (in English and in French); the Burkina report was released in 1993. Both volumes were widely circulated to all parties at OCP technical meetings. In April 1994, the World Bank organized a major international three-day meeting in Paris that included the Presidents and the Ministers of Agriculture of 10 of the 11 affected countries. In preparation for the meeting, each participant received a copy of: (1) the relevant IDA report for their country; (2) the two World Bank reports for their country (based on the IDA overview report) and the Burkina Faso country report; (3) the draft report by the environmentalists looking at the long term environmental impacts of settlement on the Leraba and Comoe river basins in Burkina Faso; and (4) a draft of the 15 “guidelines for settlement” that was prepared by two staff members in the World Bank Oncho Unit based on the introduction and the chapters in the IDA LSR reports. Each of the invited countries was asked to present a paper on the settlement and development issues in its affected river basins, to draw heavily on the 1990 IDA reports, and to nominate at least one member of their national delegation to join a working group for revising the draft guidelines. On the final day of the meeting, the working group presented their revised version of the guidelines, which was formally discussed and amended by all 10 countries and then formally signed by the heads of state of all 10 countries. Although FAO was given the formal mandate at the meeting for helping governments execute the LSR guidelines, they never received additional funding from any of the original donors, the Bank or UNDP.

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3.18.6 Guiding Principles for Sustainable Settlement and Development in the Onchocerciasis Control Programme Area Recommendation 1: Promote the social and economic integration of hosts, settlers, and pastoralists. Recommendation 2: The governments of the OCP area should put in place a process of consultation and coordination to resolve regional issues, particularly problems associated with the movement of transhumant populations. Recommendation 3: Encourage “assisted spontaneous settlement” as the most appropriate for the OCP area, given the volume of migration and the financial and managerial capabilities of the governments. Recommendation 4: Institute, at national level, a process of coordination regarding all development activities in settlement areas. Recommendation 5: The responsibility for implementing projects in settlement areas should rest with the line ministries. Recommendation 6: Support settlement in area close to already settled areas. Recommendation 7: Provide social services in settlement areas as part of overall national planning. Recommendation 8: Take into consideration the environmental and health needs of settlers in planning for sustainable settlement and development. Recommendation 9: For the most effective management of natural resources, governments should support the formation of community land management associations that involve hosts, settlers and pastoralists in land use zoning. Recommendation 10: Develop agricultural policies that support more intensive and diversified production systems and take into account the upstream and downstream linkages. Recommendation 11: Design and implement agricultural research and extension systems that respond to the changing needs of settlers over time. Recommendation 12: Promote efficient markets in settlement areas. Recommendation 13: Put in place land tenure regulations that take into account the customary tenure system but also ensure secure land tenure and the access of women and youth to land and natural resources. Recommendation 14: Ensure that women’s rights of access to and control over land are not lost in the settlement process. Recommendation 15: In addition to sustained support for the control of onchocerciasis and other important diseases, the donor community should support the efforts of the governments regarding the sustainable settlement and development of the onchocerciasis-freed areas (Elder and Cooley 1995: 128). Unfortunately, the formal announcement of the settlement guidelines coincided with a shift in international and national development priorities. Especially important, the shift coincided with the full impact of a new generation of structural

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adjustment policies that coincided with another series of sequential drought years that shifted the focus from “new lands settlement” to “food security.” By 1994 all of the first generation development authorities that some country-governments had set up to help with follow-up planning in the OCP river basins were assimilated back into their “mother” ministries or simply abolished.

3.18.7 Excerpts from Follow-on FAO Publications Five months after the April 1994 meeting in Paris, a FAO paper referred to in an UN Population Network Paper (FAO, November 1995: 21–22) reported that: Given the substantial and growing environmental degradation that has accompanied resettlement, it has become apparent that without settlement policies aimed at ensuring security of land tenure, the very success of the project may be compromised…[E]ven though the long-term objective on OCP has been to turn the previous oncho-affected valleys into habitable areas where people could safely live and work, the programme had not originally foreseen the large-scale in-migration into the oncho-freed valleys that took place following the control of the disease … As a result, OCP had not incorporated resettlement policies and implementation mechanisms at the national or at the regional levels as part of the programme.

Four years later, in an article titled “Fragile ecosystems under threat as people resettle disease-freed lands in West Africa,” FAO reported that: The estimated 25 million hectares of fertile river valleys now free from river blindness have the potential to provide food and improved living conditions for some 17 million people, according to reliable studies. That’s the good news. The bad news is that on oncho-freed areas where villagers are returning in large numbers to reclaim precious land, resettlement has been so rapid that already fragile ecosystems are under serious threat. Where once the enemy was the disease-carrying black fly, today the problems are deforestation, erosion and overgrazing. In other oncho-freed areas, the problem is isolation and lack of basic support services. Many areas lack roads, markets, schools, and reliable supplies of water (FAO 1998: 1–3).

3.18.8 Lessons Learned IDA’s experience with the Land Settlement Review provides clear evidence about the potential role of informed anthropological research to affect a donor’s vision of its impact. It is also a vivid illustration of the limitations of that research to bring about concrete change without high level national and international policy and political support. In the case of the OCP, the donor community was far more interested in the high rate of return that they could get by supporting the biological control program than in dealing with the complex and far more expensive issue of follow-up development investment. Yes, the OCP has opened up new land but that

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new land had a unique development profile that can only be understood in the context of the settlement process that the OCP set in motion. Many of IDA’s recommendations are still valid in dealing with these present-day issues.

3.19

Botswana’s Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project36

3.19.1 Introduction The Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project (SOIWDP) stands out as the only major project that IDA played a key role in terminating. For that reason alone, SOIWDP deserves careful analysis. IDA’s involvement began in May 1991 when I received a FAX from the world headquarters of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources as to my willingness to lead in the field a team of biologists, computer modelers, engineers, hydrologists, land use and regional planners, and social scientists to evaluate, at the request of the Government of Botswana, their Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project. Because fieldwork would last a full academic year during which I had already begun teaching, I faxed back my unavailability the same day. Almost immediately, I had second thoughts. The IUCN offer was closely related to two of my major research interests. One was Elizabeth Colson’s and my ongoing research in the Middle Zambezi Valley. In past centuries, the Okavango River periodically had sent water during major flood years through the Selinda spillway into the Upper Zambezi System with which I was unfamiliar. Eight months in the Okavango region would allow comparison between the Okavango region, the lower portion of the Upper Zambezi Basin and the Middle Zambezi Valley. The second reason related to my comparative research on river basin development that, time and again, had shown adverse environmental and social impacts. If SOIWDP was similar, the IUCN assessment might play a major role in avoiding the degradation of one of the world’s natural wonders and in sustaining the livelihood of local communities dependent upon it. On the other hand, if the project was sound, being involved, finally, in a potential success story, was exciting. Three days after receiving the IUCN FAX, I agreed to head up the IUCN team. In doing so, I took a leave of absence from Caltech, with my IUCN salary paid to IDA.

36

This section draws on four major Scudder sources: A 1992 SOIWDP article in Vol. 10, No. 2 of IDA’s Development Anthropology Network, Scudder et al’s 1993 543 page book on the SOIWDP, Scudder’s unpublished 2003 Manuscript on SOIWDP and Canada’s Grand Baleine, Dam and on his 2013 Okavango Desk Top Review in favor of the Okavango Delta becoming a World Heritage Site.

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During the next four months, Patrick Dugan, IUCN’s Wetlands Coordinator, and I put together an exceptional team of thirteen members of four different nationalities recruited from 12 different organizations. So alluring was the Okavango that only one of those approached was unable to participate. Deputy team leader Ronald Manley, a hydrologist and engineer, and I would be resident in Botswana most of the time. The others would be expected to spend no more than a couple of months on the project. IUCN had agreed with the Government of Botswana that they would undertake the SOIWDP study only if it was completely independent and free from interference by concerned parties, whether government, concerned NGOs or others. To this end, and although the government paid for the greater part of the study, IUCN did not enter into a contract with the government. Rather, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed between IUCN and the government emphasizing IUCN’s independence. The difference between this MOU and a traditional contract proved to be critically important and IUCN deserves much credit in negotiating how the SOIWDP Review was to proceed. The Memorandum of Understanding gave IUCN freedom from government and a mandate to provide an independent assessment. In turn, my contract with IUCN required me to work with the support of the IUCN Secretariat but free from any perceived interference from the Secretariat or IUCN members. The contracts that IUCN issued to team members placed them under my authority as Team Leader. Under these circumstances the team worked with complete intellectual autonomy. Both the government and IUCN would have access to the team’s initial draft. But what was written in the final report would be strictly a team responsibility. Manley and I arrived in Botswana in early October 1991. We developed a close relationship with IUCN’s in-country representative in Gaborone, whose wife became the team’s administrative and logistics officer. They acquired a house for the team in the capitol where Manley was based so that he could work closely with government colleagues in the Department of Water Affairs. I set up headquarters in the only air-conditioned room in an unfinished motel located on the downstream edge of the Okavango Delta. During the day, I carried out interviews and traveled extensively by land, water and air throughout the Okavango Delta region. Highpoints included being piloted by a local couple in their microlite aircraft that enabled me to examine and photograph settlement patterns, land and water use, and the biodiversity of the delta itself. Longer trips involved travel in surrounding areas including along the Namibian portion of the Okavango, on to the Zambezi and then south through the bush back to the Delta. Manley and I remained in Botswana most of the time between October 1991 and June 1992. We arranged for the other team members to come primarily in clusters in October, January and March so that the team could benefit to the extent possible from working together. Though fully involved in the final report, only Professor Gilbert White, the team’s senior adviser, was unable to come to the Okavango region. Since the Team’s terms of Reference specified that team members must not have “any direct or indirect previous involvement with the project” (IUCN/GOB 1991: 9) so as to reduce bias to the extent possible, several ‘local’ consultants were

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recruited. Two were resident in Maun and of special importance. One was Enoch Naane, who was Ngamiland’s land-use planner at the time. The other was botanist and long-term resident Pete Smith. Three reports were submitted, all of which were public documents. An Inception Report was submitted at the end of October 1991, a Draft Final Report in May 1992, and a Final report that Manley and I completed at IUCN’s Swiss headquarters in October 1992 (IUCN 1992b). Between October and December 1991, the team was impressed with such aspects of the project as the engineering design of the infrastructural components and the hydraulic modeling. In January, Manley and team member Ron Coley, who was Chief Engineer for Ducks Unlimited, Canada, went to Australia to meet with Snowy Mountains staff involved in designing the project. At that time both IUCN team engineers remained uncertain as to how the positive and negative features of the project might balance out. As more and more negative features appeared, however, it was the unanimous opinion of the team by March 1992 that SOIWDP should be canceled in favor of an alternative that did not require major infrastructure or the further manipulation of the Boro River’s flow through the delta center. During the remainder of the field study, the team developed what came to be called the IUCN preferred alternative (or simply IUCN Alternative). Through March, the team’s relationship with the Department of Water Affairs was excellent, with the Department helping with both the collection of data and reports and the organization of work in the field. Especially helpful were the Department Director, Moremi Sekwale, hydrologist Isaac Muzila, and Senior Water Adviser Stuart Child. Manley and I both regretted how fast that relationship went from relaxed and open to tense and guarded once we informed our Water Affairs colleagues that our assessment had turned negative. On two occasions during the IUCN evaluation, Manley and I had to make difficult decisions to protect our independence. The first involved IUCN. Following a major IUCN meeting in Australia, Greenpeace had informed IUCN’s Director General that IUCN could expect strong criticism if its final SOIWDP report favored the project. Wanting to make sure that headquarters could monitor the report more closely, Dugan was asked to inform the team that IUCN would like to set up an oversight panel to vet the report before publication. That request was unacceptable since Manley and I knew that there was no way that IUCN could put together a monitoring committee with the combined general and Okavango expertise of our team. After headquarters was informed that we would resign should such a committee be formed, the issue was dropped. The other occasion involved the publication process for the team’s Draft Final Report in May 1992. Because of the depth of Water Affairs opposition to our conclusions, however, we opted to arrange publication through a local publisher whose identity we did not reveal. On taking possession of the reports, we gave copies to Water Affairs on a Friday to read that weekend, along with information on our intent to release the report prior to giving a public lecture in Gaborone at the end of the next week. On the following Monday, we were requested not to release

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the report since the Minister of Mineral Resources and Water Affairs was out of town. A compromise was reached whereby Water Affairs had the option of submitting the report to parliament before we released it at the time of the public lecture. The public lecture was organized by the Kalahari Conservation Society and held in the auditorium of a secondary school in Gaborone. As Manley and I arrived, it was clear that the lecture was going to be well attended. Approximately 30 min before we began, the government announced on the radio that the Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project had been suspended. The announcement was made brilliantly both as a face-saving event and in a way to emphasize the government’s democratic procedures. No mention was made of IUCN or the IUCN report. The project had been cancelled, according to the government announcement, because of the strength of local opposition.

3.19.2 The Okavango Delta and Hinterland 3.19.2.1

Land and Water Resources

The Okavango Delta, located within the Kalahari desert, is advertised as the largest oasis in the world and is “one of the world’s premier wildlands, with magnificent scenery, game-viewing and bird-watching” (Scudder et al.1993: 51). The Okavango River rises in Angola, and terminates in Botswana’s mostly waterless Lake Xau after flowing through northern Namibia. Contained within northwestern Botswana’s Ngamiland District and the Boteti sub-district of Central District, the Delta “is not a true delta but an alluvial fan whose primary origin and, to some extent, evolution has been controlled by regional earth movements and land subsidence” (Manley and Wright 1996: 213). The second of two major faults, running at right angles to the fan’s lower margin, receives inflowing water and channels it to the Boteti River that flows only during the annual flood. Currently the Boro is the main tributary carrying water through the delta, with lesser flows down a number of other tributaries including the Kwaai along the northeastern fringe and the Thaoge along the southwestern margin. Instability is such, however, that the magnitude of flows has shifted historically between tributaries and can be expected to shift again in the future. In addition to seismic events, siltation in slowly flowing areas, blockage by detached masses of papyrus and floating grasses, human activities, and even the movements of hippos, can influence the direction and volume of incoming flows (Fig. 3.11). As mapped by the 1991–92 IUCN Review, the size of the delta is approximately 15,846 km2. The largest of its five zones is perennial swamp that covers 31% of the surface area. Next in size is seasonally flooded swamp (24%), followed by seasonally flooded grassland (17%), intermittently flooded land (16%) and dryland

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(12%).37 A major characteristic of the delta, unlike the situation in most other Africa wetlands including the Sudd in the Central Sudan, is the existence of hundreds of islands that are scattered throughout the flooded area. They greatly enhance the delta’s world famous biological diversity of plants and wildlife. Including over 350 species, birdlife is prolific in the delta and immediately surrounding fringes. During the dry season, large mammals, including herds of elephant and buffalo, and thousands of antelope, come to the delta from elsewhere in Botswana and from surrounding countries. Lions swim from island to island seeking prey. During the November-April rainy season, rainfall varies from 600 mm near the border with Namibia to less than 400 mm along the lower reaches of the Boteti. Long-term inflow to the delta is around 10,000 million cubic meters (MCM) per year while outflow is only 300 MCM. Aquifer recharge and evapo-transpiration consume more than 95% of inflow. During drought years, as during the 1990s, outflow into the Boteti may be delayed until August with no water received in its lower reaches. Soils throughout much of the delta are sandy with low inherent fertility. Even alluvial deposits vary in their suitability for agriculture, with no large areas suitable for large-scale commercial irrigation.

3.19.2.2

Human Population

The arid and semi-arid land of Botswana supported a population of only 1.3 million according to the 1991 census, with a 3.5% rate of annual increase. Over 50% live within 100 km of the capital city of Gaborone near the eastern border with South Africa. Since the 1991 census, national population structure has been seriously affected by the HIV-AIDS pandemic, with a 36% HIV infection rate among adults being the highest in Africa.38About seven percent of the national population (roughly 100,000 people) lived in Ngamiland in 1991, of whom about one-quarter lived in the administrative center of Maun located just inside the lower margin of the delta. At that time about half of the population lived in settlements of less than 500 people, with the proportion falling over the years as Maun and other centers grew in size. In the Boteti sub-district, which includes the diamond mines of Orapa and Letlhakane that contribute about 40% of Botswana’s foreign exchange, 35,473 people were listed in the 1991 census with 48% living in communities of less than 500 people. In both Ngamiland and the Boteti sub-district the proportion of female-headed households was high with one study reporting that even in Maun approximately 50% of households in two wards were female headed (Malila 1991). 37

Percentages were calculated by the IUCN Review (Scudder et al. 1993). Flooding of seasonal swamp is sufficient to support aquatic vegetation that differentiates seasonal swamp from seasonal grassland. Though dryland only receives rainfall, fringing vegetation is influenced by ground water recharge. The main area of dry land, Chief’s Island, is incorporated within the Moremi Game Reserve. 38 WHO HIV/AIDS Statistics for Africa, June 2000.

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Fig. 3.11 The author clearing a blockage in a small delta tributary

Though reasons were not analyzed, and the most important one may well be the absence of males at cattle camps or as wage laborers, “the possibility of poverty related social disorganization at the household level should not be ignored” (Scudder et al. 1993: 58). Ngamiland and Boteti sub-district are the most ethnically diverse regions within Botswana. The large majority of the inhabitants are refugees who have arrived within the past 300 years. By the middle of the 19th century, the now dominant Tawana had incorporated the other ethnic groups, including the Bantu-speaking Yei, Hambukushu and Herero, within a single state. The Yei were numerically the largest group. They introduced flood recession agriculture to the delta, while the Herero owned the largest number of cattle and horses. The original inhabitants, the Khoisan-speaking Bushman or San, continue to be marginalized in small communities or at cattle posts. Formerly gatherer-hunters, they have incorporated some livestock into their economy along with wage labor (Figs. 3.12, 3.13 and 3.14). Living standards are among the lowest in Botswana. According to 1989 figures on regional poverty provided by the Central Statistical Office, the region encompassing Ngamiland had the highest percentage of households below the country poverty datum line. That was 83% as opposed to 68% in the second poorest region. Income distribution is also skewed. At one end are the Europeans who have settled in and around Maun and who dominate the town’s commercial activities as well as the tourist industry throughout the delta region. At the other end are the Bushmen. As for the Bantu-speaking majority, keeping of cattle in a land where crop yields are always uncertain due to irregular rainfall and floods has become the preferred

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Fig. 3.12 Local people

Fig. 3.13 A village meeting

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Fig. 3.14 Plowing with donkeys

activity. According to Ngamiland’s Senior Veterinary Officer the greatest proportion of herds was owned “by relatively small-scale herders” (Scudder et al.: op.cit.). Between 1991 and the present, living standards may well have dropped because of increasing rates of HIV infection, reduced agricultural yields due to drought, and an outbreak of contagious bovine pleuro-pneumonia in 1995, which the government contained by slaughtering “approximately 307,000 cattle” (Murray-Hudson and Crisman: 2003: 419).39That may have increased the importance of gathering activities and fishing. Already in 1991, demand for thatch and reeds for building purposes in Maun was providing women with a ‘cash crop’ as was the collection of palm products for basket making, and alcohol production. Collection of edible water lily tubers was an important food for women-headed households. The sale of cooked tubers and a variety of wild fruits illustrated the increased importance of the informal economy. With Bushman residence in the Okavango region dating back more than ten thousand years, and Bantu-speakers introducing rainfed agriculture several hundred years ago and flood recession agriculture and cattle more recently, the Okavango region has been strongly influenced by human settlement and land use. Burning of reed beds for clearing fields and for driving game, for example, has ignited fires in the underlying peat that can burn for months. The area’s biodiversity has been, and

39

Restocking began in 1997 with a government target of 80,000 cattle (Murray-Hudson and Crisman 2003: 419).

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continues to be, an important source of income as well as of food, especially during drought periods. Its conservation, as well as implementation of government plans to make tourism Botswana’s most important source of foreign exchange after diamonds and other minerals,40 will depend not just on increasing the awareness of the current residents of the need to carefully manage their natural resources, but also on giving them a degree of ownership over those resources.

3.19.3 Early Okavango Water Utilization Interventions and Plans Local inhabitants were the first to influence Okavango Delta flows. A Tawana chief, according to legend, built a small dam across a tributary in the middle of the 19th century, while a headman diverted water in 1919 for cattle kept outside a tsetse fly zone.41 For about ten years starting in 1932, colonial officials modified distributary flows to improve navigation. Even earlier, based on the still-recurring fallacy about Okavango waters being “wasted,” officials and academics began to make more grandiose proposals for irrigation and other uses within Ngamiland, and for diversion to water scarce areas as far away as Johannesburg in South Africa. In 1956, Randall listed 18 such proposals with the earliest dating back to the 1920s. The geographer Wellington (1949a and b) visualized irrigation in the Okavango rivaling the Sudan’s Gezira scheme, with a specially built railroad for transporting cotton to an Atlantic port in Namibia from where it would be carried to Europe. In 1994, Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe on a State visit to Botswana suggested the need for a similar proposal even though soil surveys had already shown the delta to be unsuitable for large-scale irrigation. Following independence in 1966, the government requested assistance from the United Nations as well as from bilateral donors in assessing how to use Okavango waters for such schemes. Sweden, for example, completed a study dealing with water transfer to Eastern Botswana. Most important for the Okavango region were two sets of studies (1968–1972 and 1974–1976) completed under UNDP/FAO auspices. 16 schemes were evaluated, one of which approximated the Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project as first suggested by Brind (1954). Simultaneously, the Department of Water Affairs and safari companies continued minor diversionary works until the early 1970s when Anglo American 40

According to the March 18, 1994 Okavango Observer, 77% of foreign exchange came from diamonds, 7% from copper/nickel, 5% from tourism and 4% from cattle. 41 As a carrier of bovine sleeping sickness, tsetse fly expansion and contraction have influenced the distribution and numbers of cattle ever since their introduction to the Okavango region. Since Independence. probably the Government’s most beneficial program for Ngamiland livestock owners was the use of ground and aerial spraying that made the Okavango region a tsetse free zone by the early 1990s. More recently, tsetse fly encroachment has again occurred, with aerial spraying over much of the delta in 2001 and 2002.

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Corporation completed a program of dredging, bunding, and weir formation to improve flows into the Mopipi reservoir built on the lower Boteti River from which water was piped to the mining community at Orapa. The controversial Anglo-American program of dredging and tributary straightening along the lower Boro had an adverse impact on adjacent communities.

3.19.4 The Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project42 3.19.4.1

History

Following the completion of the UNDP/FAO studies, the government convened in 1982 an Okavango Water Development Committee to consider the various options. With the Department of Water Affairs the responsible agency, the Committee favored the SOIWDP option from the start. In December 1985, Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation of Australia was awarded the feasibility study, followed by Environmental Impact Assessment in 1985 and the detailed design study in April 1988. Even while design studies continued, the cabinet approved the project in December 1988, with the Upper Works tendered in 1990.

3.19.4.2

Project Planning, Approval and Initiation

Planning and Approval: Designed as an integrated project, SOIWDP was intended to increase food production through 10,000 ha of commercial irrigation, 5000 ha of improved flood recession agriculture, raise the living standards of the local population, and deliver water to the administrative center of Maun, riverine villages, the town of Rakops on the Lower Boteti, and the Orapa diamond mines and mining community. Those goals were to be achieved by further channelizing the lower Boro and constructing two large dams and two smaller ones to receive the Boro’s increased flow into three reservoirs. Including the Boro component, the Upper Works would involve the construction of a large dam near the top of the Boteti that would back up water as far as Maun within the Thamalakane Fault. To keep water from flowing into Lake Ngami at the southern end of the reservoir, a small dam would be built at Toteng. Further up the 42

My most important single source on the Okavango region and the water development project is IUCN’s 1993 543 page The IUCN Review of the Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project of which I was senior author. The next most important source is my own field notes kept while I was resident in the area between October 1991 and June 1992 and during subsequent revisits - the most recent being in 2002. The Okavango region is defined as including the entire delta, its semi-arid hinterland on all three sides, and the Boteti River and riverine communities.

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fault beyond Maun another small dam would be built at Matlapaneng to receive Boro water in a second small reservoir for the benefit of flood recession agriculture. Scheduled for completion at a later date, the Lower Works would consist of a large dam across the Lower Boteti at Sukwane that would provide water to Rakops and, via pipeline, to the diamond mines at Orapa. From the start, a project weakness was the dominance of two committed agencies. One was a single ministry as the responsible government agency—an arrangement that is known from experience elsewhere to hinder the kind of interagency cooperation necessary for implementing an integrated project. In the Botswana case, that ministry was Mineral Resources and Water Affairs, and specifically the Department of Water Affairs. The second agency was the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation that not only monopolized the feasibility, environmental and design studies but also had been retained by the government as the overseeing consulting engineer. Though the Department of Water Affairs had emphasized during an early meeting of the Okavango Water Development Committee that the project’s integrated nature required the participation of other agencies, Water Affairs’ increasing dominance within the Committee resulted in two types of problems. One was the poor attendance of representatives from other ministries throughout the Committee’s 1982–1990 existence. The other involved complaints about lack of consultation. As time went by, Water Affairs officials became increasingly critical of views that varied from their own, including those of knowledgeable Okavango Delta experts, officials in other government agencies such as the Ministry of Health, and from donor agencies. When the flood recession agricultural component, for local community benefit, was dropped because of cost considerations, experts involved in a German-funded project dealing with flood recession cultivation complained that they had not been involved in the discussion leading up to that decision. Water Affairs’ response to their complaint, and their views on possible adverse effects of the decision taken, was to no longer invite their participation in the Committee’s deliberations. Of special concern within the Maun community was the treatment accorded Pete Smith who lived on the outskirts of Maun, had worked for various government agencies on Delta issues since the 1950s, and was considered one of the most knowledgeable local experts. When he insisted that SOIWDP would not operate as intended, and that there were other better options for achieving its goals, he was denied purchase of his government house in Maun contrary to government policy. While Snowy Mountains could not be criticized for such behavior, they too were totally committed to the project as shown by their own favorable, and weak, environmental impact assessment and their involvement in all phases of the planning process. Project Initiation and Initial Suspension: When the contractor selected to initiate the Boro component of the project began to mobilize in Maun in November 1990, the local and international environmental movement, along with local villagers and safari operators, were incensed. Though the Department of Water Affairs had

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completed one intensive period of consultation with villagers and the expatriate community in and around Maun during a ten-day period in 1988, there had been no follow up. What consultation occurred was criticized as ‘government telling people what was going to happen’ rather than soliciting their views and taking seriously their conviction that past efforts influencing delta flows, and especially Anglo-American’s, had ‘killed’ the waterways involved. Villagers also complained that they had not realized that the project involved further ‘dredging’ of the Boro. They believed that they had been deceived by how the project had been labeled, with the Boro component called “The Boro River Improvement Works.” Local leaders and safari operators were also taken by surprise. Because bids on the initial tendering documents had significantly exceeded Department of Water Affairs estimates, they had assumed that the project would be canceled. On the contrary, the government had been looking for ways to reduce costs during the intervening years. One was to eliminate that part of the original plan (for increasing the area of flood recession cultivation) that would most benefit the village sector. The strongest initial international response came from Greenpeace whose Amsterdam office threatened to launch an international campaign in which the DeBeers’ slogan, “Diamonds are for Ever,” would become “Diamonds are for Death.” That must have caused panic in DeBeers’ corporate offices in South Africa as well as in the Government of Botswana. Denying the involvement of the diamond industry in the project, DeBeers claimed that Orapa had access to more than sufficient ground water for the life of the mine. Not only did the government agree with DeBeers that the SOIWDP was primarily for Maun as well as for the development of the Ngamiland economy, but on December 10 actually invited Greenpeace to visit the Okavango region.43 This Greenpeace did over a two-week period in early 1991. The speed with which grass-roots opposition was organized was due in good part to the efforts of two NGOs. One was the Kalahari Conservation Society. Though its central office did not play an active role, perhaps in part because the society’s chairman was the chief executive officer of Debswana (DeBeers’ and the government’s joint venture diamond mining company), the Maun branch did. So did Tshomarelo. With a membership of local Tawana elite and expatriates, Tshomarelo had been founded for the purpose of opposing SOIWDP. One demand of the opposition following a public meeting on December 20th addressed by the Director of Water Affairs, was that local residents wanted the Minister of Mineral Resources and Water Affairs to answer their complaints rather than Water Affairs officials. To respond to growing criticism, especially of the Boro works component, the government organized a meeting in Maun on January 11, 1991—just several days 43

I am indebted to Karen Ross for sharing with me relevant news clippings on events during the November 1990–January 1991 period; see especially the December 8th issue of the Johannesburg Saturday Star, the December 9th Issue of London’s Sunday Times, and the January 14th issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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before project construction was to start! About 700 people participated, most of whom were local villagers. The outpouring of opposition to the government’s position may well have been the strongest attack on any government policy since Independence in 1966. According to participants to whom I subsequently talked the anger expressed was unique in Botswana’s history, with the Minister both insulted and told to resign. Clearly taken by surprise by the vehemence of the opposition, the government initially blamed it on the international environmental movement, and on local safari companies that had used their transport to help villagers attend the meeting. Nonetheless, the government must have realized that, deluded or not by outside interests, the local populace was strongly opposed to the project. The government’s response was to suspend the project temporarily while seeking further assessment. It is important to emphasize here that the government’s reaction to the outpouring of opposition within Boteti sub-district as well as within Ngamiland was exceptional and pioneering. Not only was the project temporarily suspended, but for the first time in my knowledge a government sought a detailed evaluation of a major water resource development project from outside nongovernmental organizations. Their willingness in this regard “sets an example for other nations faced with similar difficult problems of natural resource development” (Scudder et al.1993: 36). As events developed, the Greenpeace report, though recommending the project’s cancellation, was less critical than IUCN’s subsequent, much longer, and more detailed evaluation.

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The IUCN Draft Final Report, released on May 21, 1992, recommended that the Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project be terminated. A wide range of deficiencies was presented relating “both to the project itself and to the process whereby it was planned and designed” (IUCN 1992a: Exec. Sum). Neither of the two major goals of the project to increase food production or raise living standards would be met; nor was the project necessary for meeting the water demand of Maun and the Orapa mining complex. In terms of food production, the decision to drop the northernmost small dam eliminated the reservoir that was supposed to increase flood recession cultivation up to 5,000 ha. With that component dropped, the extent of flood recession cultivation would actually be decreased. As opposed to a potential of 1,010 ha. of new cultivable flood recession areas to be created by other components of the project, reservoir flooding and reduced downstream flows would eliminate or seriously affect at least 3,000 ha (SMEC 1987b, Vol. III), including over 1,000 ha of “some of the most productive agricultural soils in Botswana” (Scudder et al.1993: 5). As for the planned 10,000 ha of commercial irrigation, that figure was based not on studies but on the terms of reference for the project that in turn was based on

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assumptions subsequently shown to be incorrect. For example, Snowy Mountains’ soil surveys showed the main areas selected to be unsuitable for irrigation, while the pilot Boro rice project that was to be extended from 30 ha to 500 subsequently failed. National policies had also changed. The emphasis on food self-sufficiency in the Sixth National Development Plan (1985) that advocated subsidized irrigation, had been replaced by a sounder emphasis on a wider range of development options that would provide the populace with food security. Commercial irrigation was “recognized to be a high technology, high risk, high input enterprise under existing soil and climatic conditions” (Scudder et al.1993: 99) which were exacerbated by Maun’s distance from major markets. By the time Snowy Mountains was finalizing its reports, the potential for commercial irrigation had shrunk from 10,000 to 1,300 ha. that the IUCN Review reduced to 110 ha. on a pilot basis. The fact that the virtual elimination of the project’s food production component caused no compensating changes in project design increased the suspicion of critics, including my own, that the project’s main purpose throughout was to provide water to the Orapa/Letlhakane mining complex and to Maun. In order to assess the impact of SOIWDP on the living standards of affected villages, the IUCN team divided the project’s impact area into nine zones. In six of those zones, the net impact of project implementation on village living standards would be negative. In two others, it would be uncertain. In only one would project implementation have had positive impacts. The total estimated population in those zones was 55,199 in 1991. Of that number, IUCN estimated that six percent lived in the zone benefiting from the project and 30% in zones where the net impact would be negative. Of the two zones where impacts were listed as uncertain, the largest contained 55% of the total population (30,423). That was the Upper Works reservoir zone in which Maun was located. In IUCN’s final report short- and medium-term impacts were seen as negative due to such reasons as loss of cultivable land to the reservoir, destruction of the riverine forest, and public health impacts. Granted the zone’s rapid growth (the approximate population ten years earlier was only 18,300), the IUCN team recognized the importance of a growing water supply, especially for Maun,44 but retained reservations about the wisdom of proceeding with a reservoir without further evaluation of other options. Those reservations strengthened during the severe drought that followed in the mid-1990s, with Manley suspecting that a full reservoir might well have dried up leaving Maun worse off than without the project. The IUCN team’s conclusions justified and supported the opposition of Ngamiland and Boteti subdistrict to the Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project. Though villagers tended to ignore the negative impact on their lives of factors that had nothing to do with the project, such as drought and population increase, their assessment of the negative impact on their living

44

The only time I was absent from Botswana for longer than three weeks was when I returned to the United States to prepare the Draft Final Report.

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standards of Anglo-America’s dredging and straightening of the Boro and diversion of the Boteti into the Mopipi Reservoir was correct. As they suspected, implementation of SOIWDP’s Upper and Lower Works would have had an even more serious impact. The question as to whether the shallow Upper Works (or Maun) reservoir might have dried up during periods of extreme drought such as occurred in the mid-1990s raises the question of whether or not the hydrological and hydrogeological assumptions on which the project was based were sound. The project’s hydrological modeling was an elaborated model developed during the UNDP/FAO studies (Dincer 1985; Dincer et al. 1987). Though that model dealt adequately with annual Okavango flows, Manley developed for the IUCN team a model for comparative purposes that would better reflect monthly flows. He also procured through Portuguese authorities better rainfall data from the Okavango’s better-watered upper catchment in Angola. Using a model capable of simulating monthly flows and improved rainfall data, Manley concluded that the project consultants had underestimated historic flows through the delta and overestimated the number of months during the extreme drought of 1940/42 that flood water did not reach Maun. While all such interpretations must be used with caution, the difference was significant as it related to the declared need for the Upper Works reservoir. According to the government project interpretation, no flows would have reached Maun during 30 months; according to Manley’s that number was reduced to “only 9 months with no flow” (Manley and Wright 1996: 219). Manley’s analysis also indicated that the project consultants had underestimated seepage as well as evapo-transpiration that related to the growing concern of team members that the Maun reservoir might dry up during drought periods. Complementing Manley’s research was that of IUCN team member Edmund Wright into the hydrogeology of the lower Okavango Delta and the Orapa mining complex. His Maun work raised a perplexing issue. Though Botswana’s arid and semi-arid habitat had stimulated groundwater research, the least known area was said to be the Okavango Basin. At the time of the UNDP/FAO surveys at the end of the 1960s and during the 1970s, recommendations emphasized the need for groundwater surveys throughout the Okavango region. No action was taken. Again in 1982 at the first meeting of the Okavango Water Development Committee, the government’s Principal Hydrogeologist pointed out the lower priority that had been given to the Okavango. Four years later in 1986, the Deputy Director of the government’s Geological Survey, who had become the Director of Water Affairs by the time of the IUCN study, criticized the lack of attention paid to ground water in Snowy Mountains’ Inception Report. When Snowy Mountains inserted a recommendation for research in a subsequent draft report, they were told to remove it. The formation of the Okavango Water Development Committee at a time of drought, after Debswana had initiated a crash program in search of groundwater for the diamond mines when the Mopipi Reservoir had dried up, together with the de-emphasis on ground water research in the delta, suggested to me that high government officials had approved the project to serve the mines, and had told

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officials in the Department of Water Affairs to get on with it. I also wondered about the extent to which hydro-politics and possibly corruption were pushing for a big project with inadequate attention to alternatives. As subsequent events have shown, conjunctive use of existing surface and ground water could meet Maun’s needs without any dam construction, while Wright’s assessment confirmed Debswana’s reply to the environmental movement in the 1990s that Orapa did not need the project because there was sufficient groundwater for the life of the mine. As for the effect of its depletion on local residents, we were satisfied that a policy of setting up an indemnity fund would adequately deal with that issue. Though none of the project’s major deficiencies related to the type of adverse impacts on biodiversity that had concerned the environmental movement, the IUCN review concluded that the two reservoirs not only would kill off the magnificent riverine forests that lined the Thamalakane fault and the Boteti River, but that the nature of the soils fringing the reservoirs would inhibit their regeneration. Especially in the case of the Maun reservoir, deforestation would detract from the area’s tourism appeal. IUCN team botanists were also skeptical that plans to revegetate the lower 43 km of the Boro would work following channelization. Overall, the SOIWDP plans were a classic case of the overestimation of benefits and the underestimation of costs. Not only were compensation costs for affected people too low, but some costs to them received no compensation at all. Those losing arable land to the reservoir would be compensated, but those whose flood recession land would no longer receive floodwater would not.

3.21

The IUCN Alternative

3.21.1 Introduction Accepting the major goals of the Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project, the longest chapter in the IUCN report dealt with a better-designed and more cost-effective alternative to realize those goals. Consistent with policies presented in the government’s recent Seventh National Development Plan (1991), emphasis was on the nature of the natural resource base in the Okavango region, existing economies at village and district/subdistrict levels, and current planning by Ngamiland’s Land Use Planning Unit, Land Board and District Council. Special attention was paid to ensuring that the IUCN Alternative was strongly participatory and that it built on the multi-stranded initiatives that villagers used to maintain and improve their living standards. To evaluate economic activities at the household level, the IUCN team dealt with rainfed and flood recession agriculture, livestock management, wage labor, gathering, fishing, hunting and craft manufacture, and such small business enterprises as tea rooms, cafes and shops. Making recommendations for such activities required an awareness of the dynamics involved. The different components of such a

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diversified production system vary not only from household to household, but within households from season to season and year to year due to variation in rainfall and flooding and changes in a household’s natural resource base and labor and financial resources. New development initiatives were also recommended. Based on the research and recommendation of team consultant Norman Reynolds (1992), the team recommended productive activities and administrative services be linked to a hierarchy of markets for the better integration of rural and urban areas. To meet Maun’s increasing demand for water, the conjunctive use of surface and ground water was emphasized, while groundwater was seen as sufficient for meeting Orapa’s needs. These various facets of the IUCN Alternative will be dealt with in further detail in the paragraphs that follow because they have importance as options for river basin development elsewhere.

3.21.2 Development Strategies for the Village Sector and Maun45 Among the IUCN Alternative’s development strategies two dealt with livestock and wild plant resources. Recommendations on livestock management dealt with major constraints such as government’s fencing policy and its termination of community control over common property grazing under customary tenure. Both government policies favored commercial ranchers who could exclude others by fencing their pastures while continuing to graze their animals on what were open access commons. IUCN’s recommendations emphasized a return to the type of limited access commons that had been managed by villages and larger political units in the past as well as to more attention to animal health, herd management and marketing of milk, meat and other animal products. Domestic use and marketing of wild plant resources provided another important development opportunity. Harvesting of reeds (Phragmites australis) already was an important source of income due to the demand in Maun and the tourism industry for fencing, screens and housing. Dried, bundled and marketed, reeds compared favorably as a cash crop with the most valuable cultivated crops (ibid: 206–208; 479–482). Yet not only were villagers not getting an appropriate return,46 but the supply of reeds was under threat from over exploitation. IUCN recommendations called for research into optimal harvesting, zoning and improved management to

45

In addition to the 1993 IUCN Review, this section draws on Norman Reynolds’ 1992 “Community Development and Resource Management” and the second of two articles that I wrote for the November 4, 1994 issue of The Okavango Observer. 46 Buyers in the safari and tourism industries tended to pay in produce such as sugar at what amounted to a lower price than the thatch’s cash value.

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protect the resource, and marketing. Other wild produce with market potential included palm (Hyphaene petersiana) for making baskets, alcoholic beverages, thatching grasses, aquatic bulbs and tubers, and a number of fruits including marula (Sclerocarya cafra) which is the main ingredient in the popular South African liqueur Amarula. One of the most innovative sections of the IUCN Alternative dealt with the issue of improving rural-urban linkages for marketing purposes and the provision of government services. In 1991, marketing facilities in Maun and other large communities were “virtually non existent” (ibid 1993: 186) as was the outreach of government services to the village level. The IUCN alternative was based on a model developed by Norman Reynolds and pioneered in western Zimbabwe. As explained by Reynolds, “Markets are low cost open spaces with a modicum of facilities. They are community owned economic institutions.” Adapted to the Okavango region the system would involve a hierarchy of periodic primary, secondary, and tertiary markets. “The primary and secondary markets would occur every fortnight. At the primary market there would be the clinic on wheels or boat, the farmers’ meeting with the extension agent, a post office agent, the school and other local meetings, the local court, a small livestock and fish market, women selling vegetables, fruit and crafts, traders from town and from other villages selling and buying all kinds of merchandise, several forms of information campaigns including immunization and AIDS, maybe a [mobile] bank but certainly any local banking system such as credit unions, and entertainers… The secondary market will receive items bulked the day before in primary markets nearby. It will have the [mobile] Bank, more outsiders linking the area to the local town and to regional and national markets, a bigger crowd, and officially supported livestock auctions and crop collection. The administration will attend the markets and perform in the eyes of the people … The tertiary or town market is the highlight of the week” (Reynolds 1992). The IUCN Alternative also called for processing industries in the larger communities such as Maun and Rakops. These would include a facility for making Amarula, the Okavango region being well served by marula trees. Other industries could process hides and manufacture the type of low cost donkey harness designed by the Flood Recession Development Project. Craft production would serve the growing demand of the tourist industry for already popular baskets, while hammer mills would begin to meet the increasing demand for mechanized grinding of cereal products. An ice plant would serve the fishing industry as well as safari companies. Other possibilities would combine introduction of new crops with associated agro-industries. One example would be the introduction of red flammida sorghum. An early maturing, drought-resistant variety with proven success in the climatically similar Middle Zambezi Valley, it makes an excellent opaque beer and could justify a small brewery. Also noted were “drought-resistant seeds like sesame and sunflower [that] could support small processing industries” (Scudder et al. 1993: 186).

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3.21.3 Meeting Maun’s and Orapa Water Demand47 Aside from a permanent water treatment plant for Maun (also recommended as part of the Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project) and boreholes with associated distribution facilities, the IUCN Alternative required no major infrastructure such as dams to meet Maun’s and Orapa’s water supply demands. Rather, the IUCN Alternative was based on conjunctive use of ground water and surface water in the Thamalakane River that flowed through Maun within the Thamalakane fault. Maun’s annual use required less than two percent of the Thamalakane’s flow based on IUCN’s hydrological modeling. It was estimated by the IUCN team that the river, once a proper water purification plant was provided, could meet demand 80% of the time. In other words, “to pump from the River Thamalakane when water is available, but to pump from ground water when the river is dry” (Scudder et al. 1993: 15) as opposed to the continual pumping of ground water.

3.21.4 More Recent Events: 1993–2002 3.21.4.1

Introduction

A major deficiency of the 1991 Government of Botswana/IUCN Memorandum of Understanding was its failure to stipulate how the IUCN final report was to be reviewed by the government and the public. After reviewing government comments on the May 1992 draft, the final report was submitted to the government in October 1992. During the second half of the following year, IUCN published the report as a 543-page book under its Wetlands Programme. During that intervening year, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Government of Botswana not only was extremely annoyed with IUCN, but was also trying to punish the people of Ngamiland for opposing the Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project.

3.21.4.2

The Government of Botswana, the Department of Water Affairs and the IUCN Review

Our relationships with Water Affairs officials became unpleasant once they were informed in March 1992 that the team did not support the SOIWDP. They would have been even worse if India Musokotwane, IUCN’s regional director for In addition to the 1993 IUCN Review, this section draws on Manley and Wright’s 1996 “The review of the Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project” and observations by Pete Smith.

47

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Southern Africa, had not given us his full support, including accompanying me and acting as spokesperson during a difficult meeting with the Minister. IUCN Headquarters in Geneva remained quiet about the team’s report throughout the May 1992–June 1993 period. When I wrote to IUCN’s Director General in May 1993 about the importance of Headquarters playing a proactive role in pressing the government to allow a public evaluation of the report, as well as IUCN publicizing and disseminating it internationally, he was told that it was necessary to move slowly because the Government of Botswana was a new IUCN member. Headquarters had prepared a press release in December 1992. But it was not released, with an accompanying Okavango resource file, until July 1993—just after the Government of Botswana had finally paid for its share of the IUCN Review. While the June 1993 Issue of IUCN’s Wetlands Programme’s Newsletter referred to the Okavango report as forthcoming, the November 1993 Newsletter ignored it completely even in its section on New Publications. I believe IUCN’s inaction was partially responsible for the IUCN SOIWDP review never being technically evaluated by the government and for the IUCN alternative never being presented to the public for discussion. I also believe such inaction was unnecessary. Though a team member who returned to Botswana in March 1993 found the Department of Water Affairs still hostile to the report, Manley had good discussions with DWA’s Director and his Minister while attending a symposium in Botswana on the Zambezi River system the next month. Also present was the Minister of Health who was also MP from Ngamiland. He was pleased with the IUCN report as had been local government officials in Maun when I discussed it with them the previous year. India Musokotwane was also upbeat during 1993 and planned to follow-up on recommendations in the IUCN alternative by visiting the Okavango region with the Director of Water Affairs and organizing a workshop on development options.48 Though delays followed, India was still optimistic when I visited him in September 1994. By then he had informed the Secretary to the President that the government really had no option but to implement the IUCN alternative. Musokotwane, who was still planning to go to Maun with government officials, also agreed that it made sense for me to explain in some detail in a two-part article in the Okavango Observer the reasoning behind the IUCN critique of the government project and the nature of the IUCN alternative. Those articles were published in the October and November 1994 issues. In December India Musokotwane died. Musokotwane’s death brought to an end efforts on the part of IUCN to work actively with the government to implement the IUCN alternative. According to Pete

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In an October 1993 article in the Okavango Observer, the Department of Water Affairs’s Principal Water Engineer for Operations and Maintenance was quoted as saying that “Long-term planning for Maun’s water supply will be based on the existing ground water and the water from the delta;” in effect on IUCN’s conjunctive use scenario. The next month the Director of Water Affairs suggested to India Musokotwane a coordinated approach between IUCN’s regional office and the government to implement the IUCN alternative. A joint visit to Maun was scheduled for January 1994 and publicized locally.

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Smith, IUCN’s country office in Gaborone, with a new representative, felt that my Okavango Observer articles had hurt IUCN’s in-country position. Later, when there was a possibility for Ronald Manley to help Water Affairs use his hydrological model, IUCN’s headquarters informed him, with a copy to me, that they did not wish him to become involved as that could be “detrimental to the long-term position of IUCN in Botswana.” By then, however, the Department of Water Affairs had begun to follow recommendations in the IUCN report for alleviating the Maun water supply problem through the conjunctive use of surface and ground water. On the other hand, if India Musokotwane’s more active approach had been taken from the start, a government and public review of the IUCN critique of the SOIWDP, and of the IUCN Alternative, might have occurred. That could have resulted in a more systematic implementation of the Alternative rather than a piecemeal approach restricted largely to Maun’s water supply, while other major recommendations dealing, for example, with raising the living standards of villagers in the Okavango region, continued to be ignored. Musokwatane’s active involvement might also have influenced President Masire’s ongoing support in the mid-1990s for the implementation of the SOIWDP at some point in the future. In a December 3, 1993 issue of the Okavango Observer the President was quoted as saying “that within 25 years, Maun and Boteti would benefit from the Southern Okavango Integrated Water Project.” That the senior most government officials, including both the President and the Vice President, continued to back the Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project, became increasingly clear during 1994. According to a March 3 headline in Botswana’s Midweek Sun, the President “longs for Okavango Delta utilization.” That was at the end of a state visit from Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe during which the two presidents visited the Okavango region. During the visit, Mugabe told those at local meetings that the Okavango should be exploited for irrigation in the same way that the lower Nile was being exploited. After the visit, President Masire mentioned the need for developing the Okavango without the interference of such international environmental groups as Greenpeace.49 He hoped that President Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and other African states would come to Botswana’s assistance. The next month, the Vice President ridiculed IUCN’s emphasis on groundwater during a visit to Maun (Okavango Observer April 1994). In July 1994 President Masire was again interviewed by the editor of the Okavango Observer. In noting how local people and tourist interests had stopped a dam that would have provided “water galore,” he stated that “in a democratic set up, people must make their bed and lie on it.” When asked if the government would revisit the project if “people’s mood changed,” the President replied, “Of course we would. But there must be demonstrable interest in the locals because we would not 49

No mention was made of the IUCN report. This may have been due to an intentional government policy to ignore it in public, or the President may not have not been briefed by the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Water Affairs as to the report’s contents and implications for large-scale commercial irrigation.

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like to come and waste resources here again. I mean we lost millions of Pula [the local currency], in order to compensate the contractors.” In October, Mugabe offered Zimbabwe’s assistance at the Southern African Environmental Management Conference. Irrigation schemes for growing wheat, rice and other crops should be established in the Delta. Castigating environmental organizations, he told NGOs in Zimbabwe that they should “keep in step” with government plans.

3.22

The Government of Botswana and the Okavango Region: From the SOIWDP to World Heritage Status for the Okavango Delta in 2014

In 1997, the Government of Botswana agreed for the Okavango Delta to become the world’s largest Ramsar site, another recommendation in the IUCN report. Its implementation might not have happened if Namibian officials, worried by the 1992–95 drought, and wishing to maintain their policy of knowing two years in advance that their water supplies were secure, had not initiated their own hurried feasibility study of a plan to pipe water to its capital city of Windhoek and other central region areas from the Okavango River at Rundu. The potentially adverse effect of such a pipe line on the delta concerned not only Okavango villagers, their leaders (who petitioned the Namibians not to proceed), and the tourism industry, but also the Department of Water Affairs which wanted any such study to be run through the tripartite Okavango River Basin Commission (OKACOM) that had been established in the mid-1990s with Angola, Botswana and Namibia as members.50 Manley returned to Botswana to work with South Africa’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research that was coordinating the ecological study of the downstream impacts of the Namibian scheme. As part of his study, he visited both Maun and Gaborone where he was warmly received by members of Tshomarelo and the Kalahari Conservation Society and by staff of the Department of Water Affairs. The conclusion of his study was that implementation of the Namibian scheme would have meant a reduction of only about 10 km2 in the flooded area of the delta. Luckily, heavy rains during the 1996/97 season filled Windhoek’s reservoirs and brought the immediate crisis to an end with the Namibian government agreeing to 50

In response to Angola, Botswana and Namibia’s welcome formation of a Joint Permanent Water Committee in 1991 for the Okavango River and plans to form a Tripartite Water Commission, the IUCN Review recommended that “ the membership of the Commission more fully represent the national interests of the three states as they relate to the integrated development of the Okavango River basin. Membership in Botswana, for example, is restricted to a single ministry (Mineral Resources and Water Affairs). Such narrow representation can lead to the type of over-emphasis on water resource management that the IUCN Review Team found to be a major weakness with the SOIWDP.”

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run their feasibility study through OKACOM following international competitive bidding. The fact that the Government of Botswana could tell Namibia that it had not only “suspended indefinitely” its Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project but had also protected the Okavango Delta as a Ramsar site, allowed its three member OKACOM delegation, which was chaired by the Director of Water Affairs, to take the moral high ground. Though the government has yet to acknowledge ever following any of the recommendations in the IUCN report, I have been told by several reliable observers that members of the Department of Water Affairs have come to see the non-implementation of SOIWDP as “a blessing in disguise.” Another positive development was the establishment in Maun in 1994 of the University of Botswana’s Harry Oppenheimer Okavango Research Centre. Recruiting its staff internationally as well as locally, the Centre with IUCN help has the responsibility for drawing up the management plan for the Okavango Delta as a Ramsar site.51 The combination of an inclusive river basin commission and the Okavango’s Ramsar designation should help preserve the delta’s integrity for many years to come. Finally, in 2014 the Okavango Delta became a World Heritage site. Perhaps the best protection available for a globally exceptional ecosystem, even World Heritage status is no guarantee for protection. In my July 30, 2013 Okavango Desk Top Review of new world heritage nominations, I outlined a number of future cultural and natural threats to the integrity of the Delta and its hinterland. Currently, since the Okavango was selected as a Natural site rather than a Cultural and Natural one, it is crucial that Botswana and the World Heritage Convention involve local communities as full partners and benefit sharers in the Delta’s management. Hence, no involuntary community resettlement should be allowed. Also of critical importance is that on-going mineral development in adjacent areas not be allowed to compromise the Delta’s integrity.

3.23

Community Forestry

These notes focus mainly on the involvement of David Brokensha and his colleagues, particularly Bernard Riley and A. Peter Castro, in community forestry-related activities for IDA. Brokensha’s and IDA’s pioneering roles in this field are described, as well as their impacts and limitations. What emerges is the strong and positive leadership roles that anthropologists can play in helping to make policies, programs, and projects more inclusive and appropriate to the needs and capacities of rural people. At the same time it is also apparent from this account that promoting and attaining participatory development have not been straightforward or

51

Ramsar is the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance that was signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971. As of October 2003, there were 138 Contracting Parties and 1,316 listed wetlands.

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easy tasks, given the substantial institutional, professional, and other challenges that exist. Nevertheless, the practice of forestry has been altered for the positive globally by the introduction of participatory approaches that anthropologists, including IDA, had a role in shaping.

3.23.1 Beginnings The magnitude of what became known as “the fuelwood problem” became clear to David Brokensha and his colleague geographer, Bernard Riley, while conducting fieldwork in Kenya during the 1970s on social and ecological change. Brokensha initially had served in the early 1970s as an Area Evaluator for the innovative Mbeere Special Rural Development Programme, which emphasized development of agriculture, roads, and water supplies. In 1974, he and Riley obtained funding from the National Science Foundation to examine the interface between socioeconomic change and shifts in the use and incidence of vegetation in Mbeere. Although environmentally related studies have a long history in anthropology (Dove and Carpenter 2008), a collaborative study focusing on both social and bio-physical aspects of human-vegetation dynamics was still an unusual topic and approach at the time. Their research documented the considerable ethnobotanical knowledge of the Mbeere, yet it also revealed that rapid deforestation was taking place. In addition to land clearing for farming, the building of roads stimulated charcoal production for Kenya’s growing urban centres. Ironically, the ‘success’ of expanding agriculture and commercial wood fuel supplies, produced significant changes in vegetation, the burdens of which, given the gendered division of labor, often fell on women. Brokensha and Riley increasingly heard complaints from them about having to walk further every year to gather firewood. Deforestation also meant that preferred species for a range of other uses, including high-quality building timber and implements, were becoming scarcer. Despite the growing urgency of this situation, Brokensha and Riley observed that foresters and other officials were generally unaware of the tremendous potential offered by indigenous knowledge of vegetation. Authorities and experts also frequently failed to recognize the advantages to be gained by fostering community participation in planning processes. Instead, preconceived ideas and plans were typically imposed on local situations, regardless of appropriateness, frequently resulting in ineffective and conflict-prone programmes and projects. In fact, this situation was not unique to Kenya. Over the years, Brokensha found that the forestry departments in the African countries where he worked had not deviated much from their colonial predecessors, in two major ways: first, there was usually a pronounced stress on commercial sector activities, and second there has been a recurrent failure to understand socio-cultural factors. Both colonial and contemporary forestry officials tended to treat local people in a patronising and authoritarian way. It would be unfair to foresters to single them out in this regard, as

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such attitudes have been and, sadly, continue to be, a bane of development interventions (Bannerjee and Duflo 2011). In 1975 Erik Eckholm of the Worldwatch Institute issued a short but seminal report, “The Other Energy Crisis: Firewood,” drawing public attention to this issue. This publication occurred at a time when many international organizations, (World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United States Agency for International Development (AID), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), and others), sought to integrate natural resource management more directly into poverty alleviation efforts, as well as to promote more participatory-oriented approaches to development. An official from USAID sympathetic to its new mandate from Congress to focus on the “lower 40%,” invited Brokensha and Riley to write a paper presenting their research findings, which was circulated, leading to further studies, workshops and conferences. A major three-day AID workshop on “The Firewood Problem in Africa” occurred in June 1978, attended by Brokensha and Riley, as well as 30 representatives from other governmental agencies, World Bank, the NGOs, universities, four African forestry departments (Ghana, Guinea, Somalia, and Zambia), and others (US Department of State 1978). Brokensha and Riley presented a paper entitled “Forestry, Foraging, Fences and Fuel in a Marginal Area of Kenya,” which highlighted the existence and importance of local ethnobotanical knowledge and the multiple contributions of trees to local livelihoods. The need to integrate local perceptions into planning was included among the findings from the workshop. A summary of the proceedings and a review of possible actions for follow-up were circulated within AID and its African missions. Based on its number of citations, Brokensha and Riley’s workshop paper proved widely influential among other organizations and scholars involved in the budding community/social forestry movement.52 As noted at the time by Brokensha (1982: 4), a characteristic (or “problem”) of the emergent social forestry movement was that much of it consisted of “fugitive” literature, “elusive conference papers, or … relatively obscure sources.” In pre-Internet days, the personal networks of policymakers and scholars, the ‘fuelwood folk,’ were crucial in the circulation of materials.

3.23.2 Fuelwood Studies The 1978 AID African firewood workshop identified the lack of information on all aspects of wood fuel use. Officials at the agency commissioned a comprehensive desk study looking at use patterns, problems associated with current and past 52

A version of the paper was published in Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Development, edited by David W. Brokensha, D. M. Warren and Oswald Werner (Lanham: University Press of America, 1980). This volume was a major contributor to the movement to recognize the practical and policy significance of indigenous knowledge.

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interventions, and a review of possible ways of resolving project design issues. Brokensha and Riley joined five other authors, including their then-graduate student, A. Peter Castro, in preparing the report, The Socio-Economic Context of Fuelwood Use in Small Rural Communities. Issued as A.I.D. Evaluation Special Study No. 1 in August 1980, nearly 2,000 copies had been distributed by October of that year. According to AID Social Science Analyst Patrick Fleuret, the report was well received both within and outside the agency, generating a robust demand for it as a planning tool (P. Fleuret to D. Wood, October 21, 1980). Shortly after the issuing of the AID study, Brokensha and Castro contributed as both writers and editors to another publication aimed at reducing the information gap: Wood Fuel Surveys, published by FAO in 1983. This book was prepared as part of the Forestry for Local Community Development Programme, which FAO and SIDA had set up jointly in 1975 to promote more participatory-oriented approaches. The focus on fuelwood offered FAO’s Forestry Department one of its first entry points for addressing directly the concerns of the rural poor, after years of concentrating on industrial development (Arnold and Persson 2009). J. E. M. (Mike) Arnold, the Chief of FAO’s Forestry Policy and Planning Service, was a firm proponent of bringing non-economic social scientists into the fold. Wood Fuel Surveys provided guidance to forestry professionals engaged in project planning, doing so by making available relevant experience from other disciplines. Two decades after its initial release, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) placed Wood Fuel Surveys on the Internet as part of its Grey Literature access series, noting, “Despite its age, this volume remains a useful guide to carrying out fuel use surveys.” ODI also observed that Brokensha and Castro’s chapter on “Methods of Fact Finding” was “a sensible overview of sociological research methods, far more widely applicable than its stated focus on fuelwood” (http:// wgbis.ces.iisc.ernet.in/envis/doc99/enpre230323). As part of its outreach efforts, IDA launched the Development Anthropology Network, a periodic newsletter aimed at “sharing ideas and experiences about the application of anthropology to humane and compassionate development among disadvantaged peoples around the world” (Horowitz 1981: 1). In its second issue published in July 1982, Brokensha succinctly surveyed the state of the art regarding “Social and Community Forestry,” including activities carried out by IDA. He noted that a diversity of approaches and issues had already emerged, including concerns about data collection, reliance on communal woodlots for reforestation (which often proved problematic), the need to incorporate women into “all stages of planning” given their major role as forest resource managers and users, and the rise of agroforestry. Brokensha also highlighted the opportunities for anthropologists to engage in advising agencies, as well as their potential contributions to training at all levels. Further insights into local wood fuel use were provided by Brokensha, Riley, and Castro’s field studies in Mbeere and Kirinyaga, Kenya, commissioned by AID’s Office of Energy Policy Advisor, Bureau for Program and Policy Coordination. Importantly, their report, Fuelwood Use in Rural Kenya: Impacts of Deforestation, was issued under IDA’s imprimatur in June 1983. It showed that the

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main causes of deforestation were the rapidly increasing population and clearing land for agriculture. Cutting down trees for charcoal was also a contributory factor, but firewood had much less of an impact. They concluded that the forestry department could not handle all the associated problems and it should encourage and work with individuals, communities, and local NGOs. Foresters could set up nurseries, advise, encourage specific trees, and allow locals to go into government forest reserves for limited use for firewood or for other forest products. It was also important for farmers to have clear title to their land so they could plant trees in security.

3.23.3 Beyond Fuelwood: Trees Within Farming and Natural Resource Management Systems When awareness of the “firewood crisis” initially emerged, some planners and foresters imagined that the most important issues were to find appropriately fast-growing trees and to convince, or compel, villagers to plant and protect them. Many projects turned out to be a kind of anti-social forestry, as communities suffered enclosures of common-property or family-held lands, or otherwise had their access to resources restricted. Not surprisingly, such interventions proved controversial and conflict-prone. From the beginning fuelwood studies indicated that rural energy issues must be understood by planners and technical personnel within the broader context of resource tenure and livelihood practices, which were influenced by systems of power, policies, markets, gender relations, and other institutions. By the 1980s, it was apparent that major gaps needed to be addressed in terms of knowledge, policy, and training. A reflection of this situation is evident in a 1984 desk study carried out by Brokensha and Castro, with assistance from Manasendu Kundu and Barry Hewlett,53 for AID with the cumbersome title of “Fuelwood, Agro-Forestry, and Natural Resource Management: The Development Significance of Land Tenure and Other Resource Management/Utilization Systems.” According to the original scope of work, the report was commissioned to help “formulate policy and program recommendations for AID to consider in promoting fuelwood and agro-forestry development.” The 64-page study covered a broad sweep of issues, calling for fuelwood to be seen as part of historically dynamic “socio-economic-ecological systems.” In addition to renewed calls for attention to indigenous knowledge, gender relations, 53

It should be noted that Castro, Kundu, and Hewlett were graduate students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where Brokensha was a tenured professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies. His faculty mentoring, including involving students in applied research, was crucial in the career paths of several graduates, a fact warmly acknowledge by them in Miriam S. Chaiken and Anne K. Flueret (eds.), Social Change & Applied Anthropology: Essays in Honor of David W. Brokensha (Boulder, Westview, 1990).

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and participation, the report emphasized the need to consider how inequality and differences of interests affect social groups regarding fuelwood and other natural resources. Given these concerns, as well as the fact that so many fuelwood projects to date had proved disappointing, the authors called for careful evaluation of a global sample of these interventions, looking carefully at the role of participation in determining their outcomes. It also ended with a plea for appreciating the importance of “systematic monitoring and evaluation.” Sadly, more than three decades later, inadequate and insufficient ‘M&E’ continue to undermine many development efforts. As with the other IDA community forestry reports for AID, this publication received wider attention and citation far beyond that agency.54 Brokensha (1982: 5) had observed in his IDA Development Anthropology Network55 article that, “Training is perhaps ultimately the most important of all activities for anthropologists interested in social forestry” (emphasis in the original). As noted, IDA’s involvement at that time included participation in workshops and conferences held by donor and technical assistance agencies, as well as preparation of training materials. At the request of FAO’s Forestry Department, IDA also carried out one of the first capacity-building workshops aimed specifically at African forestry professionals. In November 1984, IDA organized and conducted a three-week workshop in Lilongwe, Malawi on “Planning Fuelwood Projects with the Participation of Rural People.” Directed by Garry Thomas, it featured Brokensha, Riley, Peter Little, and others who served as resource persons, including anthropologist Marilyn Hoskins, then beginning her tenure as director of community forestry for FAO.56 Significantly, when FAO issued the workshop proceedings as a publication in 1985, it was entitled “Understanding Tree Use in Farming Systems.” Once again, the emphasis was placed on analyzing fuelwood use within the broader context of local institutions and livelihood practices. There was not only a need to appreciate local conditions but also include local participation, giving voice to indigenous knowledge. Ironically, years of professional training had often erased or severely downplayed the fact that rural African households had long combined complementary tree and farming management practices. Valued species are sometimes left in fields during clearing. Trees are intercropped with other crops on home gardens and fields. Pollarding and coppicing rotations are used with certain species. Trees are maintained on pasture and so on. Through presentations, role playing, field trips, and other techniques, the workshop introduced techniques for promoting participatory processes, as well as introducing social science methodology.

54

Regarding USAID's reaction to the report, Castro has an undated hand-written note from Brokensha stating, ``AID eventually loved it!''. 55 The Development Anthropology Network changed its name in the mid-1990s. 56 Hoskins launched the Forests, Trees and People Programme with FAO's Forestry Department, which fostered a global network of participatory forestry organizations and entities.

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3.23.4 Forestry and Food Security At the request of FAO’s Forestry Department, IDA became involved in its Expert Consultation on Forestry and Food Production/Security, held at Bangalore, India, in February 1988. This had been convened as a result of discussions starting in 1985 with the 10th Session of the FAO Committee on World Food Security. The expert consultation sought to explore “all forestry-related activities that have a direct or indirect impact on food production and food security at the local level” (FAO 1989: iii). Particular attention was directed at issues of equity, vulnerability, and the linkages between technical, socio-economic, environmental, and institutional issues. Brokensha and Castro prepared three “satellite papers” for the consultation: “Common Property Resources,” “Landholding Systems,” and “Institutions and Food Security: Implications for Forestry Development.” Each of these papers presented overviews of key issues regarding their topics. The common property paper drew on then-recent scholarship by the National Research Council and others that was reshaping our knowledge of the sustainability of management of communal resources, moving it far beyond the pessimism inherent in Garrett Hardin’s tragedy of the commons. It also incorporated data from Brokensha’s and Castro’s experience with conflict over common property in rural Kenya. The connection of agrarian inequality, landlessness, and indigenous technical knowledge to forestry and food security were dealt with in the analysis of landholding systems. The institutions paper focused on the nature of participation and communities, including issues concerning involvement by the poor, women, and NGOs. The paper also explored issues related to policy conflict, incentives, and budgetary concerns. All three papers shared the view that local participation is vital, especially given local knowledge and capacities, yet inequalities and institutional factors can make obtaining it highly problematic. In addition, “no simple nor universal solutions” existed regarding participatory or technical issues: plans needed to be rooted in particular situations and circumstances. Brokensha and Riley were able to participate in the Bangalore meetings, which they also later combined with brief field visits on behalf of the World Bank examining common property in rural India.

3.23.5 In Conclusion The retirement of David Brokensha in the late 1980s brought an end to his active role as a consultant in community forestry for IDA. However, his legacy is secure as a pioneer who used IDA as a means of getting anthropologists to engage in forestry issues. His tireless promotion of indigenous knowledge and participation issues helped reshape the possibilities of development policy and practice. His legacy as a practitioner and mentor are evident in an article by Castro that appeared in the IDA’s Development Anthropologist in 1997.

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Entitled “Social and Anti-Social Forestry: Lessons from Bangladesh,” it describes an evaluation of a national-level community forestry project that had been sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Castro had been invited by UNDP in 1992 to serve as the team leader for its mid-term evaluation. This marked a significant change in role from the 1970s, when one hoped that an anthropologist might be appointed to be a member of an evaluation team. In some parts of Bangladesh the project had fulfilled its goal of promoting local participation, including building capacity within communities and NGOs through training and strengthening livelihoods through job creation and tree planting. Yet in many places the project had exacerbated or created conflicts, as foresters seemed intent on using it as means to seize contested lands from communities. Bangladesh’s forest department appeared to be conflicted between those who favored participatory approaches and those who engaged in the project as a donor-driven activity. The evaluation helped halt the project in a few areas, particularly in tribal communities where conflicts had been intense. Still, for better or worse, villages in the rest of the nation had two more years to go before it ended. At the end, Bangladesh would have to repay a $44 million loan to the Asian Development Bank, which had made the project possible. The experience of the evaluation troubled Castro: wasn’t there a better way to do development planning and managing that took into account the existence of conflict? Instead of being a conflict analyst, Castro sought to understand more clearly how people address conflict, including modes of managing or resolving it. As it turned out, Marilyn Hoskins’ Forests, Trees and People Programme at FAO was exploring similar issues. Unforeseen in the early days of promoting participation was the need to address inevitable tensions and conflicts that would arise. Castro became involved in several FAO activities directed towards developing policy- and training-related materials dealing with natural resource conflict management. His involvement continued when FAO shifted these conflict issues to its Livelihood Support Programme. These days Castro continues to work on conflict and development issues, especially with the Near East Foundation, where he has served as a trainer on natural resource conflict management in Darfur, Sudan, and Mopti, Mali, as part of participatory projects. The influence of Brokensha, Riley, and IDA continues.

3.24

IDA Publications and Video

3.24.1 Introduction Through the 1980s and 1990s IDA was associated with an impressive number of important publications in three categories. Most important were 99 IDA Working Papers that could be purchased from the Institute for prices ranging for several dollars to $37. A close runner up were 26 issues of IDA’s Bulletin (formerly DAN) published once or twice a year (with two omissions) between 1981 and 1998 that sold for an annual subscription fee of $20.00. Third in importance were 16 articles

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and 6 books published by non-IDA sources including AID, FAO, IUCN, the World Bank and various presses. In addition to publications, IDA Directors and research staff frequently organized panels for, and presented papers at, the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the annual meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA), which heightened the overall impact of IDA’s works. Though some might question the above ranking, the importance of the Working Papers and the Bulletin is stressed because they best present the breadth of IDA’s achievements and interests and involved the largest number of IDA staff and associates. Most unfortunately, however, once IDA ceased to exist, the Working Papers and Bulletin were no longer available, except in the library of the State University of New York, Binghamton. Non-Availability of the Working Papers meant that academics, worldwide academic institutions, and national and international development agencies no longer had access to IDA thinking on key development issues. Take, for example, IDA’s unique research on the need for environmental flows from the Manantali dam if the environment and downstream people in Senegal, Mauritania and Mali were to benefit from that dam. Furthermore, if those Senegal River benefits had been institutionalized by the OMVS, they might well have influenced how environmental flows were utilized in other countries (Mozambique, for example) and in international rivers such as the Mekong. Though several short articles on IDA’s Senegal River Basin research were published,,,, the main and most detailed work was published as IDA Working Papers. Included were 345-page WP 55 on the Senegal River Basin Monitoring Activity, and Phase 1, 499-page WP 94 on Land use, Labor Dynamics, and Household Production Strategies: The Senegal River Valley. WP 94 also included WP 93—Senegal River Basin Monitoring Activity II: Executive Summary. If the World Bank, in particular, had had access to the above publications while planning its Senegal River Basin approach after the year 2000, would that have made any difference in Bank policies? Horowitz, Salem-Murdock and I believed that would have been the case. In December 1994, the Government of Senegal had tentatively accepted the IDA arguments that justified a regular release of waters from the Manantali Dam for downstream flood recession agriculture and other economic, environmental and health benefits for river basin inhabitants. The Government’s interest increased during 1995 after the OMVS’s Cellule Apres-Barrages, IDA’s OMVS counterpart organization, “became an enthusiastic advocate of using the dam to support the productivity of the downstream ecosystem” (Horowitz, 1998:46–47). By 1997, however, the World Bank was prepared to present to the Bank’s board a Staff Appraisal Report (SAR) for the management of the Manantali Dam that ignored environmental flows, to the concern of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US Treasury and AID. At EPA’s invitation, Horowitz was asked to address a seminar in Washington to which experts from all three agencies were asked to attend. Aware of the United States concern, in June 1997 the World Bank’s US Executive Director asked the three agencies and Horowitz “to meet with the

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SAR Team … Several other Executive Directors were also troubled by the SAR report and had asked that the proposed project not be presented to the Board until it persuasively addressed all the issues.” (Horowitz 1998: 47) In response, the project was withdrawn. However, two days later it was “resubmitted substantially unaltered” by the Bank (Ibid). After the turn of the century, however, the World Bank and the World Bank with GEF and UNDP began to implement “a number of projects designed to ‘improve’ various aspects of Senegal River Basin Development.” In this case, the Bank’s Board required a Manantali management program to address adverse environmental, health and socio-economic impacts through a Water Charter, which was established in 2002 through the OMVS. In 2008, the Bank published Winston Yu’s November 12 “Benefit Sharing in International Rivers: Findings from the Senegal River Basin, the Columbia River Basin, and the Lesotho Highlands Water Project.” In his text Yu noted that model simulations showed the feasibility for flood recession agriculture over a thirty year period since releases from the dam would only “marginally reduce the profitability of hydropower” (Yu 2008: 21). What if Yu and the Bank had access to the IDA SRB Working Papers during the 1998–2008 period? In my opinion that could have tipped the balance to regularizing environmental flows for environmental, health and socio-economic benefits, including flood recession agriculture, grazing and fishing and perhaps even for providing a “replicable model for the management of dam-regulated complex river systems in other parts of the tropics” (Horowitz, Op. Cit: 47).

3.24.2 The Working Papers 99 Working Papers were published between 1976 and 1996. One was published in the 1970s, 52 in the 1980s and 45 in the 1990s. Topics covered included river basin issues (20 WPs), a variety of issues dealing with Latin America (16 WPs), Tunisia (12 WPs), Land Settlement/Resettlement (8 WPs), Livestock (7 WPs), Social Forestry (5 WPs), Contract Farming (5 WPs), Workshops and Training (3 WPs), more general topics (2WPs) and other topics (19 WPs). Among IDA Directors and Staff, contributions were as follows: Myself (11), Horowitz (8), Peter Little (8), Muneera Salem-Murdock (7), Michael Painter(7), Tom Painter (4) and David Brokensha (3).

3.24.3 The IDA Bulletin (Also Known as Development Anthropology Network or as DAN) The first issue of the Bulletin of the Institute for Development Anthropology was published in December 1981 and the last issue in 1998. Between 1981 and 1994,

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the Bulletin was called the Development Anthropology Network (DAN) with the title changed to Development Anthropology for the last four years. Though it is not clear who edited the first four issues (July 1982-July 1985) and the last four issues, between 1986 and 1994, the Bulletin was edited primarily by Michael Painter, Peter Little and Muneera Salem-Murdock, with Tom Painter editing one issue (January 1986), Sylvia Horowitz two issues (Fall 1991 and Spring and Fall, 1994) and David Brokensha one issue (Spring 1992). The Bulletin’s format, with some variation, was for the first page to contain an index (without page numbers, unfortunately) of issue items, a list of IDA Officers, Directors and Staff (Vol. 1–Vol. 5 No. 2 but thereafter on page 2) and one of 25 articles or editorials of which 19 were by IDA Directors (Horowitz 14, Brokensha 3, myself one and all 3 directors one) and six by outsiders (Anthony Stocks in Vol. 5 No. 2/Fall 1987 being the first and the last by Peter Castro in Vol. 15, Nos. 1 and 2/1997). Horowitz wrote 14 of the 25 introductory pieces. The first three were labeled “From the President.” His first two Vol. 1. No. 1 paragraphs summed up nicely why IDA, six years after its founding, had decided to start its own newsletter: I started to head this introduction … with an apology: ‘what another newsletter?’ But since I enjoy most of the newsletters I receive … and find them timely, interesting and often more relevant than the scholarly journals published by the same organizations, why apologize? If you find the Network timely, interesting, relevant, let us know. If you can suggest ways of making it more timely, interesting, etc., please do so. Development Anthropology Network should serve as a forum for sharing ideas and experiences about the application of anthropology to humane and compassionate development among disadvantaged peoples around the world. It should explore issues and stimulate exchanges.

Horowitz’s’s second “from the President” explained what IDA intended to do and to achieve, how the Institute is funded, and with project selection. The third “From the President” piece set the stage for subsequent first page summaries by discussing US government policies and other key national or international issues; in this case, US’s contribution of the World Bank’s International Development Association. These 25 first page summaries remain fascinating and important since they deal with key national and global development issues that remain relevant until this day. Following the introductory page, the bulk of the Bulletin contained articles by members of the IDA family on various projects, achievements and problems that I found very useful; indeed essential, in drafting IDA’s history. The remaining pages contained notes on recent IDA and Staff activities, visitors—of whom there were many—to the institute, other relevant organizations and programs, global issues of interest, and obituaries. Starting in 1986, a centerpiece in the Bulletin included a listing of IDA’s Working Papers, Monographs in Development Anthropology published in Cooperation with Westview Press, and other IDA monographs published by AID, the World Bank and other organizations

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3.24.4 Monographs in Development Anthropology (Under the General Editorship of David W. Brokensha, Michael M. Horowitz and Thayer Scudder) No Place To Go: Effects of Compulsory Resettlement on Navajos (1982). Thayer Scudder with the assistance of David F. Aberle, Kenneth Begishe, Elizabeth Colson, Clark Etsitty, Jennie Joe, Jerry Kammer, Mary E. D. Scudder, Jeffrey Serena, Betty Beetso Gilbert Tippeconnie, and John Williamson. Ishi: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Philadelphia. Anthropology and Rural Development in West Africa (1986). Edited by Michael M. Horowitz and Thomas M. Painter. Published in cooperation with Westview Press, Boulder, CO. Lands at Risk in the Third World: Local Level perspectives (1987). Edited by Peter D. Little and Michael M. Horowitz (1987). Published in cooperation with Westview Press, Boulder, CO. Anthropology of Development and Change in East Africa (1988). Edited by David W. Brokensha and Peter D. Little (1988). Published in cooperation with Westview Press, Boulder, CO. Anthropology and Development in North Africa and the Middle East. Edited by Muneera Salem –Murdock and Michael M. Horowitz (1990). Published in cooperation with Westview Press, Boulder, CO. Other Publications by IDA Authors available directly from the Publisher Horowitz, Michael M. 1979. The Sociology of Pastoralism and African Livestock Project. AID Program Evaluation Paper No.4. Horowitz, Michael M. 1980. The Workshop on Pastoralism and African Livestock Development. AID Program Evaluation Paper No.6. Scudder, Thayer, 1981. The Development Potential of New Lands Settlement in the Tropics and Subtropics: A Global State-of-the Art Evaluation with Specific Emphasis on Policy Implications. AID. Horowitz, Michael M. and Kamal Badi, 1981. Sudan: Introduction of Forestry in Grazing Systems. FAO. Scudder, Thayer, 1981. The Development Potential of New Lands Settlement in the Tropics and Subtropics: A Global State-of-the Art Evaluation with Specific Emphasis on Policy Implications. Executive Summary. Program Evaluation Discussion Paper No. 21. AID. Thomas, Garry L., David W. Brokensha, Peter D. Little, and Bernard W.Q. Riley, 1985. Understanding Tree Use in Farming Systems. Based on the Workshop “Planning Fuelwood Projects with Participation of Rural People” at Lilongwe, Malawi. 12–30 November 1984. FAO. Scudder, Thayer, and Gottfried Ablasser, 1985. The Experience of the World Bank with Government-sponsored Land Settlement. Report Number 5625. Operations Evaluation Department. World Bank.

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Scudder, Thayer, and Thomas Conelly, 1985. Management Systems for Riverine Fisheries. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 263. Painter, Thomas R., Roger J. Pouliun, David Harmon, and Douglas Barnett, 1985. Development Management in Africa: The Case of the Niamey Department Development Project. AID Evaluation Special Study No. 36. Riley, Bernard W., and David Brokensha, 1988. The Mbeere in Kenya. Vol.I: Changing Rural Ecology. Vol. II: Botanical Identities and Uses. University Press of America. Salem-Murdock, Muneera. 1989. Arabs and Nubians in New Halfa: A Study of Settlement and Irrigation. University of Utah Press. Little, Peter D. 1992. The Elusive Granary: Herder, Farmer, and State in Northern Kenya. African Studies Series 73. Cambridge University Press. Little, Peter D., and Michael J. Watts, eds. 1994. Living Under Contract: Contract Farming and Agrarian Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa. University of Wisconsin Press. Brokensha, David, ed. 1994. A River of Blessings: Essays in Honor of Paul Baxter. Foreign and Comparative Studies/African Series 44, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. Salem-Murdock, Muneera, and Madiodio Niasse, John Magistro, Christophe Nuttal, Michael M. Horowitz, Ourmar Kane, with Curt Grimm and Monica Sella, 1994. Brokering Democracy in Africa: The Rise of Clientelist Democracy in Senegal. L’Harmattan.

3.25

Video

Written and Directed by Michael M Horowitz. LARGE DAMS AND SMALL PEOPLE: MANAGEMENT OF AN AFRICAN RIVER

3.26

1995: The End of IDA as Initially Planned by the Directors

3.26.1 Introduction Though IDA continued to survive for another decade, by the end of 1995 the Institute no longer was able to function as intended by the three founders. Of the many reasons for this conclusion, the most important was that decreasing finance was unable to support IDA’s three Senior Research Associates and Program Directors around whom program generation and fund-raising had been intentionally centered.

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Serious financial declines were as follows: 1990 1991 1992 1993

$1,757,337 $1,360, 596 (a decline of 23%) $1,187,831 (a decline of 32%) $905,389 (estimated; a decline of 48%).

3.26.2 The Directors and Staff Assessment of the Situation 1993–95 The following excerpts from 1993 and 1994 meetings and memos are intended to illustrate how the Directors and Staff assessed the existing situation. 7 December 1993: Beers and Horowitz memo to Staff and Directors IDA’s “downward sloping trend is due primarily to the completion of a number of IDA projects that employed non-core staff people on long-term contracts, without there being new projects to replace them. At the same time as we have experienced substantial declines in total revenues, fixed costs (core staff salaries, fringe benefits, insurance and rent) have steadily risen.” 19 August, 1993: Horowitz to the Directors and IDA Staff We approach the end of FY 1993 confronting great difficulties and great possibilities. We have been discussing—both formally and informally—the former at considerable length, including tight finances, shifting foreign aid concerns to areas where we have few linkages, and little direct experience, and imminent staff departures. In order to position ourselves most effectively to respond to new opportunities, I suggest we have a series of weekly meetings to which specific topics will be discussed in terms of two themes: (1) how can the activity more effectively contribute to the quality of Institute work; and (2) how can the activity be made more- cost-effective.

12 November, 1993: VFB to the Directors I believe our current staff is the best it has ever been. Unfortunately, the overhead generated by the IDA core group is not sufficient to cover the costs of the staff, benefits, and general office operations… We have no persons who are not IDA full-timers bringing in money. In previous years we had several persons stationed overseas on long-term activities….When those positions ended we had nothing to replace them with… I am deeply concerned. I consider IDA an employer and family and its future scares me.

16–21 November. 1993: Director’s Meeting. Washington, D.C. IDA Bulletin. “The Directors considered staff recommendations to reduce the frequency of the Development Anthropology Network to one issue per annual volume. While they are mindful of the potential savings involved… and the Senior Research Associates’ investment of editorial time, they are concerned about the potential loss of visibility in both the development and anthropological communities.”

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16 January, 1994: Horowitz to Brokensha and Myself During the first six months of 1994 Horowitz was based at the World Bank on a Visiting Research Fellowship … The comments that follow were written in Binghamton where he spent the Martin Luther King Holiday after his first two weeks at the Bank: “We are all facilitators, with interactive styles. The Institute would not have lasted 18 years (imagine) if we hadn’t operated as a collegium. I am comfortable with this and do not wish to seek to change it. We all must be concerned, however, with (a) the sharp decline of productivity measured principally in revenue and (b) the very modest influence wielded by the Institute in policy arenas. The two are closely interrelated, because without adequate funds we are constrained in reaching outward (since we have difficulty paying for the Network, films, participation in meetings and international fora, employing new staff and consultants to explore new regions and topics).

3.26.3 Inadequate Support from Foundations A major weakness related to the Directors’ initial decision in 1976 not to seek strong foundation support as a cushion to deal with periodic financial downturns and, especially important, to give the Directors and senior staff the opportunity and time to complement programs by thinking about, and writing on, policy issues. Moreover, between 1976 and 1995, the Directors largely choose to rely on senior staff, and especially Michael Painter, to draft, sign and follow up on what were largely project requests to foundations.

3.26.4 Shifting AID Policies A series of 1993 and 1994 Horowitz memos to Brokensha and myself sum up nicely the situation in Washington and implications for IDA. 16 January 1993 Horowitz memo to Brokensha and myself within two weeks of Horowitz’s commencement of his six month residency at the World Bank I’ve been most disappointed with Clinton’s “unwillingness [after his 1993 election as President] to articulate any kind of ideology—other than domestic economic growth—to guide either domestic or foreign actions … We see this in Clinton’s comment on the AID Administrator controversy that had Matt McHugh withdraw his candidacy. ‘Who cares who administrates AID?’ Clinton said. For all his pre-election rhetoric, Clinton has run away from human rights, from Third World development, from economic stimulation, and even from a coherent environmental policy.

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12 July 1993 Horowitz memo to Brokensha and myself Curt Grimm called [from AID], reporting that AID expects to reduce its overseas presence by about 50%, from 108 (?) missions to 52. Since half of all USAIDs are in Africa, that continent will take the biggest hit. Southern Africa will be best … apparently under the ‘potential market for US exports’ theme—smaller missions will be closed all together, and new regional offices will be established… More than ever, it appears prudent for us to search intensively for support outside AID.

3 October 1993 Horowitz memo to Brokensha and myself Concerning AID’s impending reorganization, “Of immediate relevance to us is the eliminations of the Bureau for Research and Development (in which SARSA is housed), and the assignment of its functions to a new Bureau for Global Programs, Field Support and Research. In that reorganization will those AID officials who appreciate the quality of IDA’s work continue to have managerial responsibility for the Cooperative Agreement? Even in January 1994, by the time this reorganization is supposed to have been fully implemented, we may not know who sits where. The World Bank at least publishes a telephone directory. I haven’t seen one from AID in several years.”

1 October 1993 (the first day of FY94) Horowitz memo to Brokensha and myself What I heard on the radio yesterday was ominous for organizations like ours that are so dependent on funding from AID. This much I recall. The total AID budget passed is less than the amount requested by the Administration. This means either no growth over FY93 or even some retrenchment… The Israel and Egypt entitlements are unaffected… Additionally $2.5 billion is ear-marked for Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States … Given no new—and possibly less—money, these funds will come from appropriations traditionally directed to Africa-Asia-Latin America. In short, the geographical focus shifts from our strengths to areas where we have little credibility or connection… We may also be adversely affected by the imminent forced retirement of 50 AID senior executive people, among whom are persons who know our work and have been supportive…

3.26.5 Junior Staff Reductions Vera Beers and Horowitz 13 December 1993 Memo to the Directors. At a December 10, 1993 staff meeting, Vera and Michael “presented the status of current IDA finances, pointing out the recurrent gap between income and expenses, and the imminent exhaustion of our $100,000 bank line of credit. Several personnel changes were announced: 1. Termination of the position of librarian, effective 20 November 1993 2. Termination of the position of information management specialist, effective 1 January 1994. 3. A voluntary reduction of working time from 80 to 60% for editorial associate Sylvia Huntley Horowitz.

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3.26.6 Senior Staff Associates and Program Directors Responses On 31 October 1995, Muneera Salem-Murdock resigned to become Regional Coordinator for Africa/Asia/Near East and Economic Growth Advisor at AID’s Office of Women-in-Development. Peter Little received a one year leave of absence from IDA in 1994 to “try out” a senior faculty appointment at the University of Kentucky. When he decided to pursue that appointment on a full time basis and resign from IDA, he continued doing fieldwork in his areas of expertise on IDA grants and contracts for another ten years. In January 1995, Michael Painter accepted a two year Chemonics’ assignment in Botswana.

3.26.7 The Directors Throughout 1994 and 1995 both Brokensha and I were far more pessimistic about IDA’s future than Horowitz. By the end of the century, we had both resigned as directors and we were no longer active in IDA affairs.

Chapter 4

My Increasing Disillusionment with the Planning, Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation of Large Dams, Especially as Illustrated by The World Bank—The Largest and Most Influential Financier of Large Dams

4.1

Introduction

Starting in the mid-1960s I believe that I have had longer experience with the World Bank than any other human ecologist or anthropologist/sociologist. I was familiar with the World Bank as a financier of Kariba and Kainji in the 1950s and 1960s. Thereafter I had no direct contact with the Bank until, as a replacement for Philip Gulliver, the Bank recruited me on a part-time basis as their first consultant anthropologist/sociologist in order to join John C. de Wilde’s study of African Agricultural Development during 1964–1968. My 1977 lecture at the Bank’s headquarters in Washington, DC on the weaknesses of Bank—assisted dam-induced involuntary resettlement led to close contact and friendship with Michael Cernea. Cernea was hired by the Bank in 1974 as their first full-time sociologist. Subsequently, he became influential as the Bank’s first Senior Adviser for Sociology and Social Policy until his retirement in 1997. I mention Cernea to emphasize that between 1964 and 2014 I have worked with, and respected, many first-rate Bank employees representing most fields of Bank expertize. When I criticize the World Bank, I am criticizing Bank senior management, Board of Directors, Board of Governors, and the dominance, as planners, within the Bank, of macro-economists and engineers. During the mid-1980s, I was a member of the Bank’s Panel of Environmental and Social Experts (POE) for China’s Longtan Project which completed only one extended field visit before China decided not to request further Bank financing. Longtan was my first experience with membership on such World Bank-required, but independent, POEs to advise member governments on contentious large-scale projects. I subsequently served on such panels for the Lesotho Highlands Water Project during 1986–2000 and Laos’ Nam Theun 2 (NT2) project during 1997– 2014.

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Membership on such panels was an intentional strategy on my part for shifting away from consultancies to more influential and respected POEs that, as in the NT2 case, could insist on the completion of certain activities such as physical resettlement before a reservoir could be filled following dam completion.

4.2

Kariba Dam and The World Bank in the 1950s

My first experience with the World Bank was during 1956–57 when Elizabeth Colson and I were completing our one-year benchmark study of 57,000 indigenous people before their involuntary resettlement in connection with the first mainstream dam on the Zambezi River. Though we visited the dam site and knew that Kariba was being financed by the Bank’s largest loan at that time, we had no contact with World Bank personnel; our strictly academic research was independently financed. We were also aware that the Bank at that time had no safeguard policies dealing with dam impacts on the environment and on dam—affected people. In the Kariba case (as with other Bank-financed projects funded through member governments) dealing with, or ignoring, such impacts was the responsibility of the relevant Governments.

4.3 4.3.1

The Summer of 1964 in East Africa Introduction

Rather than complete a one-year post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard, I accepted a summer consultancy with the World Bank to join John C. de Wilde’s team of three economists and one agronomist to research small holder agriculture in East Africa. The post originally had been offered to anthropologist Philip Gulliver, a far more experienced Africanist at that time. Unable to accept the Bank’s offer, Gulliver recommended me on the basis of my human ecological research in Northern Rhodesia and Egypt.1 Being a part time member of such an interdisciplinary team doing several months of field research in Kenya and Tanzania soon after their independence was an exceptional opportunity for me. So was remaining on the team during

1 I met Gulliver in the late 1950s while he was on the faculty of Boston University’s African Studies Center. We played tennis together and the Harvard Department of Anthropology asked him to join the committee responsible for my final Ph.D. degree examination. Following teaching positions in Africa and England, he moved to Canada where he retired in 1992 as Distinguished Research Professor of Anthropology at York University.

4.3 The Summer of 1964 in East Africa

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preparation of a two volume study published in 1967.2 In Kenya we surveyed development projects involving a number of ethnic groups in five districts with special attention paid to land settlement and irrigation schemes. In Tanzania, we concentrated on the Sukuma. I also had the opportunity to gain some familiarity with small-scale agriculture in five West African countries visited by the other members of the team.

4.3.2

World Bank Procedures in the Field for Such Studies

Acting Director of the Bank’s Economic Unit at the time, de Wilde was outstanding as team leader, expert and colleague. During our surveys, close friendships were made between us, including de Wilde’s secretary who had her hands full dealing with relevant government offices. She and de Wilde also managed to fit in two major tourist experiences. One was a night at Tree Tops, a famous tourism attraction in Kenya’s Aberdare Mountains. From our above ground quarters, we were able to watch wildlife, including a rhino, drinking from a water hole below us. The second experience involved traversing by Land Rover the Serengeti Plain in route to Tanzania from Kenya. The major constraint, aside from too short a time for each survey, associated with the Bank’s in-country procedures was the time spent in hotels as opposed to over-nighting in the field. While being accompanied in the field by government officials was necessary to gain access to government records and information during each visit, their presence could be expected to constrain discussions with farm families and other local households.

4.3.3

Evaluation and Utility of the Research

In his review of de Wilde’s two volume study, Miracle concluded, “despite numerous faults, these two volumes are pioneering work in their attempt at comparative economic analysis of tropical African agriculture; while not definitive, they extend considerably our understanding of the problems of developing African agriculture.” Moreover, “If as seems certain, these two volumes become mandatory reading for planners in all tropical African countries hoping for World Bank loans, their contribution to better economic planning may well be considerable” (Miracle 1967).

2

John C. De Wilde assisted by Peter F.M. McLoughlin, Andre Guinard, Thayer Scudder, and Robert Maubouche (1967). Experiences with Agricultural Development in Tropical Africa. Two Volumes. Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins University Press for the World Bank.

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4.4

4 My Increasing Disillusionment with the Planning, Implementation …

May 1977 Lecture on Involuntary Resettlement in Connection with Bank-Assisted Large Dam Projects

Along with Robert Goodland, the Bank’s main environmental adviser, Michael Cernea was the Bank’s most influential employee dealing with social problems. As already explained in this volume, it was Cernea who contacted Michael Horowitz and myself in the fall of 1976 as to our interest in “consulting for the World Bank.” My favorable reply led to the above May 1977 lecture on Bank-assisted Large Dam Projects.

4.5

The World Bank’s Initial 1980 Safe Guard Policy on Involuntary Resettlement

Illustrating the Bank’s poor record with dam project- affected people, my 1977 lecture led, through Cernea’s agency, to one of my most important impacts on World Bank policies. That impact was to contribute to the formulation of the Bank’s first safeguard policy on involuntary resettlement in connection with Bank-financed projects,3 and to my contributing to the implementation of those policies in India, China, Lesotho and Laos either as a Bank Consultant or member of a Bank-required independent Panel of Environmental and Social Experts (POE).

4.6 4.6.1

World Bank Involvement in the Sardar Sarovar Component of India’s Narmada River Development 1961–1989

The 1961 date corresponds with the beginning of the World Bank’s overriding involvement in Gujarat’s irrigation development. By the early 1980s, Bank loans were financing at least four-fifths of Gujarat’s annual irrigation investment aside from subsequent Narmada development (World Bank 1984: 4). India’s national government first “approached the World Bank for help with the Narmada scheme in 1978, and in the same year the Bank sent a reconnaissance mission to determine an appropriate means for involvement” (Wade 2011:45). The Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) was selected as a possible Bank project, project appraisal followed, and in May 1985 the project agreement was signed by the Bank, the Government of India and the three States involved for a loan of $450 million.

3

OMS 2.33: Social Issues Associated with Involuntary Resettlement in Bank Financial Projects (See pages 125–126 for background information on this first Safe Guard policy).

4.6 World Bank Involvement in the Sardar Sarovar Component …

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I became involved as a SSP World Bank consultant four years earlier (1981) after Michael Cernea found out that project appraisal was proceeding without paying attention to the Bank’s own 1980 resettlement guidelines. Against opposition from the India Department which continued to focus only on SSP’s irrigation component, and the interests of the Government of India, Cernea convinced Bank management that a post-appraisal mission on resettlement issues alone was essential. He also requested that I be the mission’s resettlement consultant in which capacity I made visits to India in 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1989. In route to India on my first SSP visit, I was excited because naively I assumed that, as a so-called socialist country, India would have an excellent record in connection with development-induced compulsory community resettlement. On the contrary, India’s record—meticulously documented by Indian scholars who are among the best in the world—was even worse than that of the United States (in regard to Native Americans). Exemplifying India’s expertise was Lakshman Mahapatra, former vice-chancellor and Department of Anthropology chair at Utkal University, who was my partner during my 1985 SSP visit. In a 1999 publication, Mahapatra later stated that “in India, we rarely come across studies of reconstruction of livelihoods after resettlement. Even rarer are reports on social integration as a part of such reconstruction” (Mahapatra 1999: 143). By the mid-1980s, my closest World Bank associate in the field was Bank lawyer Carlos Escudero whose SSP experiences had made him a strong supporter of the Bank’s involuntary resettlement requirements.4 During our 1985 mission, he was also concerned that my critiques of SSP resettlement implementation and my contacts with Indian NGOs might put my life in danger. After a further Bank mission to the project area in 1986, Escudero was the strongest supporter that the Bank should threaten India with [SSP] cancellation on grounds of its non-compliance with the resettlement agreement. Weeks later the Bank’s reorganization of June 1987 hit, and the main proponent of the reorganization threat, the project’s lawyer, Carlos Escudero, by then a resettlement champion, was moved to work on banking in Indonesia, despite his three requests to be allowed to continue with Narmada. His transfer was a victory for the India Irrigation Division (Wade Op Cit: 48).

By the mid-1980s both Indian national and international NGOs were criticizing Indian government agencies and the World Bank’s lack of support for resettlement and environment issues. In my opinion, the effectiveness of the two strongest local NGOs was weakened because of their different approaches to resettlement issues. ARCH Vahini, with OXFAM UK financial support (especially from OXFAM campaign programs’ John Clark), concentrated on trying to improve resettlement

4

I believe that my previous experiences with dam-induced experiences also influenced Escudero. We also had a “joking relationship” since my name, Scudder, is an anglicized version of Escudero. Hence I joked that the Scudders were survivors from the defeat of the Spanish Armada who swam ashore to England.

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implementation. Narmada Bachao Andolan (MBA), under Medha Patkar, and allied with the US Environment Defense Fund through Lori Udall, not only fought to stop the Sardar Sarovar Project but also, without success, tried to get OXFAM to state “whether it was for or against the dam, period” (Wade, Op Cit 51). It was Udall who also arranged for me to meet the Bank’s Board of Directors in 1990 to explain my own opposition to the dam. According to Wade, “By the late 1980s the Bank was devoting serious resources to resettlement. First in Gujarat and then in Maharastra some progress began to be made on the ground, though hardly enough to lance the international storm. What caused the turnaround? In 1988, … a high-level resettlement mission went to India led by the senior vice-president for operations, Moeen Qureshi, the first time a senior manager had involved himself directly. He was briefed intensively by NGOs in Washington DC before he left… On his return, Qureshi again had intensive private discussion with NGO leaders about what to do…They discussed a set of benchmark actions by the Indian authorities which would justify continued Bank involvement.” Such benchmark actions were forwarded to India, with the requirement that they be met by March 1989; otherwise, disbursements would be suspended (Wade, Op Cit: 49).

I was asked to join the April 1989 mission to assess the current resettlement situation. As on my first mission in 1983, I was appalled, stating in my lengthy report to Michael Baxter, head of the Agricultural Unit in the Bank’s Delhi Office: “In comparing the August 1984/September 1985 situation with the situation today, I believe there has been a serious deterioration” which, I concluded, justified permanent or temporary cessation of disbursements.

Not only did Baxter’s report to Washington reverse my negative conclusions to conclusions that improved resettlement made cessation of disbursements unnecessary, but he also made me a joint author of his report! Fortunately, after I insisted that my name be dropped from Baxter’s report, my initial report was leaked to the Indian Press causing a sensation. Inside the Bank a witch hunt began to find the leaker. The head of the Agricultural unit in the Bank’s Delhi Office was shocked to learn that even he was under suspicion, such was the paranoia. In the event, the Bank told the Government of India that it was satisfied with progress on the ground, and withdrew the threat of suspension (Wade, Op. Cit: 49).

All five of the major reasons for unacceptable resettlement outcomes (Scudder 2005)—lack of political will, lack of planning and implementation capacity, inadequate finance and resettler participation, and, especially, lack of viable opportunities for resettlers to improve their household and community livelihood— were present during my four surveys. Moreover, their absence has continued until this day. Even worse, I found corrupt, dishonest, and self-serving behavior among all levels of SSP officialdom.

4.6 World Bank Involvement in the Sardar Sarovar Component …

4.6.2

223

1990–March 1993

Following my 1989 visit, I recommended that “World Bank disbursements for SSP should be stopped until government action acceptable to the Bank has been taken on resettlement issues” (Scudder 1989: 6). I then outlined, in the form of recommendations, nine issues that urgently needed attention. While chances for successful resettlement would be increased if they were dealt with satisfactorily, they could no longer be “ensured.” I made a similar recommendation to the Bank’s Board in 1990, adding that in the absence of timely compliance, the Bank should cancel the remainder of its loan. The increasing volume of such complaints forced the Bank to fund in 1991 an external SSP review. The first such evaluation sanctioned by the Bank, and one that led to the formation of the Bank’s Inspection Panel in 1994 (Wade, Op Cit: 62), The Independent Review was headed by two distinguished individuals. The Chair was Bradford Morse, former head of UNDP and a friend of the then World Bank president. The Deputy Chair was Thomas Berger, a prominent and highly respected Canadian lawyer with an international reputation dealing with environmental, indigenous peoples, and human rights issues. Concluding that implementation of an acceptable resettlement program was unlikely, the Independent Review’s 363 page report was released in June 1992. In a June 18th letter to the Bank’s new president, the chair and deputy chair wrote “we believe the situation is very serious. We have discovered fundamental failures in the implementation of the Sardar Sarovar Project. We think the Sardar Sarovar Projects as they stand are flawed, that resettlement and rehabilitation of all those displaced by the Projects is not possible under prevailing conditions … Moreover we believe that the Bank shares responsibility with the borrower for the situation that has developed” (Sardar Sarovar: The Report of The Independent Review: 1992: xii). In asking how such a situation could arise, the Review concluded that “It is apparent that there has been, and continues to be, deep concern among Bank officers and staff that India should have the means to enhance agricultural production. The Sardar Sarovar Project was seen as offering enormous benefits, especially in terms of delivery of drinking water and irrigation. There developed an eagerness on the part of the Bank and India to get on with the job. Both, it seems, were prepared to ease, or even disregard, Bank policy and India’s regulations and procedures dealing with resettlement and environmental protection in the hope of achieving the much-needed benefits” (353–4). Rejecting the Review’s recommendation that the World Bank Group “step back” and consider the SSP “afresh,” the Bank countered with a report in which it outlined procedures for continuing the project. Though a number of the Bank’s Directors had agreed with the Review’s “step back” recommendation, the majority voted in October 1992 to “give India five more months, until April 1, 1993, to comply with the terms of the loan” (Caufield 1996: 27). Unable to meet those, India and the Bank agreed to the loan’s cancellation on March 31, 1993.

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Though interpretations differ as to the nature of the dialogue between the Bank and India, with the media reporting that the decision was India’s, I suspected that Bank officials had advised their Indian colleagues to take that route to avoid further embarrassment. After all, the low interest portion of the loan had already been disbursed, with interest rates on what remained not that different from those of commercial banks! To this day, I still consider India’s record with SSP resettlement to be the worst that I have studied over a sixty year period. While drafting this section, I received a 27 June 2017 email from India’s Peoples Media Advocacy and Resource Centre (PMARC) that the Indian Government’s Narmada Control Authority has taken the decision to close the gates of Sardar Sarovar dam without complete rehabilitation and dishonoring a Supreme Court order. 192 villages, 1 township, 40,000 families, lakhs [hundreds of thousands] of people will be submerged.”

4.7

The World Bank’s Gwembe Tonga Development Program

The World Bank’s history with mega dams began in the 1950s when the Bank provided its largest loan prior to that date for the construction of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi. At that time, the Bank had no safeguard policies dealing with project impacts on the environment and project affected people. Dealing with those issues was the responsibility of the host countries (now Zambia and Zimbabwe) which at that time were part of the short-lived Central African Federation of Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Malawi. 57,000 project-affected people, mainly the Gwembe Tonga ethnic group, were involuntarily resettled, the large majority of whom remain impoverished sixty years after their removal. The World Bank came back into the lives of the Gwembe Tonga in 1995 when a Bank mission was in Zambia appraising a project to rehabilitate the Zambian Government’s Electricity Supply Corporation (ZESCO) and the country’s hydropower distribution system at the same time that Gwembe Tonga Research Project (GTRP) members Samuel Clark, Lisa Cliggett and myself were in country. The Bank’s Task Manager, Donal O’Leary, was a friend of mine, the two of us having worked together on the Bank-assisted Lesotho Highlands Water Development Project. O’Leary arranged for two members of his mission—anthropologist Tod Ragsdale and environmentalist Joseph Wells—to visit the GTRP team while they were working in the Lusitu area below the dam where 6,000 Gwembe Tonga had been resettled because of insufficient land in the reservoir basin. The two Bank consultants were so appalled by the increasing poverty and land degradation there, that a week later O’Leary himself and ZESCO’s Managing Director arrived unexpectedly to visit us after we had moved to a reservoir-based resettler village.

4.7 The World Bank’s Gwembe Tonga Development Program

225

It was at that time, nearly forty years after resettlement, that the idea was first discussed to initiate what I believe was the World Bank’s first world-wide rehabilitation and development project for resettlers within a Bank-financed project. Initially the idea was for a Gwembe Tonga component, restricted to those resettled in the Zambian portion of the Middle Zambezi Valley, to be incorporated within ZESCO’s Power Rehabilitation Project. I was asked to write Terms of Reference for such a component that was submitted to ZESCO and the World Bank in August 1995.5 Once aware of ZESCO’s interest in rehabilitation of North Bank Kariba resettlers, the binational Zambezi River Authority (ZRA), with the support of the Zambian Minister of Energy and Water Development and the Zimbabwe Minister of Transport and Energy, authorized a 45 day survey of the entire two country resettlement area by a nine member team which was the first such survey completed by either government. What the survey team learned was that the “valley people have generally lagged behind in terms of national development. Most of them live in dire poverty with meagre or no food at all, poor sanitation and poor dwelling places (ZRA 1996:13).” And one might add, virtually no electricity from one of the world’s five largest dams in terms of reservoir surface area and storage capacity. Based on that study the Zambezi River Authority published its June 1996 Report on “Kariba Dam’s Operation Noah Re-Launched.” That title was based on Kariba’s much publicized “Operation Noah” for wildlife rescued from the rising reservoir by Northern and Southern Rhodesian teams. As the ZRA noted, for the wildlife teams involved, their “work brought its own reward: the satisfaction of having assisted nature through a difficult period. Nevertheless Operation Noah accorded animals five star hospitality compared with the matter in which people were resettled.” In their Foreword, the two ministers declared: being the statutory owners of the Kariba Dam and Lake, the Zambezi River Authority believes it is not too late to revisit the situation” (Ibid 1996: iii). The text then presented “A number of projects, deemed to be viable and self-sustaining … with the view of assisting over 110,000 affected people on both sides of the inundated Zambezi Valley. Approximately 142 million United States dollars will be required to re-launch ‘OPERATION NOAH.’

No question that by the beginning of 1996, the Zambezi River Authority, Zambia’s ZESCO, Zimbabwe’s Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) and the World Bank were now actively thinking about what the ZRA, and our Gwembe Tonga Research Project, assumed would be a major rehabilitation and development project for both countries that would actively involve the World Bank. As a next step the Zambezi River Authority organized a July 15th Workshop for the above four parties at Kariba Town on the Zimbabwe side of the Dam to which Gwembe Tonga Research Project members were also invited.

“Rehabilitation and Development Strategies for Gwembe Tonga affected by the Construction of the Kariba Dam in the 1950s.”

5

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4 My Increasing Disillusionment with the Planning, Implementation …

During the Workshop, three major discussion periods dealt with recommendations from the participants for an initial series of short, medium, and long studies that would cover all Kariba Dam resettlement areas in both countries. The final presentation by the Zambezi River Authority and the World Bank was on “Mobilization of Support for the Program.” Showing their commitment for a major program, within a week, the Zambezi River Authority submitted to participants a ten page Terms of Reference for Rehabilitation and Development Strategies for the predominantly Tonga peoples and Downstream Riverine Areas affected by the Kariba Dam Construction. The estimated budget for the initial two-year study was US $385,000. To be “concurrent with the preparation of the Zambia Power Rehabilitation Project, the study would begin on January 1, 1997” (TOR 1996:10). From the July 25 four-page commentary on the Terms of Reference, I was pleased that the Zambia River Authority “will be responsible for undertaking the study and carrying out its initiation … . Implementation will greatly facilitate ZRA’s becoming an integrated river basin development authority.” Though that decision was crucial, since ZESCO’s and ZESA’s responsibilities as electricity supply organizations were significantly restricted, I also suggested that study staff should also be recruited from the University of Zambia and the University of Zimbabwe so as to ensure adequate cultural and social science expertise. Furthermore, I was “delighted” that the Zambezi River Authority would push for “an electricity surcharge for generating funds” for that, presumably, would have a positive impact on ensuring World Bank participation. The next month the World Bank, with no explanation to participants, decided to withdraw from a bi-national project that would have pioneered a globally relevant rehabilitation and development approach to involuntary resettlement in World Bank-financed projects. Instead, the Bank limited its Kariba resettlement involvement to a minor $15 million Gwembe Tonga component in ZESCO’s Zambia Power Rehabilitation Project.6 The inexcusable, unacceptable way in which both the World Bank and ZESCO behaved, is best illustrated by quoting the August 28, 1996 letter of the Zambezi River Authority’s Chief Executive to ZESCO’s Managing Director: Having spent resources and time at the World Bank’s and ZESCO’s request to arrange meetings, and a working group to draft Terms of Reference that adequately cover the issue, we are naturally disappointed at the turn of events that you now wish to revert to the original Terms of Reference which no longer require a broad based coverage which involved all other key players who would have contributed to the alleviation of the Tonga People’s plight as one whole. We are further disappointed that even though the Terms of Reference which were drafted by the working group selected by yourselves together with the Zambezi River Authority, Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority, the World Bank and the Environmental Council of

6

Anticipated cost of the Power Rehabilitation Project was $300 million.

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Zambia7 at the Kariba meeting of 15/07/96 indicated a much higher budget than previously, no consultations were made to these other parties on how the funding would be met to cover the higher budget. You took a unilateral decision to abandon same.

The next day I wrote to O’Leary, Ragsdale and Wells about the importance of at least trying to re-integrate the ZRA into the ZESCO Gwembe Tonga study since otherwise it will be “very difficult to deal with four important international Kariba Lake Basin and downstream issues in a Zambia-focused study. Those aspects are the necessary hydrological study for forecasting reservoir drawdown and refilling necessary for agricultural development of the foreshore; an integrated, hence international, water and land based marketing and general communications system; fisheries development which, with Scandinavian funding, had been on a binational basis; and current Zambezi River Basin studies using remote sensing.” On 3 September, I received a FAX from the Manager of ZESCO’s Environment and Social Affairs Unit (ESU) explaining that “Zimbabwe has been left out of the study on account of lack of financing. The World Bank only approved to provide $165,000 for the study on the Zambian side.” ZESCO and the World Bank moved rapidly to design its own Gwembe Tonga research plan at a September 19, 1996 workshop meeting on “Rehabilitation and Development Strategies for the Peoples affected by the Kariba Dam Construction” to which knowledgeable experts from Zambian Government ministries and the University of Zambia had been invited. The World Bank official present noted that having previously “grossed over” environmental issues, ZESCO now had its own Environmental and Social Affairs Unit. Since the most hydro project-affected people in Zambia had been the Gwembe Tonga, ZESCO, in the words of the World Bank representative, “would like to receive a report that would help implement practical projects that will mitigate against some of the adverse effects” (Workshop Minutes Page 6). Though no GTRP personnel or Gwembe Tonga officials or experts were present at the workshop, my earlier suggestion had been accepted that implementation of the study should be the responsibility of the University of Zambia’s Institute for African Studies8 with a qualified research team drawn from various government ministries, the university and the Gwembe Tonga. When Elizabeth Colson and I received the Workshop Minutes we were concerned that none of the study experts selected came from Kariba project-affected areas and that the only two Tonga-speakers were not Gwembe Tonga. In a 30 September email to O’Leary, I wrote:

7

To all of whom, among others, the ZRA letter was copied. IAS’s predecessor was the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute that had been the original sponsor of the GTRP whose members became IAS affiliates. IAS subsequently became the University’s Institute for Social and Economic Research.

8

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4 My Increasing Disillusionment with the Planning, Implementation …

Throughout Zambia’s history there has been a tendency for people in positions of influence to appoint people to important positions on the basis of ethnicity or area of origin, friendship, religion (note here, that starting with the Team Leader, the first three CVs received were all Seventh Day Adventists – As well may be others also). … Ethnicity is becoming an increasingly important, and unfortunately, divisive issue in Zambian politics, with the Tonga in particular, being the second largest linguistic grouping, feeling left out of national politics. As for the Gwembe Tonga, they have been subject to study after study with virtually no implementation follow up. They are understandably fed up.

Thereafter planning proceeded rapidly with one Gwembe Tonga expert added. That was Bennett Siamwiza whose Masters thesis at an English university was on hunger within the Gwembe Valley. The World Bank would be the executing agency with the Institute for African Studies funded not with the World Bank’s own funds, however, but with a $165,000 Japanese Government grant through the World Bank. That amount was subsequently increased to $195,000 by the time the study contract was signed on January 7, 1997. $15,000 of the $195,000 had been set aside as a consultancy fee for me to act, in effect, as a liaison between ZESCO, the Institute for African Studies, and the World Bank. When the possibility arose that Siamwiza might be dropped from the research team for the type of reasons that Colson and I had feared, I requested O’Leary to ensure that Siamwiza would receive from the $15,000 the same fee ($7,500) that the other ten IAS researchers would receive. IAS fieldwork began in March 1997 with each of the 11 researchers expected to spend 50 days on the study. The final study, “Development Strategies and Rehabilitation Programmes for the People Affected by the Construction Dam: Proposed Implementation Plan” (Vol. 1) and “Final Composite Report” (Vol. 2) were submitted to the World Bank that December. The two volumes adequately covered the report’s Terms of Reference and were incorporated in the World Bank’s appraisal document for the Zambia Power Rehabilitation Project. Five activities were described (World Bank 1997: 12). Together costing $12.3 million, the Bottom Road was by far the most important activity followed by water supply and improved cropping. 1. The rehabilitation of the 365 km of a key road (The Bottom Road) that connects the three districts that received the resettlers. 2. Water resource development combining improved water supply and improving cropping patterns along the margin of the reservoir that are timed to coincide with the patterns of reservoir drawdown and refilling. 3. Improvement of land use through strengthening agricultural extension facilities. An additional fund is to be created to support micro-projects dealing with land use. 4. Upgrading of health facilities and services. 5. Electrification of three large villages as well as the area around the reservoir.

4.8 Incorporating the Gwembe Tonga Rehabilitation and Development …

4.8

229

Incorporating the Gwembe Tonga Rehabilitation and Development Program

The Zambia Power Rehabilitation Project was approved in February 1998. The following December, the Gwembe Tonga component was inaugurated, for a three year period, at Siavonga on the shores of Lake Kariba. Present were all seven Gwembe Chiefs and all three members of parliament. Though it was suggested that I give the introductory speech, I preferred that honor to go to Professor Mwindaace Siamwiza, who was Bennett Siamwiza’s elder brother, Zambia’s leading scientist, and a Kariba resettler.9 Though the inauguration itself was a major success, the implementation of the Gwembe Tonga Program was a disaster for a number of reasons. First, the next month the Program was set back when an exploding land mine killed a consultant surveying how to rehabilitate the Bottom Road, with subsequent de-mining by the Zambian Army continuing into 2003—two years after the Gwembe Tonga Program was supposed to end. Second, rather than taking on responsibility for Bottom Road rehabilitation, the World Bank handed over the most important project component to the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA). Bureaucratic inefficiencies delayed the use of DBSA funds until the end of 2001 by which time depreciation of the South African currency left funds only sufficient for a poorly supervised South African firm to complete an inappropriate and overpriced feasibility study. Even though the World Bank extended the Gwembe Tonga component of the Power Rehabilitation Project for another two years, additional funding continued to be totally inadequate for substantial progress with road reconstruction. Thereafter, the Bank lost interest in the Bottom Road aside from declaring its final status as being “Highly Unsatisfactory” in the 2006 Power Rehabilitation Project Implementation Completion Report. As for water resources development, the second most important activity, its final status was rated “Unsatisfactory” by the World Bank. Third, while the World Bank also rated ZESCO’s participation as unsatisfactory, my assessment of subsequent World Bank evaluations was that once the critical appraisal team of O’Leary, Ragsdale and Wells was no longer involved in the Project, World Bank implementing personnel had little interest in the Gwembe Tonga component. Fourth, not only were Gwembe Tonga infuriated by the Project’s short-falls, but they were equally angry about the extent to which their active participation in project planning and implementation had been ignored. According to Brenda Musonda, who wrote her Master’s thesis at the University of Witwatersrand on the Gwembe Tonga Development Program, her 5 key informants during her fieldwork 9

Though the most logical person to be on the Steering Committee for the Gwembe Tonga Component, Professor Siamwiza was passed over in favor of a non-resettler Plateau Tonga politician whose parents had emigrated from the Middle Zambezi Valley before the Dam was built.

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were “were all employed by ZESCO specifically to implement the projects. So, most of the workers of GTDP were ZESCO employees which saved on costs of employing outsiders” (Musonda 2008: 66). The annoyance of the seven Gwembe Chiefs was such that they sent the following complaint in 2008 to the World Bank Director in Washington, D.C.: “THE WRONGS THE BANK HAS DONE—BACKGROUND AND CURRENT SUFFERING OF THE DISPLACED PEOPLE FOLLOWING RELOCATION 1. The Bottom Road Priority for the Gwembe Tonga people The economic benefits of the Bottom Road cannot be over emphasized as it will open up the Valley [by] improving trade along the lake shore, easing movement of people, improving food security, easing marketing of produce and merchandise in the valley and beyond, exploiting the tourism potential and abundant mineral resources, and improving fisheries and setting up aquaculture industries. 2. Phase Two When the project was coming to an end the World Bank asked GTDP to draw [up] a phase two of the project. Phase two was [drawn up] and submitted to the World Bank and the Zambian Government. All the chiefs of the Valley have a copy of phase two of the project. Phase two of the project was discussed with the World Bank country representative who indicated that the Zambia Government should write the Bank to fund phase two of the project. Please accept this letter as a formal appeal to complete the project that World Bank began in 1998. ESPECIALLY THE BOTTOM ROAD.” Little change occurred over the next three years. In 2011, then Zambian President Sata included the Bottom Road, without major World Bank financing,10 in the government’s Link Zambia 8,000 Road Project that was designed to pave over a five year period three roads in each of the country’s ten provinces. Estimated costs for 8,000 km of roads was expected to cost at least $5.5 billion. Though lack of funds for paying contractors has caused years of delays since 2011, Bottom Road slow progress continues. In 2016 the first 132 km tarred section was completed which links Siavonga District with Gwembe District and provides the two interior Gwembe Valley chieftaincies (Munyumbwe and Sinadambwe) with more rapid and safe tarred road access to Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, via both the Lusaka–Chirundu Access Highway as well as via the Munyumbwe–Gwembe Boma road. According to Munyumbwe’s District Council Treasurer, businessmen are “now coming to Munyumbwe … to look for goats and cattle. A lot of people are coming from Lusaka to use the same road to buy fish…We have buses going to Siavonga

According to the World Bank, the project “was mainly financed by market priced Euro bonds that are currently contributing to the fiscal pressure for interest payments as the bonds were dollar denominated posing a huge foreign exchange risk due to the depreciation of the local unit, the Kwacha, in the last two years (World Bank May 8, 2017: 2)!

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(from Munyumbwe). This road has made the lives of the communities better” (Zambia Daily Mail, December 28, 2016). Less desirable is that local entrepreneurs “have taken up charcoal burning. They sell charcoal to motorists. Most of the high-value charcoal along Bottom Road finds its way to Lusaka where it has a ready market” (Ibid). In September 2015, President Lungu11 spoke at the ground-breaking ceremony for the commencement of the second and final 108 km section of the Bottom Road which was to link Munyumbwe and Chief Chipepo’s Chabbo Boma’s village and school to the tarred road at Sinazeze in Sinazongwe District. During his speech, the President “advised the people of Southern Province to ignore critics of the Bottom Road project which is meant to spur growth in the area … . The Bottom Road was a strategic road that could spur economic development in the province due to the numerous opportunities for diversification in areas of agriculture and tourism…He said the Bottom Road would aid fish traders and crocodile farmers, among other entrepreneurs, to conduct their business effectively. In his reply to the President’s speech, Senior Chief Sinazongwe said, “Your Excellency, we are very happy that after 60 years of inactivity, the [government] has commenced this project which will connect the three districts and make us live as one people.” His remarks were “echoed” by Chief Chipepo who gave a vote of thanks” (Times of Zambia, September 17, 2015).

4.9 4.9.1

World Bank International Panels of Environmental and Social Experts Introduction

My 1989 Sardar Sarovar report completed my last consultancy based on field work for the World Bank. Thereafter I restricted further field research and reporting under World Bank auspices to membership on Bank-required independent Environmental and Social Panels of Experts (POE) for larger and more contentious projects. As I look back on my experiences with the World Bank, I am not sure if that shift was primarily due to my current belief that the World Bank tends to treat its consultants poorly. Certainly I suffered such treatment in two cases during the 1980s which coincided with my joining in 1986 the first visit of the Panel of Experts for the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP). The first case occurred in the mid-1980s after the Bank’s Office of Evaluation (OED) recruited me to complete a desk review, with the assistance of OED’s Gottfried Ablasser, of the Bank’s experience with government-sponsored new lands settlement. Subsequently in 1987, Ablasser wrote a 4 page article based on our research (Finance and Development 1987: 45–48). No mention of my name was 11

Lungu was elected president in January 2015 following Sata’s death in October 2014.

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included. Two years later, the second case was when the Bank’s Michael Baxter falsified my Sardar Sarovar conclusions in my 1989 report. In addition to increased clout, a major advantage of membership on a Panel of Experts over being a Consultant were close friendships and relationships with other panel members, most of whom had international reputations in their fields of expertise that tended to exceed those of World Bank staff. Examples from the Lesotho Panel, were Guillermo Cano, former Minister of Water Affairs in Argentina, John Ledger, current Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Johannesburg, and former Chief Executive Officer of South Africa’s Endangered Wildlife Trust, and Robert Hitchcock, a global expert on indigenous people. Though Cano was only able to be a member of the first POE meeting, his impact on me has been lasting. In his earlier involvement with the LHDA, he had advised the Lesotho government to place the project under the responsibility of the central government. Initially, he recommended the Office of the Prime Minister; a recommendation which he changed, while on the POE, to the Chair of the Council of Ministers (Fig. 4.1). Both recommendations emphasized that a country’s megaproject with regional development implications should have central government supervision; a recommendation that I believe has global significance and which I remember whenever I glance at the following drawing that he drafted while he sat across from me. As for John Ledger, when I finally resigned from the Lesotho POE, he said “I love you man” as he embraced me in a bear hug; a remembrance that still brings tears to my eyes. Colleagues on Laos’ NT2 Panel included David McDowell and Lee Talbot, both of whom had been Director Generals of the International Union of the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, as well as Tim Whitmore who was a global expert on tropical plants with Cambridge and Oxford affiliations. Fig. 4.1 Cano drawing of the author

4.9 World Bank International Panels of Environmental and Social …

4.9.2

The Panel of Experts During Phases 1A (Katse Dam Construction) and 1B (Mohale Dam Construction) of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP)12

4.9.2.1

Introduction

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Between 1989 and 2002, I missed only one of the 19 Panel visits to Lesotho prior to my resignation in order to concentrate on being a panel member for Laos’ World Bank-assisted Nam Theun 2 Dam project. “Initiated by what were seen at the time as two pariah governments,13 LHWP was controversial and problem-prone from the start. On the other hand, I considered two of the project’s major goals (water delivery to South Africa and hydropower generation for Lesotho) in the macro-economic interests of both countries. That conclusion was reinforced after South Africa’s Independence in 1994 at which time the project received the support of President Mandela, Kader Asmal, the Government’s new Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, and the African National Congress. I hoped that I could contribute to implementing the project’s third goa1, which was at least to restore the living standards of project-affected people and to protect ‘the existing quality of the environment’ (LHWP 1986 Treaty: 71) (Scudder in Thamae and Pottinger, eds 2006:39).

4.9.2.2

POE Impacts Between 1989 and 1991

During the first three years, the POE’s impact on the project was minor. One reason was the Panel’s organization. Unlike the Bank’s Dam Safety Panel of engineers and geologists that had three-year contracts, our POE “only had one-year contracts. Members were also initially given short notice about forthcoming visits, with the result that, predictably, some members were unavailable due to other commitments” (Scudder ibid: 74). POE disagreements with the Project’s binational Joint Permanent Technical Commission was the POE’s major constraint. Though supposed to be the project’s major policy-making body, the 1986 LHWP treaty, and especially the Commission’s South African members, saw the project primarily:

12

Phase 1A was dominated by construction of the Katse Dam and Phase 1B by the construction of the Mohale Dam. 13 Mabusatsa Lenka Thamae and Lori Pottinger (editors). 2006. On the Wrong side of Development: Lessons Learned from the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. Transformation Resource Centre. The Transformation Resource Centre was one of two Lesotho NGOs that played a positive role in critiquing the LHWP. The other was Sechaba Consultants. My comments in this section draw heavily on my 46 page section in this book and on various POE reports.

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“as an infrastructure project for water transfer to South Africa. Rather than sticking to its primary role, another constraint has been the Commission’s ongoing micro-management of the affairs of the [project’s] Environment and Social Affairs Group (which has had a destructive impact on the group’s effectiveness and the morale of its staff)…The composition of the Commission created another problem. Dominated by engineers and technical experts, the Commission’s members were primarily concerned with achieving the project’s infrastructure on time and without major cost overruns … time and again social issues were either ignored or misunderstood” (ibid: 50). (T)he South African delegation also appeared primarily interested in the timely physical removal of Phase 1A and 1B villagers from the reservoir basins and associated project works rather than in resettler rehabilitation. I vividly recall one occasion when one of the South African delegation’s senior advisers and I got into a shouting match during a wrap up meeting because of my insistence that World Bank policies, with which he and the Commission were unfamiliar, and which included not just physical removal but livelihood rehabilitation of all project affected people, must be followed (ibid: 51).

Panel critiques of the Commission, and especially of the South African members, in 1990 and 1991, “led to the Commission’s rejection of the 1991 report as ‘unwarranted negative criticism of, and derogatory comments aimed at, the Commission … as well as efforts of get LHDA to withdraw and repudiate the offending report and to terminate the Panel. LHDA’s response was to urge the Commission to work cooperatively with LHDA to implement Panel recommendations. That position was shared by the World Bank, a senior Bank official making it clear that firing panel members, though a Commission option, might adversely affect loan negotiation for Phase 1B” (ibid, 74).

4.9.2.3

POE Impacts Second Half of 1992–2001

“Though the POE members did not receive three-year contracts until 1996, relationships with the Commission began to improve during the second half of 1992 and remained relatively cordial with both the Commission and the LHDA Chief Executive Officer through 2001. Three examples of increased POE influence follow. One was the gradual realization by Commission members that the POE’s reports had played an important role in convincing them that a compensation and development approach, as opposed to compensation alone, would indeed be required to meet Treaty Obligations. Though the extent to which development should be emphasized continued to be inadequate thereafter, recognition of a development component as a legitimate South African resettlement cost remains, I believe, one of the POE’s major contributions for benefiting LHWP project-affected people. Another major benefit was the POE insistence that Mohale resettling households have the option of relocating anywhere in Lesotho unlike Katse reservoir resettlers who were required to relocate within the Katse basin. A POE resettlement contribution in 1995 further increased its status in the eyes of the Commission and LHDA. Though resettlement had yet to be completed from the reservoir basin, the project authorities requested World Bank permission to seal

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the Katse Dam on schedule so as to take advantage of inflow during the 1995/96 rainy season. The Bank, strongly backed by the Panel, refused, stipulating that replacement houses for all reservoir-affected residents must be completed and occupied before the dam was closed. With the requested closure date only six months away, that was the situation at the Panel’s April 1994 visit during which the Panel played the major role in working out a possible solution that allowed on-schedule closure. That role pioneered greater involvement of Katse villages in the construction of at least some of the 25 houses that were required. The situation was, nonetheless, lamentable since what was belatedly achieved was merely the physical removal of affected households without the necessary social services and development to restore their living standards. It was a situation which the Panel emphasized should not be repeated during resettlement and rehabilitation associated with Phase IB (ibid: 74–75).”

4.10

The World Commission on Dams

4.10.1 Introduction Following his appointment as IUCN’s Director General in 1994, David McDowell sought “strategic partnerships with key international agencies so that they might work together to resolve controversial issues and meet joint interests” (IUCN/World Bank 1997). The 1998–2000 World Commission on Dams was a major outcome of the strategic partnership with the World Bank whose new President, James Wolfensohn, shared McDowell’s concern about the large dams controversy. In April 1997, 35 carefully selected participants14 met over two days at IUCN’s headquarters in Switzerland to attend a workshop, jointly organized by IUCN and the World Bank on ‘Large Dams: Learning from the Past: Looking at the Future’. The Workshop’s most important “achievement was the agreement to establish, by November 1997, a two year World Commission on Dams with the following terms of reference: • To assess the experience with existing, new and proposed large dam projects so as to improve (existing) practices and social and environmental conditions; • To develop decision-making criteria and policy and regulatory frameworks for assessing alternatives for energy and water resources development; • To evaluate the development effectiveness of large dams; • To develop and promote internationally acceptable standards for the planning, assessment, design, construction, operation and monitoring of large dam projects and, if dams are built, ensure that affected people are better off;

One of the 38 invited (three were unable to come), I also provided one of the five Overview Papers (Social Impacts of Large Projects) distributed to participants.

14

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• To identify the implications for institutional, policy and financial arrangements so that benefits, costs and risks are equitably shared at the global, national and local levels, and • To recommend interim modifications—where necessary—of existing policies and guidelines, and promote “best practices” (Large Dams 1997: 9–10) Within a month McDowell had setup an Interim Working Group of Bank and IUCN staff that “would draw on participants in the Workshop for advice and support in establishing the Commission” which held its first meeting in May 1998. Though I did not know at the time, my inclusion among the Commission’s 12 members was almost predetermined. That was because McDowell was familiar with my leadership during the IUCN review of Botswana’s Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project. He also believed that the Commission needed someone whose experience was neither pro nor anti large dams. For that reason he was able to insist on the importance of someone in the middle in spite of opposition to my membership by individuals on both sides of the anti-dam/pro-dam debate. Membership on the Commission came at an ideal time in my career since Caltech faculty who agreed to retire at 70 (the year 2000 in my case) could spend their last two years doing research on full salary. That meant, unlike other commissioners with the possible exception of engineer Jan Veltrop, I was able to work full time on Commission matters. Over a 30-month period, Commission members developed close and supportive relationships. My closest relationship was with Jan Veltrop who had been Chief Engineer and Senior Vice President of Harza Engineering Company, and a former president of the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD). During Commission field trips to Brazil and Sri Lanka, we spent much of our time together including making an additional several day visit to Brazil’s Tucurui Dam. During our long and frequent talks, Veltrop emphasized that throughout his career as an engineer he was so busy planning and building dams, that he did not have time even to examine and/or think about their adverse impacts on free flowing rivers and project affected people. It was only as a member of the World Commission on Dams did he become aware of, and concerned about, such adverse impacts. I suspect his story could apply to the majority of water resource engineers and especially those dealing with hydro dams or dams with a major hydrological component. Our friendship continued until his death. While I was writing up the results of John Gay’s and my statistical analysis of “Resettlement Outcomes of Large Dams” (Scudder 2012 for Tortajada et al’s Impacts of Large Dams: A Global Assessment), it was Veltrop who “pointed out that [my] chapter would be more influential if it included the first detailed statistical analysis of resettlement outcomes” (ibid: 65). The final report of the Commission in 2000 generated major and unfair opposition even within agencies whose members had attended the April 1997 Workshop, and had participated in the work of the Commission. Especially damaging, as a

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result of being one of the organizers, was World Bank criticism, which was largely channeled through John Briscoe. Briscoe and I had been professional friends during much of his career at the Bank and subsequent position as Professor of Environmental Engineering at Harvard University until his death from cancer in 2014. I use the phrase ‘professional friend’ for colleagues who I liked personally but with whom, as in Briscoe’s case, I disagreed on practically all issues dealing with large dams. Furthermore, it was Briscoe more than anyone else who led the World Bank’s misguided effort to discredit the WCD report. That disservice is emphasized below. It is also important, however, to emphasize that, as the Bank’s senior water adviser, Briscoe also “shaped a $40 billion portfolio of water resource, irrigation, hydropower and sanitation projects” (Washington Post Obituaries, November 17, 2009). In other words, while ill informed, misguided, and ignorant in his critique of the Commission’s final report, his emphasis on the global provision of water resources and sanitation, especially in urban habitats, was of global importance. Briscoe’s role in regard to the World Commission on Dams is best told in his own words: “As the Bank’s senior Water Adviser I was the Bank’s point person in helping design the WCD, as liaison to the Commission, and as interlocutor with the Bank’s staff and management, the Bank’s Board, and its borrowers … I was the principal author of the Bank’s 2003 Water Resources Sector Strategy …, which built on the debate launched by the WCD Report and repositioned infrastructure at the heart of the challenge of growth and poverty alleviation… More specifically, I played a major role formulating a number of official Bank documents which bear on the WCD… Now that I no longer work for or speak for the Bank, I also draw on a large store of information on what was really at stake and what really happened.… in all the many hours of discussion on these issues among technical staff of the Bank, with management and the Board. It was extremely rare to face a substantive rebuttal for the position which I advocated vis-a-vis the WCD or the implications for the Bank’s borrowers and the poor in the developing world… While those concerned with single issues (the environment) and single groups (affected people) have merged into a powerful global anti-dam lobby, those who have responsibility for the well-being of all citizens in a developing country have a different and more complex task.

4.10.2 Reactions to the Report

I led the small team of Bank officials who were asked to review the report and to ensure that … the President of the Bank…. was adequately briefed. It was immediately apparent (a) that there was much of value in the Report but (b) that the heart of the matter – compliance with the 26 Guidelines – would effectively make it impossible for the Bank (or anyone else) to ever finance another dam… After the [WCD’s] launch, on Jim Wolfensohn’s instructions I was then dispatched with one other senior staff member to

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discuss the Report with officials of a representative sample of developing countries that were building dams (Briscoe 2010: 399)… It was my judgement that while the Commission was heavily stacked with anti-dam activists, they would be counterbalanced by some excellent professionals and politicians who had a broader view of the issue. I also believed – incorrectly, it turned out—that the Secretary General, a person of great capability, would play a moderating, balancing role. With the benefit of hindsight I can see why this was not the case—the anti-dam commissioners, and their extensive support groups they bought to the process, were ‘veterans’, acutely aware of the unwritten rules of the game with international financial institutions. Whereas several of the moderate commissioners were sophisticated operators in other political contexts, in the content of the WCD they were ‘innocents’ who had never been engaged at close quarters in other political contexts, in this blood spot at the global level… From the day of the launch of the Report…the ‘veterans’ and their anti-dam colleagues lasered in on ‘compliance with the 26 Guidelines’ This took the innocents by surprise, for that was clearly not their reading or intention. The Chair of the Commission issued an immediate clarification: “Our guidelines offer guidance – not a regulatory framework. They are not laws to be obeyed rigidly. They are guidelines with a small ‘g,’ that illustrate best practice and show all nations how they can move forward”. The veterans (with in my mind, justification) dismissed this as the opinion of an individual and not the recommendation of the Commission, and insisted (again with justification, in my mind) that it was the Report that was the bible” (Briscoe 2010: ibid)

What surprises me most about Briscoe’s comments is how narrow-minded they are, and how Briscoe’s unfair and inaccurate analysis of Commission members, is designed to reinforce his defense of large dams. His labeling Commission members as “innocents” was both insulting and untrue as was his implication that Kader Asmal’s statement that the Commission’s “guidelines offer guidance—not a regulatory framework” was only Asmal’s opinion rather than the Commission’s. Ironically, as discussed below, it was the members and institutions of the pro-dam fraternity that were proved to be the “innocents.” Throughout the WCD Process, Asmal was dynamic, dominant and globally well informed as the WCD Chair. His article “Introduction: World Commission on Dams Report, Dams and Development” in the American University International Law Review (Vol. 16. Issue 6. Article 1) ten months after the WCD’s publication is a useful summation of Asmal’s perspective: “The WCD marks a milestone in the slow progress of adjustment to a new development paradigm.” It “is a product of globalization. It is, in effect, a child of the backlash against a failed model of development, one in which economic development trumped wider social and environmental concerns…The title of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s recent book, Development as Freedom, encapsulates this new thinking… In 1994 the Wappenhas Report documented the high failure rate of Bank projects, shaking the Bank’s confidence.” That and OED’s survey of 50 large dams funded by the World Bank led to OED’ s asking IUCN to have a workshop for an independent review of their report “which then led to the formation of the World Commission on Dams over a difficult nine months period. The process was not perfect. The dams industry never lost the grudging feeling that their perspective was under-represented on the Commission.”

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In the end, there was one key element to the success of the Commission process: twelve men and women of integrity, representing every significant perspective in the dam’s debate, unanimously agreeing upon and signing the report – embracing all the values, principles, guidelines, and recommendations contained therein.

Over our 30 months together, the pro dam Commissioners I got to know best were engineers Jan Veltrop and Donald Blackmore. Unlike Briscoe’s inability to understand how serious were the environmental, health and social impacts of large dams, by the end of the Commission both Veltrop and Blackmore shared my concerns on those issues. In his assessment of the WCD’s outcome, McCully, one of Briscoe’s “veterans,” noted that Veltrop and Commissioner Goran Lindahl (CEO of the engineering multinational ABB) “proved to be generally open-minded and prepared to accept the evidence that dams have under-performed and have had huge social and environmental impacts. They further accepted the progressive policy principles that formed the basis for WCD’s recommendations” (McCully 2001: 1472). McCully also agreed that Kader Asmal played a key role in the Commission’s outcome contrary to Briscoe’s assessment. In addition to interpreting the competence and influence of Commissioners according to his own interests rather than the facts, Briscoe also ignored the opposing views of other World Bank colleagues such as Robert Goodland. After being a World Bank consultant for four years on Bank projects, Goodland was hired as the Bank’s first full-time ecologist in 1978 with the initial responsibility of advising on ways for dealing with adverse environmental and social impacts of Bank appraised projects—advice, in the form of recommendations, that he found his Bank colleagues seldom willing to implement. Thereafter, and influenced by the Bank’s Michael Cernea who was another of Briscoe’s unmentioned influential Bank critics of large dams, Goodland switched to playing a lead role in drafting, gaining approval of, and monitoring the implementation of the Bank’s environmental and social guidelines. Goodland and Cernea then played major roles in helping other international and national development agencies as well as international banks establish, and coordinate with the Bank, their own such standards. Just as Briscoe eventually became the Bank’s Senior Water Adviser so Goodland in the 1990s became the Bank’s Lead Environmental Adviser while Cernea became Senior Adviser for Sociology and Social Policy. Like Briscoe, Goodland also played an active role in the history of the World Commission of Dams—but supportive role within the Bank which Briscoe ignores—which he wrote about in the same source (Water Alternatives: The World Commission of Dams + 10) that contained Briscoe’s previously cited article. As with Briscoe, I prefer letting Goodland discuss the Commission, as well as Briscoe himself, in his own words. My primary source is the World Bank Group’s Oral History Program and specifically the Program’s 59 page Oral History interview with Goodland:

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Oral History Question: [P]lease discuss how adequately equipped is the Bank in handling large size and complex projects, in particular the contentious issue of large dams. Goodland’s answer: I would say inadequately equipped… Partly due to my history, as I had worked on the world’s biggest dams before joining the Bank, I was familiar with the environmental and social impact of dams. I drafted the Bank’s policy on the environmental and social impacts of dams and reservoirs mainly to prevent impacts on the poor… Reluctantly, the Bank eventually came around to agree that things were bad in the hydro projects it was financing, and some were totally unacceptable …So we had a big international conference in Gland, Switzerland at IUCN headquarters in 1997. That led directly to the World Commission on Dams. I helped set it up in Cape Town. Minister Kader Asmal and Achim Steiner offered me the job to strengthen them full time… It may have been my mistake that I couldn’t accept their offer, but I helped start them up strongly and steered them in a prudent direction. Q: What, in your opinion, needs now be done by the Bank? A: The Bank needs to adopt a reliable policy on big dams and on involuntary displacement. The best policy is found in the World Commission’s report, but the Bank rejected it… If followed, it would have made dams uncontentious. Unfortunately, the Bank rejected the report of the Commission. And almost vilified the World Dams Commission staff. John Briscoe, one of the Bank’s most strident environmental skeptics, promoted big dams over renewable energy and natural gas.

Briscoe was correct in identifying anti-dam NGOs as strong opponents. But as various NGO opponents pointed out, their strength profited from the inability of the Pro-Dam individuals and institutions to organize themselves. Most prominent among Briscoe’s NGO’s “veterans” was Patrick McCully, author of the influential Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams (2001) and one of the authors in the American University International Law Review’s 2001 issue on the World Commission on Dams. In describing the background to the growing NGO opposition to large dams, McCully emphasized the importance of the 1994 Manibeli Declaration “which called for a moratorium on World Bank funding for dams. Three hundred twenty-six groups and coalitions in forty-four countries demanded that the World Bank establish an ‘independent comprehensive review of all World Bank-funded large dam projects to establish the actual costs, including direct and indirect economic, environmental and social costs, and the actually realized benefits of each project…’ (McCully, 2001b:1456). “At the end of 1994, the World Bank’s Operation Evaluation Department (‘OED’) informed the International Rivers Network that it would review Bank-funded dams… A final draft of the OED review was circulated internally to the Bank’s Executive Directors and senior management in September 1996. OED failed to meet its commitment to circulate drafts to NGOs for comment, and the full review was never publically released… Long-time Bank staff, who had worked on the dam projects being reviewed, were resentful of criticism of dams and kept a close eye on the OED team working on the review. These staff members helped ensure that the review started with largely pro-dam assumptions and ended with largely pro-dam conclusions” (McCully 2001: 1456–1457)

The Bank’s intention was for the 1996 Gland Workshop with IUCN to provide a review of the OED report. To ensure favorable comments the Bank wanted only ‘reasonable’ NGOs invited. Not only did IUCN insist on an ‘open house’ affair but

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“contacted IRN to suggest names of activists to invite to the workshop … six groups, known to be highly critical of dams, and the World Bank, accepted invitations” (ibid: 1458) which included review of the OED study which the Workshop proceeded to reject. The dam critics who came to Gland were greatly surprised that the workshop resulted not only in an agreement to establish an independent dam review, but that the review would encompass dams and not just those funded by the World Bank… The OED/Bank staff therefore concluded that their best response to the NGOs’ demands would be to propose the establishment of a review of dam building in general… More surprising than the Bank’s offer of a global dam review was that the dam industry representatives at the workshop agreed to the proposal (McCully ibid: 1460–1461). A…vital element in the WCD’s success is the dam industry’s lack of experience in common strategizing and action, and its inability to reach a common position on whether and how to engage the WCD. Had the industry possessed better organizational skills, it may have either refused to take part in the WCD or done more to influence the process. Several pro-dam governments and agencies attacked the process at one time or another, but their efforts were never coordinated or effective. (McCully ibid, 1471).

Another of the NGO “veterans” that Briscoe referred to was Peter Bosshard who served as secretary of the Swiss Berne Declaration when he was a member of the Reference Group and subsequently became a president of the International Rivers Network. Like Briscoe he wrote one of the papers in the Water Alternatives + 10 2010 Issue that presents a careful comparison of the different backgrounds and influence of the NGOs and the Dam industry on the WCD Report. To continue McCully’s analysis of NGO strengths and Pro Dam weaknesses, in Bosshard’s words: In March 1997, the First International Meeting of People Affected by Dams took place in Curitiba, Brazil. The participants of the meeting called… for an ‘international independent commission… to conduct a comprehensive review’ of large dams (Curitiba Declaration, 1997). NGO representatives brought this proposal into the Gland workshop… After some trepidation, the World Bank delegation also lent support to the idea… Although the dam industry was actively involved in the WCD process, the different industry actors never tried or managed to harmonize their approach to the WCD… The industry members of the WCD Forum did begin to caucus ahead of the Forum meetings halfway through the process. But unlike the NGOs which cooperated very effectively throughout the WCD Process, they were not use to working together and appeared to disagree on key issues such as the need for public acceptance of dam projects. Civil society contributions far outnumbered industry contributions among the submissions to the WCD’s knowledge base, and during the question and answers sessions at the WCD’s four regional consultations… When the WCD Report was published, it was immediately welcomed by international civil society, international organizations such as UNEP and the World Health Organization, and financial institutions such as the African and Asian Development Banks. The new rights-and-risks approach turned affected communities from passive victims or beneficiaries into active participants in dam projects… The dam industry was once again split in its response to the WCD report… Skanska, a Swedish construction company, found the report to be ‘extremely valuable,’ and expressed the hope ‘that the Commission’s new criteria and guidelines become accepted globally’ (Skanska 2000) (Bosshard 2010: 60–61).

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Bosshard also noted that the Australian Committee on Large Dams also favored the report and encouraged the International Commission on Large Dams “to not only accept the report but to actively promote it” (Australian National Committee on Large Dams: n.d.). With the exception of some dam building agencies particularly in developing countries, the strongest opposition to the WCD framework was orchestrated by the World Bank. Soon after the report was published, the Bank’s senior water advisor [Briscoe] set out on a tour to visit [only seven] developing country governments, during which he strongly advised them against adopting the WCD recommendations (Bosshard ibid:62).

When I visited Laos on one of the NT2 POE’s missions I was informed that Briscoe and his colleague Lintner did not try to get opinions on the WCD report from government agencies, including the university, other than the Ministry of Mining and Energy. The World Bank’s 2004 Water Resources Sector Strategy: Strategic Directions for World Bank Engagement also summarizes the Bank’s position on the World Commission on Dams. John Briscoe was the main author assisted by the ‘diverse members’ of the Bank’s water community: ‘a high level panel of Bank staff on the issue of a new business model for Bank engagement with high-risk/high-reward infrastructure’ and members of the Bank’s senior management (World Bank 2003: v). The 2004 Strategy’s Overview and Executive Summary starts with the Bank’s 1993 Water Resources Management Policy Paper that “reflected the broad global consensus that was forged during the Rio Earth Summit of 1992” (2004: 1). A decade later, an OECD “major review of industrial countries… concluded that progress in implementation has been difficult, slow and uneven” (ibid). Yet in 2004, the Bank’s policy response in regard to the large dam component of its new Water Resources Sector Strategy was that “The World Bank will reengage with high-reward-high-risk hydraulic infrastructure” (ibid:4). Granted the findings of the World Commission on Dams in 2000, McCully’s Silent Rivers in 2001, my The Future of Large Dams in 2005, and Ansar, Flyvbjerg et al’s “Should we build more large dams? The actual cost of hydropower megaproject development” in 2013, emphasis on “high-reward-high-risk hydraulic infrastructure” in the Bank’s 2004 Strategy makes no sense. More specifically, the Bank’s rejection of the World Commission on Dams 26 guidelines is based on Briscoe’s erroneous conclusion that the consensus of the Commission was that the WCD’s 26 guidelines were a regulatory framework to be obeyed rigidly. As for other weaknesses in comparison with WCD policies on specific issues, the Bank’s social guidelines for resettlement do not require affected people to be project beneficiaries nor is the Bank willing to accept “a blanket prohibition on work with an agency that has built a dam in contravention of good faith negotiations” (2004: 78) dealing with international rivers.

4.11

4.11

With Special Emphasis on Involuntary Resettlement …

243

With Special Emphasis on Involuntary Resettlement, the Origins, Initial Inadequacies and Subsequent Weakening of World Bank Environmental and Social Safeguard Policies for Replacement by Still Weaker Environmental and Social Framework Policies

4.11.1 Introduction The impetus for, and creation of, the World Bank’s Environmental and Social Safeguard Policies were due primarily to Michael Cernea and Robert Goodland. The first Safeguard Policy, Social Issues Associated with Involuntary Resettlement in Bank-Financed Projects, Operational Manual Statement 2.33, was issued in February 1980. I am most familiar with OMS 2.33 not just because it deals with involuntary resettlement but because its origin dates back to my 1977 lecture on forced community resettlement in connection with Bank-financed dams. Not only did that lecture stimulate Cernea to organize the drafting of the Bank’s first Safeguard Policy but to also make involuntary resettlement one of his major research interests. Goodland, who considered involuntary resettlement “by far the biggest problem on the social side” (Robert Goodland, World Bank Oral History Program, 2005: 8–9), helped Cernea by adding some human ecology and environment to his draft. Both subsequently played major roles in drafting other Safeguard Policies, with Goodland’s first one dealing with the protection of “vulnerable ethnic minorities: OMS 2.34 of February 1982” (ibid: 8–9). Nine other Safeguards Policies followed dealing with such topics as Safety of Dams, Natural Habitats, and Pest Management (World Bank April 5, 2017). Though I have always been very critical of the Involuntary Resettlement Safeguard Policy (see below), there is no doubt that such policies have been critically important granted the tendency of the World Bank and other international agencies to ignore, in their so-called development projects, adverse environmental impacts and adverse impacts, such as involuntary resettlement, that involve project-affected people. Moreover, not only was the World Bank the first agency to draft such policies, but through the efforts of Cernea, Goodland and others, also played the major role in convincing other international agencies and the OECD countries with their export-import agencies, and some major banks, to create similar Environmental and Social Safeguard Policies. According to Cernea, in regard to the Bank’s first Safeguard Policy: In 1980, no other multilateral or bilateral development agency had such guidelines. The Asian Development Bank formally adopted such a policy only fifteen years later, in 1995. Nor did the OECD countries – each with its own bilateral aid agency—have any such policy guidelines. It took more than a decade for OECD and those agencies to recognize the legitimacy and timeliness of the World Bank’s policy. In 1991, OECD’s Development Assistance Commission invited me to Paris in several rounds, and I wrote at OECD-DAC’s request the social policy guidelines on involuntary resettlement for the bilateral aid agencies

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4 My Increasing Disillusionment with the Planning, Implementation …

of OECD countries” (Michael Cernea, Society for Applied Anthropology Oral History Program 2007: 26).

4.11.2 Social Issues Associated with Involuntary Resettlement in Bank-Financed Projects (OP 4.12—Involuntary Resettlement December, 2001. Revised April 2013)15 The greatest weakness of OP 4.12, and earlier versions, is the wording on page 1 that “displaced persons should be assisted in their efforts to improve their livelihoods and standards of living, or at least to restore them [my underlining], in real terms to pre-displacement levels prevailing prior to the beginning of project implementation, whichever is higher.” At the time the involuntary resettlement guidelines were drafted in the late 1970s, research by Colson, myself, and others already had emphasized that the complexity of involuntary resettlement was such that a ‘restoration’ policy could be expected to further impoverish a majority of what were often already impoverished communities. Cernea knew this because I had told him but was unable to convince Bank management that a benefit sharing approach was necessary. That unacceptable weakness on the part of Bank Management has continued until this day. For example, while Director General of the Bank ‘s Operations Evaluation, and Senior Author of the Bank’s 2001 Involuntary Resettlement: Comparative Respectives, Picciotto and his colleagues, in the book’s summary, were unable to convince Bank management that “Above all, displacees must be beneficiaries of the project. Merely aiming to restore standards of living and life styles common to isolated river valleys can be a dead-end development strategy” (Op Cit: 140). Another major weakness of the various editions of the Involuntary Resettlement policy is that they do not emphasize that involuntary community resettlement is a complicated and dynamic process that all too often is carried out by governments and engineering firms with: (1) (2) (3) (4)

insufficient political will, insufficient funds, insufficient capacity, insufficient development opportunities to enable resettlers to raise their living standards and contribute to a stream of project benefits, and (5) insufficient active involvement (as opposed to consultation) of resettlers throughout the resettlement process.

15

This is the latest revision of OMS 2.33.

4.11

With Special Emphasis on Involuntary Resettlement …

245

Furthermore, the resettlement process can be expected to continue after the completion of dam construction and reservoir filling until the project authorities have adequately handed over development responsibilities to local government agencies and to resettler institutions to enable the second generation of resettlers and their hosts16 to successfully compete for their fair share of national resources. More specifically, funds tend to be inadequate because pre-project baseline studies underestimate the number of people requiring resettlement (by 50% according to the Bank’s own research). Furthermore, delays in implementing baseline studies tend to underestimate the extent to which a majority already have been adversely affected by the project before project approval, and the commencement of construction, because such government services and activities as agricultural extension, schools, road construction and maintenance have already been cut in anticipation of reservoir filling (Scudder 2005). Then, because it takes years for the Bank to revise its Safeguard policies, there is the probability that research has provided new and important knowledge relating to resettler well-being that is not incorporated. A major example, yet to be dealt with, in either the Involuntary Resettlement Operation Manual or the new 2017 Environmental and Social Framework dealing with resettlement (ESS5. Land Acquisition, Restrictions on Land Use, and Involuntary Resettlement), is the adverse impact that better trained and politically connected immigrants are apt to have on resettler communities that surround new reservoirs. During John Gay’s and my statistical analysis of resettlement outcomes in 44 large dams, we learned that resettlers had more difficulty in competing and integrating with immigrants for dam and reservoir benefits, such as commercial fisheries, other businesses, and illegal occupiers of resettler land (for irrigated farming, tourist lodges, and vacation homes) than with competing and living with hosts. Another of our statistical findings related to the adverse effects of unexpected environmental and political events. Examples of the latter adversely affected resettler livelihood in Sri Lanka’s Mahaweli Project when the Buddhist beliefs of the first Mahaweli Project chairman restricted the fishing and livestock-rearing activities of project affected people while the different interests of a new president adversely affected resettler livelihoods (Scudder 2005: 156–159). Looking to the future, increasingly adverse environmental effects such as drought and excessive rainfall induced by climate change also can be expected to have adverse impacts on resettler communities.

16

While Bank policy is to include host populations, they too risk impoverishment due to inadequate farmland and various common property natural resources (water included); schools, health and other facilities; and the risk of conflict over economic, political, religious and socio-cultural issues.

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4 My Increasing Disillusionment with the Planning, Implementation …

4.11.3 Decreasing World Bank Emphasis on Environmental and Social Policies By the year 2000 or thereabouts, I believe the Golden Age for Environmental and Social Policies came to an end. Two major reasons involved negative reactions within the World Bank to the 2000 World Commission on Dams’ Guidelines, and to similar Bank attacks on the 2001 Extractive Industries Review.17 According to Robert Goodland, who was actively involved in the Extractive Industries Review following his retirement from the Bank: “The Bank’s role in extractive industries is stark. It increases more poverty than it alleviates. The extractive industries are the prototypical example of discredited trickle-down theory. Typically … the Bank helps a foreign mining company come into a developing country with very weak environmental and social regulations, weakened governments in general, gutted labor laws, and absent health and safety standards. The company opens a mine and pays royalties and taxes to the government. The Bank hopes that some of those taxes and royalties to the government eventually trickle-down to reduce poverty. However, it doesn’t work that way… On the contrary, the direct poverty-creating aspects of mining and extractive industries in general is unacceptable.

Just as the Bank rejected the World Commission on Dams, it did not accept the Extractive Industries Review either.” (Goodland Oral History 2005: 27–28). In further comments on the extractive industries situation, Goodland added: “(T)he Bank needs to stop weakening its social and environmental policies. On the contrary, the Bank needs to keep its policies up-to-date and commensurate with environmental and social needs in its member countries. The Bank’s Mining Department financed weakening of mining codes in about 70 countries. This was my biggest shock during my EIR work.” (ibid: 2005:29).”

4.11.4 The World Bank’s April 2017 Environmental and Social Frameworks to Replace the Environmental and Social Safeguard Policies During 2018 According to a World Bank April 5, 2017 web release on Environmental and Social Safeguards Policies, The World Bank’s environmental and social safeguard policies are a cornerstone of its support to sustainable poverty reduction. The objective of these policies is to prevent and mitigate undue harm to people and their environment in the development process. These policies will be replaced during 2018 with the Environmental and Social Framework (ESF).

17

Urban renewal and mining tend to be the second and third largest causes of involuntary resettlement following large dams.

4.11

With Special Emphasis on Involuntary Resettlement …

247

The two sets of policies will operate in parallel for about seven years to govern projects approved before and after the date the ESF starts to be applied.

Note that the above release is in praise of the Bank’s Safeguard Policies rather than the new Frameworks that were finally approved by the Bank’s Board in August 2014. Though subjected, over a four year period, to a series of three contentious global assessments, the Bank avoided consulting at Bank headquarters the leading NGO on development-induced involuntary resettlement (The International Network on Displacement and Resettlement) whose ten person advisory board includes global experts on development-induced involuntary resettlement from Australia, China, India, South Africa and United States. In the 1 February 2016 issue of DEVEX three former World Bank senior officials18 wrote the following about the new Environmental and Social Frameworks: The World Bank now proposes replacing its safeguard policies with weaker and ‘aspirational standards’ that may be met ‘flexibly’ during a project’s execution …[The bank] also proposes reliance on self-monitoring by the borrower, which could hide damages, thereby raising the costs of correction and legacies. If implemented, the World Bank’s current proposal to revise-down and de-rank safeguard policies would gravely weaken social and environmental safeguards on which investments are now premised.

18

Michael Cernea, Vinod Thomas (35 years with the Bank; last position as director general and vice president of the Independent Evaluation Group) and Rob van den Berg (10 years as director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the Bank’s Global Environment Facility).

Chapter 5

Summary

5.1

Introduction

The inadequate monitoring, by such organizations as the World Bank, “of the impacts of dams and the complete failure to conduct proper ex-post evaluations of performance and impacts” (WCD 2000: 184) is frankly appalling. Moreover, “one of the major reasons why the current non-productive debate on dams has thrived, is the absence of objective and detailed ex-post analyses of the physical, economic, social and environmental impacts of large dams, 5,10 or 15, years after their construction” (Biswas 2012: 12). One purpose of this monograph is to explain, through my own sixty years of research on large dams, why ex post evaluations need be continued over the long term to balance emphasis on the many short and medium term benefits of large dams against increasing costs over the long term to free flowing river habitats, associated communities, and global cultures. It was such short-term benefits that initially convinced me during the first 20 years of my research (1956–1975) that large dams presented an exceptional opportunity for integrated river basin development. As my long-term research continued, I became increasingly skeptical that benefits could continue to exceed costs over time. My thinking and conclusions were influenced by four experiences, the last two of which confirmed my current belief that, over the long term, large dams are not cost effective.

5.2

The First Experience

First in time was membership on the World Commission on Dams (1998–2000) that broadened the breadth of my experience with large dams. Unlike my fellow commissioners, I was able to work fulltime on the Commission (WCD) for over © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Scudder, Large Dams, Water Resources Development and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2550-2_5

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two years that gave me the opportunity to familiarize myself with the vast WCD knowledge base that included case studies of individual dams, country studies of China and India, and Thematic Reviews and Contributing Papers on topics outside my expertise. Especially important for me were Thematic Reviews of such topics as Electricity Supply and Demand Options, Water Supply Options and Flood Control and Management Options.

5.3

The Second Experience

Writing my 2005 The Future of Large Dams: Dealing with Social, Environmental, Institutional and Political Costs was the second important experience. As during my membership on the WCD, in 2005 I still saw large dams, though flawed, as a still necessary development option” (Scudder 2005: 1). But my doubts had increased during the 2001–2005 period as a result of the first statistical analysis of community resettlement in connection with large dams that I completed with the assistance of John Gay.1 Because of unavailability of necessary information, our analysis included only 44 cases. Living standards improved in only three cases (7%), restoration occurred in 5 cases (11%) and living standards worsened among the majority in 36 cases (82%). Major factors associated with improvement and restoration were political will on the part of the government, adequate financing and staff capacity, opportunities for those resettled, and active participation of the communities resettled. Further significant findings included the adverse effects of construction workers and subsequent immigrants who out-competed resettlers in utilizing such reservoir basin resources as fisheries and land for agriculture and tourism. Competition with host populations, unexpected events, and changes in government could also have adverse impacts on resettling communities.

5.4

The Third Experience

Third in influencing my present conclusion that large dams are not cost effective over the long-term, was a recent statistical analysis of 245 large dams by four Oxford University professionals that indicated that “even before accounting for negative impacts on human society and environment, the actual construction costs of large dams are too high to yield a positive return” (Ansar et al. 2014: 2).

1

See Scudder (2005) The Future of Large Dams, Chap. 3, and Tortajada et al. (2012), The Impacts of Large Dams, Chap. 3.

5.4 The Third Experience

251

The senior author of the above article was Bent Fryvbjerg who is “the first BT Professor and inaugural Chair of Major Programme Management at Oxford University. He works for better management of megaprojects and cities” and is “the most cited scholar in the world in megaproject planning and management” (Said Business School, University of Oxford). My first contact with Fryvbjerg was in April 2014 when he emailed me that my 1973 article on “The Human Ecology of Big Projects: River Basin Development and Resettlement”2 had been included in his edited two volume “Megaproject Planning and Management: Essential Readings.” I wrote in my April 24 reply that together his Essential Readings book and his co-authored article on “Should we build more large dams?” have played an important role in my recent decision to change my data analysis and writing priorities. The Oxford article finally gave me the opportunity to write this book. I had been putting off such a book for years because of the absence of a credible publication dealing with economic factors on which I could ‘piggy back’ my social and environmental data and experiences to finally document why large dams are not cost effective over the long term (50+ years). Early in 2015, Flyvbjerg contacted me because Oxford University Press had invited him to edit The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management. In his email, he then added “and I would very much like you to be a leading contributing author. I hold your work in the highest esteem and believe its inclusion would substantially add to the quality and attractiveness of the Handbook.” In “the proposed Table of Authors I have penciled you in with ‘The Good Dam: Does It Exist All Things Considered?’ as the holding title, and no one would be in a better position than you to write this chapter, in my view.”

5.5

The Fourth Experience

The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management was published in 2017. Published under Fryvbjerg’s suggested title, my “The Good Dam: Does It Exist All Things Considered?” was chapter 19. Writing that chapter was the fourth experience that convinced me that large dams are not cost effective over the long term. I suggest that readers seeking a much briefer economic, environmental and socio-cultural analysis of why Large Dams are not Cost Effective over the Longer Term read chapter 19. The Table of Contents is in the following Annex.

2

In Annual Review of Anthropology 1973: 45–55.

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5 Summary

Annex I The Good Megadam: Does It Exist All Things Considered? 19:1 Introduction 19:2 The Political Economy of Large Dams 19:3 Economic and Financial Costs 19:3:1 Introduction 19:3:2 Flaws in Economic and Financial Analysis: Megadams are not Cost Effective 19:3:3 The Current Build, Own, Operate, and Transfer (BOOT) Approach to Large Dam Construction 19:3:4 Flaws in a Politically Biased Options Assessment Process 19:3:5 Discount Rates are Too High 19:3:6 Emergency Repair and Decommissioning Costs 19:3:6:1 Emergency Repair: The Kariba Case 19:3:6:2 Decommissioning and Dam Removal: Giles Canyon and Elwha Dams 19:3:7 Inadequate Political Will, Budget, and Staff Capacity on the Part of Government and Political Authorities 19:3:8 Monitoring and Evaluation (M & E) Are Weak 19:3:9 Corruption 19:4 Ecological and Environmental Costs 19:4:1 19:4:2 19:4:3 19:4:4 19:4:5

Free-Flowing Rivers, Large Dams and Engineers Evaluation and Research on Free Flowing Rivers Floodplain and River Restoration Climate Change Associated Environmental Degradation: Environmental Costs Associated with Fragmentation of Either a Free Flowing River or a Portion of a River Basin

19:4:5:1 Immediate Upstream Areas 19:4:5:2 Reservoir Basins, Greenhouse Gas Sedimentation 19:4:5:3 Downstream Flows and Fisheries 19:4:5:4 Negative Impacts on Delta Ecosystems

Emissions,

19:5 Reservoir Basin Community Resettlement 19:5:1 Introduction 19:5:2 Resettlement Outcomes 19:5:3 The Magnitude of Dam—Related Community Resettlement

and

Annex I

253

19:5:4 Evaluation and Research 19:5:5 Dam Resettlers are Incorporated into a National/International Political Economy: Hence the Importance of Education 19:5:6 Health 19:6 Downstream Community Impacts 19:7 Handing Over 19:8 Conclusion

Chapter 6

Postscript: In Search of a Career and Myself

6.1

Introduction

My childhood and adolescence, and those of Eliza, my wife and companion of 67 years, were rather exceptional for children of educated parents in the United States. The second of three children and born with serious dyslexia (a little known condition in the 1930s) and only one good eye, Eliza was a mystery to her parents, psychiatrist, and most teachers. The second child of a family that took inheritance seriously (my brother was Townsend Scudder IV), I also had the misfortune of not being the girl my mother wanted in our two child family. I was also nearly four years, or more, younger than my brother and eight cousins, with the result that I was considered either as a brat, or was excluded from their gatherings. As a result of such circumstances, and others dealt with below, both Eliza and I had to make our own way from childhood onward. Why is all this important for a book dealing primarily with the impacts of large dams on project affected people and free-flowing rivers? I believe the reason is because my career over the past 60 years has been unique, a condition which Kader Asmal, Chair, of the World Commission on Dams (1979–2000), of which I was a member, was especially aware. In his forward to my 2005, The Future of Large Dams, he wrote: So what are we to make of this American – from a country often considered one of the most provincial and inward looking in the world – who did the exact opposite? Ted left home, family, comfort and excellent education and career in the US to immerse himself not only in developing nations, but also among the lives of the poorest of the poor and dispossessed in those nations. Some may consider such a life to be a moral crusade, evangelism or missionary work. But Ted’s research was never motivated by anything more than an insatiable drive for answers to questions most would rather not ask. Through his investigations, he created a field of study, a discipline of his own, where none existed. He documented – disinterestedly but not dispassionately – the voices of the voiceless, the lives of the nameless. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 T. Scudder, Large Dams, Water Resources Development and Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2550-2_6

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His immersion and travels made it impossible to pin down Ted’s identity, his sense of place, let alone his politics. You see at once he is more comfortable crossing a Southeast Asian paddy than sitting in a Washington office building, more at ease among the Tamil or Basotho or Tonga than among classmates at his Harvard reunions.1

Throughout my career, I insisted on the importance of long-term research and post-project audits if one was to better understand and respond to the impacts of large dams, and carried out such research myself with special emphasis on Kariba— the first mainstream dam on the Zambezi. As a result of that study, and subsequent research on large dams on 15 other rivers, including the Nile (Aswan High Dam), Mahaweli (Sri Lanka), Narmada (India’s Sardar Sarovar), and Nam Theun and Xai Bang Fai (Laos’s Nam Theun 2), I eventually concluded that, over the long-term (50 years and more), large dams are not cost effective for economic, socio-cultural and environmental reasons.

6.2

Childhood and Adolescence

Eliza is convinced that I was unintentionally physically and perhaps socially neglected by my parents at least until I finally was fitted with glasses when I was 10 years old. How otherwise, she asked, could one explain why they were unaware that I had severe myopia, whereby more distant images and landscapes were blurred, and that I appeared to be squinting in early photographs? As for social neglect, she may be over-emphasizing her own experiences during the first ten years of her life when little was known about the combined impact of her having only one functional eye, as well as extreme dyslexia, which teachers at the time, and perhaps also her parents, were apt to associate with lower intelligence. After the birth of her first child, my brother Towney, my mother wanted a daughter. Instead, she had a miscarriage during her second pregnancy that explains the age gap between Towney and me. Again hoping for a girl during her third pregnancy, I came along instead and was dressed as a girl for an unknown period of time. Unlike most children, I have virtually no memory of my childhood before I was seven. What memories I do have were without exception unpleasant. One involved a nasty dogfight while another may have involved sexual molestation. When I was playing along a small stream at a distance from our house, an unknown man came up to me and wanted to see my penis. I have no further memory of that incident. I was also considered a more difficult, and hyperactive, child than my brother. On one occasion, my mother told Eliza that during naps she had to physically confine me between bed sheets by using two very large safety pins. Jeana Levinthal, a pediatrician, who was my favorite cousin in later years, remembered me “as a

1

None of which I have ever attended.

6.2 Childhood and Adolescence

257

strong willed moppet who was giving parents a hard time with refusal to eat as they wished. A false memory on my part? Maybe. But it impressed me as anorexia.” A teacher at the School in Rose Valley wrote in his December 1941 evaluation when I was eleven, “Less jitterbugging this year than last—at any rate so far.” The previous year, the same teacher had written in November 1940 “his emotions lie pretty deep and a lot more is felt and responses made than is apparent from the observer‘s viewpoint. He is frank enough, but with a layer of secrecy about what lies dearest to him at any time.” My own interpretation of the “neglect hypothesis” has been: yes, I was ignored more than my older brother for a variety of reasons, some of which were beyond my parents’ influence. Grandfather, Townsend Scudder, was a strong believer in primogeniture. Towney, his name sake into the fourth generation and very handsome, was clearly his favorite grandchild; my father’s siblings being two older sisters. Towney was also three and a half years older than I was. The children of my father’s two older sisters, and the two children of my mother’s older sister, were also three or more years older than me, the result being that, unlike myself, my brother had closer relationships with his cousins than I did throughout our childhood. At best, I was ignored and at worse considered a pest if I tried to join in my brother’s and cousins’ activities. This fact was brought home to me ten years ago when one cousin sent me some chapters of an autobiography he was writing for his children. Apologetically, for both of us were now in our 70s, he wrote “Looking over my remarks concerning your immediate family, I note that I referred to you as a ‘pest’. As the youngest child among families that summered together in the same commune near the Connecticut Berkshire Mountains, I was not involved in joint activities when Ty Cobb, Jr.—the son of a baseball legend—was hired by the commune to develop athletic and social programs to keep members’ children busy during the summer holidays. Nor was my self-respect improved when the next oldest child, who was included in joint activities, referred to me either as “useless” or “stupid” whenever he saw me. Left on my own, I spent much of my time during summers with my brother’s cocker spaniel, Peter, who accompanied me on long walks in the Housatonic National Forest that was adjacent to our cabin as was the Appalachian Mountains’ Blue Trail that stretched from Maine to Georgia. I also sought out as playmates the three sons of the caretaker’s family, the oldest of whom was several years younger than I was. And I developed friendships with various adult commune members. I was especially fond of Henry Seidel Canby, a Yale English professor and founder of the Saturday Review of Literature, and his adult son, Edward. Mr. Canby, as I called him then, knowing that I was an avid bird watcher, and, perhaps also, to get me out of the way during his attempted courtship of my mother, gave me my first binoculars. Though I do not recall the date, if the gift had occurred before I received eyeglasses, the impact on me of the binocular’s ability to sharpen my vision of distant images and of birds, must have been overwhelming.

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To sum up, although I agree with Eliza that I was at least frequently ignored during early childhood, not only was I unaware of being ignored, but seemingly compensated by learning to function by doing things on my own or by attaching myself to a wider age range of friends. Indeed, I suspect that I became the loner during early childhood that I have been throughout my life, and, who, with few exceptions, preferred his own company in dealing with past, present and future activities. The main exception was my father. Though a popular teacher of literature, and a well-known scholar, at Swarthmore College, he resigned in 1945 to found a not-for-profit Center for Information on America to provide working class people and secondary school students with a series of discussion guides on issues vital for achieving the ideals of the Constitution. Leaders in their fields were selected as writers. By the 1980s, income from subscribers was growing, but had yet to cover the Center’s budget. Also concerned by my father’s failing health and the Center’s increasing debts, the Center’s Trustees shut the Center down in 1985. My father’s reaction was to commit suicide by driving the family car at night into a deep reservoir. Though he was able to crash through at least one gate, the car was found the next morning hanging over the reservoir’s edge, while my father was found, incoherent, wandering around a nearby field. He never recovered his senses. My father’s influence on me during my childhood and youth was far greater than anyone’s. A lone wolf, it was he who was responsible for my love of nature, bird watching especially, and of the mountains. Just before he died, and was unable to talk, I crawled into bed with him and yodeled quietly while he looked at me. He smiled. He died while I was in Ethiopia.

6.3

A Short Career as an Ornithologist: From Camp Kabeyun to the Northern Selkirks of British Columbia

I feel I really ‘came alive’ during the two summers (1939 and 1940) that my parents sent me to Camp Kabeyun. I have no idea why they made that decision at that time, though it was primarily my father’s idea. Located on Lake Winnipesaukee’s Alton Bay in New Hampshire, the Kabeyun Season lasted eight weeks. In the November, 1939 “Camper” evaluation letter that my parents received from the Director, he wrote that I was “a very active boy, suggesting possibly that he is a bit high strung nervously and maybe needing to relax more. And of course he is keen about trips, particularly mountain climbing and is able to keep up with a somewhat older group. The only constructive criticism I have to add … is that he seemed very fond of surpassing others and glorying in it; a bit cocky. Coupled with his cheerfulness, his humor, his energy, his wide interests and his ability, he can easily become a leader when he learns the desirability of calling less attention to his own merits.”

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Ornithology played an important role during my four years of secondary schooling (1944–1948) at the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. A scholarship student there, in the fall I picked apples, in the winter shoveled snow off the tracks of the Boston and Maine Railroad, and at other times waited on faculty during meals. Throughout I birded with Fred Dunn who became one of my best friends. In addition to bird watching in the Exeter area, we bicycled to the coast at Hampton Beach, Newburyport harbor, and Plum Island to observe shore and oceanic birds. By the spring of my first year, I had come into my own with Exeter’s dean writing my father that ‘I am glad to give Thayer permission for an all-day birding trip. I think Thayer is getting about as much out of the Academy as any boy here. He comes back from one of these excursions full of enthusiasm and happiness and tells me the new birds he has seen. I envy him this pleasure.” In summary, 1945 and 1946 provided the most intensive prolonged period of birding in my life. During those years I learned to identify by song alone all but a few year-round and migrating land birds, while Fred’s and my identifications of rare, or occasional, birds were accepted by professional ornithologists. In the 1946–47 and 1947–48 academic years, I also became more involved in Exeter extra-curricular activities. Winning Exeter’s annual cross-country race in the fall of 1946, I was captain the next year of a first-rate team that won the New England Inter-scholastics. I also learned that, while fundamentally a lone wolf who never sought leadership positions, I could be a leader when asked. Hence at Exeter, my senior year I was president of the Outing Club, founder and first president of the Mountaineering Club as well as president of the Biology Club and of the Scientific Society. In summary, what I value most about my Exeter years is not my coursework, about which I remember very little, but the opportunity that Exeter gave me to develop my birding and mountaineering activities and leadership capacities. As a scholar, I was a C+ student until my faculty adviser suggested during my senior year that I should become a B-student if I wanted to go to Harvard with my two Exeter roommates. Although my father and brother had both graduated from Yale, there was no alternative to my attending Harvard College in the fall of 1948. One reason was that Fred Dunn was already at Harvard that meant more birding and mountain climbing together. But the main reason was that the Harvard Mountaineering Club was not only the best college mountaineering club in the United States, but in overall reputation second only to the American Alpine Club. Family finances remained precarious, but I received from Exeter a Lowenstein Memorial Fellowship for college-bound seniors as well as a Harvard scholarship. Harvard’s Biology Department allowed me to skip freshman biology so that my first biology course was an intensive course attended mainly by upper classmen in Comparative Anatomy. Probably as suggested by Fred Dunn, who at the time was majoring in anthropology, I also took and liked my first course in that field. Shortly after enrolling at Harvard, I contacted Professor James L. Peters, an ornithologist based in Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) and asked him for a job in his laboratory. Though non-paying, the position that he gave

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me provided an opportunity to familiarize myself with literally thousands of bird skins from all over the world, that Peters was studying in connection with his monumental Checklist of Birds of the World.2 Peters himself, while at the MCZ, had collected over 1,200 specimens of birds during a year’s trip in Argentina. I first was official duster of bird skins, until I learned the filing system for the various trays of birds. Finally, I wound up reclassifying warblers from Sharpe’s Checklist to Peters’. Peters also taught me, during a several year period, how to prepare skins of birds that I was permitted to kill in the vicinity—including pigeons, English Sparrows and starlings some of which I shot, while they were perched on MCZ second floor gutters, by leaning out of various laboratory windows. When I told Peters of my plans to lead a small expedition to the Northern Selkirk Mountains during the summer of 1951, he saw that as a splendid opportunity for me to complete my training as a professional ornithologist by collecting birds for the Harvard Collection. In the process, he helped me acquire the necessary permit from the British Columbia Museum, as well as such essential collector’s gear as a 410 shotgun, and appropriate ammunition that would not damage the birds aside from killing them. He was especially interested in my bringing back skins of Rosy Finches and Northern Water Thrushes, while suggesting that I gain more experience on arriving in the mountains by preparing skins of other species before seeking out the two species for the Museum. That 1951 summer in the Northern Selkirks had two purposes. Collecting birds for Professor Peters, as well as collecting alpine plants, was the first purpose, to be followed by mountaineering in a seldom-climbed part of the Northern Selkirks. Eliza and I first drove to the edge of Kinbasket Lake close to the big bend of the Columbia River in British Columbia. Miners ferried us, and our gear, across the lake to where we pitched our first camp beside a steeply, descending mountain stream. The next three miserable days were spent cutting a trail through dense thickets of alder and Devil’s Club to our second camp at 4,200 feet in a beautiful avalanche-cleared grassy meadow, well fertilized with moose dung, in which patches of snow were still present. That became our base camp, although we also established a small Camp 3 on the top of a ridge at above 6,400 feet from which we subsequently launched our mountaineering activities. The alpine flowers in the vicinity of Camp 3, were spectacular as were occasional sightings of mountain goats. My activities concentrated on collecting and pressing over 100 plant species, as well as charting bird distribution. The botanizing, especially the need to collect a variety of grasses and sedges, was hard, boring at times, unimaginative, and lonely. That discovery, however, was very important, for as I wrote my father at the time, “I don’t think I want to do this sort of work for a career.” Perhaps initially tentative,

2

Though Peters died before the Checklist was completed, colleagues ensured its publication in 1987. According to Harvard’s history of the Ornithology Department, “this systematic checklist still remains the basis of organization for many ornithological collections throughout the country.”

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that conclusion was confirmed after I shot and skinned my first bird that was a warbler. To sum up my thoughts as I looked at the skin, they amounted to my saying, “to hell with a career that would require shooting what I love.” Returning to Harvard from the Selkirks in the fall of my senior year, I took further courses in anthropology, and various courses in the humanities. Not able to pick a major, I graduated with Honors in General Studies. Though I found my courses at Harvard more interesting than those at Exeter, again I was more interested in extracurricular activities than Academics. My Sophomore year, I lettered in Cross Country but then dropped long distance running to concentrate on Eliza’s and my marriage, and on mountaineering: becoming president of the Harvard Mountaineering Club my senior year.

6.4 6.4.1

A Brief Career as a Mountaineer and Arctic Specialist 1939–1946: Initial Experiences with New England Mountains

My first mountain climbing occurred while I was a camper at Kabeyun in 1939 and 1940. During the next eight years, I climbed primarily with my father and Exeter class mates in the Berkshires of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

6.4.2

1947–1948: Mount Ktaadin in Winter and the Grand Teton

Four years of membership in the Exeter outing club not only gave me the opportunity to climb throughout New Hampshire’s White Mountains, but also encouraged three of us to make a winter ascent of Maine’s 5,268 foot Mount Ktaadin during the 1947 Spring Break. The evening of March 19, we met, at Millinocket’s Great Northern Hotel, Mr. Dyer, the Chief Ranger of the Baxter State Park, who would accompany us as far as the Chimney Pond Campground in the basin between Ktaadin’s main peaks. Rising at 4.30 AM the next morning, we were given breakfast at the home of Fred Salem who was to transport us, and our crampons, ice axes, snowshoes, skis and ropes, to Wonder Lake at the beginning of the Chimney Pond Trail, on his two snow sleds. The body of each was made from a discarded wingless airplane that was powered by a three-bladed ship’s propeller that was enclosed within a metal rim at the end of the fuselage. One sled had two pairs of wooden skis, while the other had three aluminum skis. The engine and instrument panels on both came

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from planes with altimeters still present. Our destination was Roaring Brook, 16 miles away, that was where the Chimney Pond trail began. Chimney Pond lies in Ktaadin’s southernmost basin with the mountain encircling us on three sides like a half moon. With heavy packs weighing about 75 lb and skis over our shoulders, we reached the Chimney Pond cabin shortly after dark. The temperature already was beginning to drop sharply as the night winds began to sweep off the peaks. Preceding us, Dyer and Salem had found the cabin, and the outhouse, under eight feet of snow some of which had drifted inside through the cabin roof. Our all day climb to Ktaadin’s summit was incredibly beautiful. It also proved us to be very lucky amateurs who were climbing beyond our skills on at least three occasions. The first occurred along the knife-edge, with a drop of over 1000 feet on both sides, where it was necessary to descent into and out of a deep notch. For that section not only should we have been roped but also well-trained belayers in case one of us slipped. The second occasion, when we were at risk, was when photographs I took showed that my two companions were walking too far out on a major cornice with thin air rather than rock and snow beneath them. The third occasion occurred after we reached the Summit. Our plan was to descend largely snow-covered slopes to the Saddle from which a relatively easy climb would take us back to Chimney Pond. I was leading at the time and, after surveying the descent to the saddle, decided that the quickest and most fun way down was to slide on my snowshoes. Of course, almost immediately I was moving faster than I had anticipated. I had also neglected to take off my crampons so that I risked serious leg injury if I tried to slow my descent by jamming the crampon spikes (which, on our Army surplus crampons, were large) into the hard snow. Aware of that risk, I leaned back on my show shoes, put my feet up in the air, and began to move faster downhill than before. Then my snowshoes and I parted after I sailed over a small bump, my spikes dug into the hard snow that fortunately gave way, so that I was able to slow down by gingerly digging my spikes into the snow but causing pain ripping through my legs each time. Then suddenly I spun around and came to a stop. On standing up, I found that, fortunately, no real harm to my legs had occurred; so I signaled my companions to descend while standing up. Also during 1947, Robert H. Bates returned to Exeter from military service in the mountain troops. Also an internationally famous mountaineer, who had been on the expedition that nearly made the first ascent to K-2 in the Himalayas, Bates taught a few of us rock climbing on the sea cliffs at Kittery, Maine. As our faculty adviser, three of us then founded the Exeter Mountaineering Club of which I was the first president. My next major mountaineering “expedition” occurred in September 1948 when three of us spent three days climbing in the Grand Tetons. Throughout our time in the Tetons, as on Ktaadin, we were lucky the weather was good for climbing. Even before we started, we received a warning, which Neal Hastie and I ignored, that we should only climb in the Tetons with guides. As for our third member, Bill

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Lindamood, his father would not allow him to join us on climbing the Grand Teton without a guide. The three of us, with a four days food supply, choose to do our climbing from Garnet Canyon, where we settled in beside a ready-made fireplace on a patch of grass beside a glacier-fed stream. As I look back on how we spent the next three days, I am embarrassed by my poor judgment on climbs after our first day’s successful ascent of the Grand Teton.

6.5

1948–1955: Climbing Within the Harvard Mountaineering Club

Starting as a freshman in 1948 significantly improved my abilities as a rock climber and expeditionary mountaineer. Rock climbing (plus some ice climbing in Mount Washington’s Huntington Ravine) was predominantly on well-marked routes in the White Mountains and the Swangunks of the Hudson River Valley in New York. Expeditionary mountaineering occurred in September 1949 in the Southern Selkirks of British Columbia, in the summer of 1951 in the Northern Selkirks, in the summer of 1952 when four of us did first ascents of Mount Brooks and Mount Mather in Mount McKinley National Park, and back in the Southern Selkirks during the summer of 1955. What follows is a short description of the 1952 Brooks-Mather expedition. During the summer of 1952, I organized a four-person team to climb in Alaska’s Mount Denali National Park. Our purpose was to combine first ascents of 11,890 foot Mount Brooks and 12,096 Mount Mather with three career-oriented projects. One was to help Bradford Washburn, Director of the Boston Museum of Science, to complete his mapping of Denali and surrounding area, by surveying Denali from the top of nearby Mount Brooks. The second was to collect alpine plants around McGonagall Pass that was the entry point for most expeditions to climb Denali. The third project was to test experimental cold weather boots for the Climatic Research Laboratory of the U.S. Quarter Master Corps. We established our base camp near the base of Mount Brooks. Climbing Brooks required caution because of thousand foot vertical drops from the summit’s main ridge, but, unlike Mather, no special technical problems. We established our second camp at a spectacular location at the top of Brook’s massive northern buttress that rose steeply above our base camp. From there, the four of us reached the summit where two of us spent the night in a snow cave, while our two colleagues descended to camp two. Early the next morning we completed our surveying under a cloudless sky only to be told by Washburn, after our return to Cambridge, that all our results were useless. Unable to identify any surveying mistakes we made, we believed the problem lay with the old Tavistock Theodolite that Washburn had given us as opposed to a new and lighter Wildt theodolite that had been available.

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On July 18, we moved from our Mount Brooks base camp up the East Brooks Glacier to our Mather base camp at the bottom of the spectacular Mather icefall. The next day, in continuing bad weather that made us wonder if our summer’s climbing was over, we willow-wanded our way through the Mather icefall so as to speed up our ascent if the weather cleared. On July 20, the weather cleared at noon, and we left for what was literally a 24 hour climb and descent of my most spectacular mountaineering experience. Ascending through the icefall, sunlight illuminated the range of blue to almost purple colors of the icefall’s seracs and crevasses. Then we slowly ascended the Mather basin on snowshoes on the assumption that their reduced disturbance of slopes would lessen the avalanche risk. Then the slope steepened, and I wrote in my diary: What a pitch – at first it was merely kicking steps up a gradual pitch. Then, it steepened to a 45 degree soggy avalanche slope with a slight breakable crust on top. Up this, I led straight and then, just in front, I heard the most sickening thud. The snow yielded and I thought a line of cleavage opened up.

We continued straight up, however, to where rocks jutting from the snow reduced the avalanche danger. There the slope steepened to about 60°, and more so, that it became necessary to put on crampons and cut steps. The time was past 10 PM and the sun was setting. During a brief stop I wrote: O my darling, what a climb. The sun is down but along the horizon to the north is the arctic red glow. Now we are climbing along a snow covered knife-edge with one more knife edge to be traversed to the North Summit and then on to the slightly higher South Summit. The red grow along the northern horizon seems to be brightening while the hundreds of tiny muskeg lakes in the tundra below reflect like so many mirrors.

6.6

1952–1955: Preparing for a Career with the Arctic Institute of North America

It is odd that I have nothing in writing about a possible job with the Arctic Institute of North America. It was Bob Bates, whose continued interest in my life, followed me to Harvard. Mentioning that the Institute might be an interesting career possibility, Bates put me in touch with Colonel Water A. Wood, who was then director of the Institute’s New York office, and with whom I began corresponding. By my June 1952 graduation from Harvard, and with Eliza now pregnant, I had received encouraging job possibilities from both Colonel Wood as well as from the US Quarter Master Corp’s (QMC) Climatic Research Laboratory in Lawrence, Massachusetts. In the fall of 1952 at Colonel Wood’s invitation, I drove down from New Hampshire to his New Jersey residence for a visit. By then, however, I believed that Colonel Wood may have decided that I needed more experience such as would be provided by the Climatic Research Laboratory job.

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Fortunately, the QMC job finally came through with Eliza, our new baby, and I moving to an apartment in Andover, Massachusetts. I was assigned to work with a small team responsible for testing experimental and other clothing to be worn in extreme environments. My job over a nine-month period was to work with a small number of soldiers who would be testing, in my company, day and sometimes night, clothing and boots in three extreme environments. Results would be monitored not just in notes (as in the case of the Mickey Mouse boots), but, where relevant, by my using thermocouples to record body temperatures and analyzing expired air samples. In February 1953, we spent a month at Fort Churchill, Manitoba, on the edge of Hudson Bay to test the impact of extreme dry cold conditions on a synthetic polar bear suit and other equipment. To get us away from any moderating conditions caused by Hudson Bay, on one occasion we were taken at night on Canadian Army Over-Snow “Penguin” vehicles west to a location that gave us access to both the tundra and the adjacent conifer (‘taiga’) belt. I will never forget watching, with my head outside the vehicle turret, the northern lights shimmering across the horizon and the wind-blown snow obscuring the ground that we were traversing. On that occasion, we were also testing sleeping bags and the cold was such that the hoar frost, dangling from the mountain tent roof, and caused by our breathing, reached and tickled our noses by the time morning came. New Hampshire’s Mount Washington was the late winter-early spring habitat selected for testing under wet cold conditions. On one occasion, while using the Harvard Mountaineering Club’s cabin in Tuckerman Ravine, we were photographed from below as we ascended the massive eastern buttress and final ridge to the summit of Boott Spur. My longest period in the field, however, was when Eliza, our six month old baby and I drove to Yuma, Arizona, and spent two months based at the adjacent US Army’s Yuma Test Station. While we marched across desert sands in outrageously high temperatures, and took expired air samples for analysis, Eliza spent the days in the Army pool where she completed a course in lifesaving. Back on the East Coast, I resigned from the QMC lab to prepare for joining the Arctic Institute at its headquarters at McGill University rather than at the New York Office. The Institute had been established in 1945 by act of the Canadian Parliament. Its purpose was to undertake “the objective study of Arctic conditions and problems”.3 During the next five years, the institute “established itself at the forefront of research by its involvement in several significant large scale projects.” One was Walter Wood’s Project Snow Cornice that began in 1948 with the purpose of researching the accumulation and ablation of the 1,650 square mile Seward— Malaspina glacial system. My specific job was to handle logistics to facilitate the research program during the summer of 1954. In the meanwhile, Eliza and I were living in a cottage adjacent

MacDonald, Robert (2005). “InfoNorth: Challenges and Accomplishments: A Celebration of the Arctic Institute of North America.” Arctic. Vol 58. No 4.

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to my parent’s house in Woodbury, Connecticut, while waiting to be hired and sent to Canada. What happened next was one of the major examples of serendipity that has had a major and unmeasurable effect on our life. I think it was in the evening that I got a telephone call from Walter Wood’s Secretary to inform us that there would be no job for me at the Arctic Institute because Col. Wood had decided to terminate the Project Snow Cornice research program for the indefinite future. The reason was understandable. On July 27 1951, worried about not returning to New York City in time for their daughter’s ‘Coming Out’ as a Debutant, Walter Wood’s wife, Foresta, convinced the pilot of the Institute’s ski wheeled Norseman aircraft, to take off from base camp for Yakutak, Alaska in questionable weather. The aircraft containing pilot Maurice King, Foresta and daughter Valerie never arrived and to date, has not been found.

6.7 6.7.1

Hitchhiking and a Gradual Shift Toward the Social Sciences Introduction

Still relatively safe in the 1940s and 1950s, I look back with appreciation and fondness on my hitchhiking experiences and education while traveling approximately 20,000 miles throughout the United States between the mid-1940s and September 1949.

6.7.2

New England to the Mississippi and Back

I cannot remember when I first began hitch hiking. It would have been at some point during the mid-1940s as a means to get around New England quicker than by bicycle. My first hitchhiking outside New England was to Tiptonville on the Mississippi River, in the Northwest Corner of Tennessee, between August 10th and 30th. That trip gave me a vivid introduction to how diverse in interests and personality people are. On the way, I was picked up by a large, well-built man who looked like a professional football player. Early in our conversation he told me that he was gay but quickly added that I need not fear him. Soon after that, however, we stopped near a peach orchard and, frankly, I was afraid. Again, he tried to pacify me by explaining that all he wanted to do was to spend some time under the trees fondling the fuzz on the mature peaches. And that is what we did, until renewing our journey!

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On return to New England, I was picked up by a truck driver at dusk, as we were approaching Knoxville. As we reached the city’s outskirts, he told me that since he was prohibited from picking up hitchers for insurance reasons, he would have to drop me off well before coming into the city center. The area where I disembarked not only was unlighted, but was a suburb where small single story houses were separated from the street by tall wooden fences. As I started walking, I noticed a car coming from behind slowing down and stopping briefly before moving toward me again. Shortly after passing me, it stopped again and two men got out and began walking toward me. When I turned around, I saw that I was also being approached from where the car had initially stopped. Literally, at the last moment, a truck laden with coal came up beside me, the driver shouted at me through the open passenger widow to jump on the running board. He may also have shouted at me to swing my body forward toward the engine as he accelerated. Anyhow, that was what I did just before one of my assailants smashed into the door what I assume was a knife or some sort of weapon.

6.7.3

Summer of 1948: New England to the West Coast and Back

The next summer, following my Exeter graduation, found three classmates and I hitchhiking, sometimes with two of us together and other times alone, to take up summer jobs in Yosemite National Park. At Yosemite, the four of us had been assigned to work on the Blister Rust Control Program at Sugar Pine Camp that was located at about 6,000 feet outside of the Yosemite Valley. Blister rust, an invasive fungus, needs two different types of plants to complete its life cycle. One type, unaffected by the rust, are various species of currants and gooseberries. The other type in the United States are a number of conifers where mortality is high due to lack of genetic resistance. Our job was to uproot and pull out gooseberry plants. It was the most unpleasant work I have ever done. What made the work bearable was the opportunity to explore Yosemite Park. I also found one group of co-workers fascinating. They tended to be “winos” from the back streets of San Francisco who come to Yosemite to thaw out and earn $60.00 a week to live off the following winter. We lived together in a barracks run like a slave camp by a supervisor and his wife. During our first week of work when two of us were showering together, my San Francisco co-worker asked me if I knew what was involved in a sport known as ‘drop the soap.’ When I said no, I had the wisdom to decline when he asked me if I wanted to play, since the play involved anal copulation when one leaned over to pick up the soap. These were tough guys, and not the sort of friends one wanted to keep up with; yet, not only did they interest me, but I liked them. After they left to return to ‘Frisco, and after an argument with our supervisor, I too left after about a month’s work.

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During the next few weeks, I hitched over the Tioga Pass, south along the eastern slopes of the Sierras, and then east to the Grand Canyon where I descended to the Colorado River. Then back to Los Angeles, having been evicted, from a west bound freight train, in the desert, but fortunately close to a road running parallel to the tracks. That night in Needles on the California–Arizona border I had one of those experiences that was slowly switching my research and public policy interests from the biological to the social sciences. I had bedded down in a small park only to be awakened at about 1:00 AM by a pat on the shoulder. A Mexican stood over me, with two others squatting on the grass behind him. We talked for a while until finally putting on his hat, I entered a bar and bought with his money two bottles of cheap wine. So off they went with the wine that they, as Mexicans, could not buy.

6.7.4

Destination Cuba with Fred Dunn

On December 18, my father dropped me off on Highway US 6 on the outskirts of Woodbury, Connecticut. The morning was cold, with the rising sun caressing the snow-flecked ground. A few hours later a motor cycle pulled up beside me. It was a late model, blue, with plenty of room for me. Unlike me, the driver was bundled up against the cold with his feet snug in sheepskin aviation boots. I slid in behind him, dangling my small overnight bag down beside the wheel, and not really prepared for my first motorcycle ride. We began to pick up speed, clinging to the curves in a miraculous way. He glanced back at me and pointed at the speedometer. On the curves he leaned the ‘cycle over so that my feet scraped the ground. When he left me off at the Merritt Parkway, my fingers remained curved as if I still held my satchel. So began Fred Dunn’s and my hope to spend our Christmas Holidays in Cuba. Our progress was slow during the first day and night. At dawn on the second day, our luck changed when a Maryland car, with a small trailer full of Christmas trees, picked us up. Two days later, because the owner could not drive faster than 40 mph with his load, he dropped us off in Miami, Florida. The driver was a kind, and quite fascinating person, who regaled us for hours at a time throughout the trip with an amazing number of ballads and love songs; mouthing the tunes first on an old harmonica. Fascinating also were the varying landscapes through which we traveled. As we passed through the Carolinas and into Georgia, we noted the poverty of the houses of the Afro-Americans that were unpainted and standing on low stilts. The roofs often sagged and, almost always, appeared to have a stream of smoke rising from the chimney as a reminder of the occupants’ efforts to keep warm.

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Further south the road bridged through huge Cyprus swamps with murky water lying dormant in stagnant pools among the inflated roots. Spanish moss dangled from the branches and laced the swamp roof with an intricate network. The next morning, we passed a poorly clothed chain gang at work on the road with two guards warming their hands over an ash can fire; their guns leaning against their legs. On reaching Miami, we bedded down in a nice park close to the sea until about three AM when police told us to move on. By 7 AM, after being searched by two more police, we were swimming off a lovely beach. Later, and south of Miami, a car, filled with a large family of Afro-Americans, who were by far our friendliest hosts, packed us into the front seat. The driver took great pleasure on introducing himself to us and was pleased when we gave him our names. He said that he realized that we were northerners. We asked him about the Florida Keys, and whether we would have a good time being there. He replied in the affirmative “because you are white men.” For him, no public beaches were open; only certain stretches along the ocean and away from towns, where the water was open to sharks and the beaches inferior. He added that though legally free from slavery, their life today amounted to the same thing or worse, for now when the negro tried to reap the rewards of freedom, he found them few indeed. Our next ride, a pickup truck, with a new engine, which crept along the Florida Keys, was, alas, our last ride of the trip. With Fred up front (the elderly driver was fearful of having two hitch hikers beside him), I was sitting in the open end of the truck. As a large oil tanker bore down on us, I waved at the driver who did not respond. Then, at the last moment, the driver angled his rig away a bit so that he did not hit us straight on; in which case, I would have been thrown into the tanker’s steel grate and then under its wheels. I felt the pickup truck tremble and saw the oil tanker’s bumper churning its way toward me. Then, I was summersaulting through the air over the truck’s engine and toward the side of the road. My glasses flew off and I wondered if they would break. I hit the ground hard and rolled, over and over, through the gravel. When I sat up I saw that my right shoe was partially ripped off my foot which was covered with blood which had seeped through my sock. My pants were ripped, and blood mixed with dirt and pebbles covered my entire right leg in a thick deep red mass. My hands had been gorged by the gravel. I lay back down again, and began to feel the pain. I was carried into a nearby roadside cabin where my blood first seeped through the sheets, and then through the mattress. Fred fortunately was not hurt, and got necessary insurance information from the driver; information which later enabled me to purchase my first car—a second hand Chevrolet coup. A policeman was present. Though no doubt well-meaning, he poured iodine up and down my leg, adding more pain and burning to my injuries. Fortunately, one man present offered to take us back to Miami where he left me at the Coral Gables Hospital. A hospital nurse held my hand while she cleaned, treated, and bandaged my wounds. X-rays were taken of my shoulder which showed a badly broken and

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separated collar bone along with a broken toe. I was then told by the doctor present, who referred to my wounds as second degree burns, to quickly take a train home for surgery and treatment. He later drove the two of us to the bus station, to retrieve some baggage we had left there previously, and to a hotel for the night. By the next morning when I boarded the 9 AM train for the north my bandages, along with the previous night’s bed sheets, were covered with pus. The train ride north was a fascinating example of the good and the bad in people; hence, one more experience that influenced my shift from the biological to the social sciences. In Jacksonville, where a new conductor and porters joined the train, I got off briefly to buy some tangerines. On return to my seat, I found that my wallet and ticket had been stolen. To make matters worse, the new conductor said I would have to get off the train when we reached Savannah, Georgia. That was when other passengers came to my help. A woman helped me complete a more thorough search for my wallet. She also gave me two dollars for meals, as did others, who together agreed to cover my fare if the conductor was adamant that I leave. One porter explained that a solution would be worked out. Another person helping me was actually much worse off than I was. When I asked him if he was traveling alone, he replied that no, he was with his wife. When I looked around for her, he explained that she was not with us in the passenger car. She was in a coffin in the baggage car, and he was taking her home for burial.

6.7.5

Summer of 1949: Back to the West Coast and the End of Hitchhiking

Through the father of a Harvard classmate, two of us received summer employment with the Oregon Bureau of Public Roads. Our job was to join a road survey crew to help with chaining and other tasks on the main north-south highway between Oregon and California. We spent our first day in Portland learning about highway surveying with plumb bob and chain, and then were transferred to Oakridge in the heart of the Yellow Fir belt behind which were still snow-covered mountains. Most of the summer I worked on a chaining crew in the middle of the heavily traveled highway beside the Willamette River. During the second half of August, I was transferred to the night shift to run screen tests, on a mechanized sifter, on different sizes of crushed gravel. My job from 6 PM to 2:30 AM was to make sure that gravel samples, taken from the crusher’s conveyor belt, fell within the limits of six grades. This summer, however, I was a different person than during the summer of 1948 because during the previous fall I had begun dating Eliza. On weekends, however, I still took off for interesting places. One weekend, I climbed Mount Hood; another I skied Mount Hood’s snowfields. I also returned to Crater Lake while another weekend, Fred Dunn and I climbed Mount Shasta from the north. I also enjoyed

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immensely a trip to an isolated portion of the Oregon Coast. I slept on the sand, having collected a huge amount of driftwood for a large fire, the charcoal of which still glowed at five in the morning. Unlike 1948’s work in Yosemite, I remained on the job until early September when I left to join Harvard Mountaineering Club colleagues for climbing in the Southern Selkirks of British Columbia.

6.8

Eliza and Marriage

Knowing that I would know no girls on arriving in Cambridge, an Exeter classmate suggested that I look up his date at our Exeter graduation whose father was a Harvard professor. Her name was Eliza Drinker who, he added, was probably the most conservative girl in the area in her relationship with boys. That impression, Eliza subsequently informed me was based on her zero tolerance for boys or men whose primary interest in girls was as sex objects. Throughout my freshman year at Harvard, Eliza gave me a home life and sanctuary that further brightened both of our existence, since we found that we could talk about anything on our mind. Of course, there were the usual football games and cocktail parties that we attended with my roommates and their dates. Of most importance, were our conversations at the Drinker house within a short walk from the Harvard campus, during our walks, and especially by a secluded, tiny pond in the Mount Auburn Cemetery that was surrounded by lovely green grass, forsythia, pines, and modest yet imposing tombstones scattered over the grassy slopes of this lovely hollow. We became engaged the following fall after I had returned from Oregon and the Selkirks, and after I had agreed to three conditions. The first condition, was that Eliza would have a full time career dealing with early childhood education. That presented no problem with me; indeed, Eliza’s having a full time career probably held our marriage together during my career-related absences. Eliza’s decision concerning a career in early childhood education dated back to when she was ten. That was when both she and her family were unsure of her future, as they and she wrestled with behavioral problems associated with her severe dyslexia as well as being partially sighted. Eliza’s own awareness of, and efforts to cope with, the current view that those with dyslexia were, at best, considered abnormal and, at worse, stupid, was also associated with difficult behavioral problems. Her situation became even more difficult when her parents took her to a psychiatrist, since she interpreted that decision on their part was because they thought she might be crazy which she knew very well was not the case. Believing for the first time that her parents could make a wrong decision, she showed her independence by refusing to say a single word while in the psychiatrist’s office with the result that he told her parents that future visits would be worthless.

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It was at this time, when the family was living in Newton, Massachusetts, before moving to Cambridge, that it was arranged during one summer for Eliza to take care of three to five year old children at a nearby Mothers’ Rests. In the Boston area, Mothers’ Rests were where very poor, often single, and mostly Irish and Italian working mothers could come for ‘short vacations’ with their young children. Eliza’s experience there was of fundamental importance for two reasons. First, in arranging activities for the children like playing in a small, nearby steam, she became aware that the children liked her for herself. Second, she realized that the unacceptable behavior of one child, in particular, was due primarily to poverty-related lack of access to high-quality parenting, and what we now call pre-school education. That realization led to Eliza’s choice of early childhood education as a career. Eliza’s second condition was that, while she would not expect me to attend social functions associated with her career, I should not expect her to attend similar functions associated with mine. As for the third condition, that was, as a family, we must always have dogs. With those three conditions eagerly accepted by me, we were married that summer on August 26 at the Drinker’s summer home in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire.

6.9 6.9.1

Tertiary Education The Yale Divinity School and Classes in the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: 1953–1954

Though my intention following college graduation in June 1952 had been to join the Arctic Institute, Eliza and I had also discussed the pros and cons of my attending Graduate School in case no appropriate job became available. The problem, however, was, in what field? Just as Fred Dunn, on deciding to switch from anthropology to medicine, registered as a one-year special student to complete whatever other courses were necessary for entering medical school, we decided upon a similar option. From our temporary residence at my parents in Woodbury, I explored a one year, special student, option at Yale University that would allow me to take a range of courses in different disciplines. While no department in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GRAS) showed sufficient interest, the Yale Divinity School not only was receptive, but would allow me to take half of my course work in GRAS. Moreover, their tuition was lower and they offered me a scholarship for the 1952–53 Academic Year. In terms of education, my year at Yale was the most interesting year of schooling that I have had. It also, again the role of serendipity, led to financing, through the Danforth Foundation, the following six years of education on my return to Harvard University. At the Divinity School, my favorite course was comparative religion

6.9 Tertiary Education

273

that introduced me to the five major world religions. At the Graduate School, invaluable in helping me choose a career, were a full year course on the Geography of Africa and a full year course on the History of Africa. While I was being intellectually stimulated, for Eliza, now pregnant with our second daughter, circumstances were not pleasant since we had insufficient money for safe living. Our cottage, rented for good reason at only $25 per month, had been built on the edge of the Long Island Sound. Uninsulated, its owners only used it during summer vacations. It was not wind proof in addition to being cold. Heating was solely provided by ‘silent death’ heaters that should be turned off at night. The hot water heater was a small unit located in the cellar that had to be lit by hand, and turned off after use so as not to explode. Far worse was that our daughter was almost electrocuted by a faulty power line that the cottage owner may have illegally attached to an overhead line as is often done in less developed countries. In our yard, we had built a small playpen for our daughter, Lydee, made out of wire fencing that was attached at one end to some sort of metal upright. Shortly after our daughter went outside to play, Eliza heard her screaming, and running out side saw that Lydee, with one hand on the metal upright and the other on the wire fence, was unable to let go. The daughter of an engineer and scientist, who taught his children how to live with modern appliances, Eliza immediately assumed Lydee was being electrocuted by a current passing from the upright post, through her body, to the wire fence. Fortunately, for both of them, her father had also taught his children how to cope with electrical and other hazards. Running back indoors, Eliza she put on rubber boots and gloves and then was able to remove Lydee’s hands. Though still crying and very frightened, Lydee was otherwise unhurt. Eliza’s budget for food was inadequate, a problem that she solved by serving us frequent, as easily reheated, but tasty tuna fish casseroles made from cat food (about which I was told many years later) at only a fraction of the cost of canned tuna fish. Whatever monotony followed was occasionally broken when Eliza was able to purchase a 6–8 lb jumbo lobster that in those days had yet to be priced as a delicacy. Meanwhile, we had decided that our best option as a family was to return to Cambridge where Eliza would resume her education at the Nursery Training School of Boston (now the Eliot Pearson School at Tuffs University) and I would study for my Ph.D. in Harvard’s Department of Anthropology.

6.9.2

Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: September 1954–June 1956

As serendipity, in the form of the Project Snow Cornice’s cancelation, played a major role in our coming to Yale in the first place, so did being at the Yale Divinity School, lead to my receiving sufficient funds to complete a Harvard Ph.D. six years

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later. The funds were provided by the Danforth Foundation’s student fellowship program that had been established with funds from the Ralston Purina Company of Saint Louis, Missouri for graduate students who intended to become college or university teachers. Initially, under the Foundation’s Executive Director Kenneth Irving Brown, the emphasis was on those whose intension was to become Christian ministers or to teach religious topics. But in 1953, a decision was made to also allow students to apply without strong personal religious commitments, but with a strong interest in religion as a part of culture. One result was that three future anthropology professors, including myself, received awards in the spring of 1954. Thereafter, the program was broadened still further with special emphasis on the humanities. By the time a decision was made in 1979 to terminate the fellowship program, 3,600 students had received grants.

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