Dear Friends,
We are writing to ask the support of your organization for the attached
Manibeli Declaration, calling for a moratorium on World Bank funding for
large dams around the world. International Rivers Network's goal is to
submit this declaration to the World Bank, the member governments, and the
world's media with 1,000 signatory organizations as part of the campaign on
the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Bank. It is
called the Manibeli Declaration in honor of the heroic resistance of the
people of India's Narmada Valley to the Bank-funded Sardar Sarovar Dam, who
today are facing forced eviction from their homes and lands as the waters
rise behind the dam.
We are asking that you add the name of your organization (but not the names
or titles of any individuals) to the list of signatories to the Manibeli
Declaration, and that you contact other organizations in your country who
may support this position and be willing to sign on as well. In addition to
listing the endorsing organizations we would like to state how many people
these organizations represent. If appropriate, please indicate how many
people or members of the community are represented by your organization.
We plan to release the declaration Wednesday, June 15, so please respond
before then. There are a number of ways you can communicate your response
to this appeal directly to Leonard in the Berkeley IRN office:
by fax to 1-510-848-1008;
by telephone to 1-510-848-1155;
by Email to "leonardirn@igc.apc.org";
and by post to IRN, 1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley CA 94703 USA.
If you would like more information on the positions taken in the Manibeli
Declaration IRN would be very glad to provide detailed background
materials.
Thank you for considering this appeal, we look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Leonard Sklar Research Director
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MANIBELI DECLARATION* Calling for a Moratorium on World Bank** Funding of
Large Dams June, 1994
* In honor of the heroic resistance by the people of the village of Manibeli
and others in India's Narmada Valley to the World Bank-funded Sardar Sarovar
Dam, and of the millions of reservoir refugees around the world. At this
moment the people of Manibeli face forced eviction and flooding of their
lands.
** "World Bank" includes International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (IBRD), International Development Association (IDA),
International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Multilateral Investment
Guarantee Agency (MIGA).
WHEREAS:
1 The World Bank is the greatest single source of funds for large dam
construction, having provided more than US$50 billion (1992 dollars) for
construction of more than 500 large dams in 92 countries. Despite this
enormous investment, no independent analysis or evidence exists to
demonstrate that the financial, social and environmental costs were
justified by the benefits realized;
2 Since 1948, the World Bank has financed large dam projects which have
forcibly displaced on the order of 10 million people from their homes and
lands. The Bank's own 1994 "Resettlement and Development" review admits
that the vast majority of women, men and children evicted by Bank-funded
projects never regained their former incomes nor received any direct
benefits from the dams for which they were forced to sacrifice their homes
and lands. The Bank has consistently failed to implement and enforce its
own policy on forced resettlement, first established in 1980, and despite
several policy reviews the Bank has no plans to fundamentally change its
approach to forced resettlement;
3 The World Bank is planning to fund over the next three years 18 large
dam projects which will forcibly displace another 450,000 people, without
any credible guarantee that its policy on resettlement will be enforced.
Meanwhile the Bank has no plans to properly compensate and rehabilitate the
millions displaced by past Bank-funded dam projects, including populations
displaced since 1980 in violation of the Bank's policy;
4 World Bank-funded large dams have had extensive negative
environmental impacts, destroying forests, wetlands, fisheries, habitat for
threatened and endangered species, and increasing the spread of waterborne
diseases;
5 The environmental and social costs of World Bank- funded large dams,
in terms of people forced from their homes, destruction of forests and
fisheries, and spread of waterborne diseases, have fallen disproportionately
on women, indigenous communities, tribal peoples and the poorest and most
marginalized sectors of the population. This is in direct contradiction to
the World Bank's often-stated "overarching objective of alleviating
poverty;"
6 The World Bank has prioritized lending for large dams which provide
electricity to trans-national industry and to urban elites, and irrigation
water supply for export-oriented agriculture, neglecting the most pressing
needs of the rural poor and other disadvantaged groups. The Bank has
provided $8.3 billion (1992 dollars) for large dams through the
International Development Association (IDA), the "soft" credit window which
is supposed to aid the poorest populations in developing countries;
7 The World Bank has tolerated and thus contributed to gross violations
of human rights by governments in the process of implementing Bank-funded
large dams, including arbitrary arrests, beatings, rapes, and shootings of
peaceful demonstrators. Many Bank- funded large dams projects cannot be
implemented without gross violations of human rights because affected
communities inevitably resist the imposition of projects so harmful to their
interests;
8 The World Bank plans, designs, funds, and monitors the construction
of large dams in a secretive and unaccountable manner, imposing projects
without meaningful consultation or participation by the communities
affected, often denying access to information even to local governments in
the areas affected;
9 The World Bank has consistently ignored cost-effective and
environmentally and socially sound alternatives to large dams, including
wind, solar and biomass energy sources, energy demand management, irrigation
rehabilitation, efficiency improvements and rainwater harvesting, and
non-structural flood management. The Bank has even convinced governments to
accept loans for large dams when more cost-effective and less destructive
alternative plans existed, as may be the case again with the Arun III
project in Nepal;
10 The economic analyses on which the World Bank bases its decisions to
fund large dams fail to apply the lessons learned from the poor record of
past Bank- funded dams, underestimating the potential for delays and cost
over-runs. Project appraisals typically are based on unrealistically
optimistic assumptions about project performance, and fail to account for
the direct and indirect costs of negative environmental and social impacts.
The Bank's own 1992 portfolio review admits that project appraisals are
treated as "marketing devices" which fail to establish that projects are in
the public interest;
11 The primary beneficiaries of procurement contracts for World
Bank-funded large dams have been consultants, manufacturers and contractors
based in the donor countries, who profit while citizens of the borrowing
countries are burdened by debt and the destructive economic, environmental
and social impacts of the large dams themselves. The Bank has consistently
failed to build local capacity and expertise, promoting dependency instead;
12 World Bank-funded large dams have flooded cultural monuments,
religious and sacred sites, and national parks and other wildlife
sanctuaries;
13 In its lending for large dams the World Bank has tolerated and thus
condoned theft of funds supplied by the Bank, often by corrupt military and
undemocratic regimes, and has often made additional loans to cover
cost-over-runs brought on by what the Bank refers to as "rent seeking
behavior." Examples include Yacyreta Dam in Argentina and Chixoy Dam in
Guatemala;
14 The World Bank has consistently violated its policy on environmental
assessment, and has allowed environmental assessments to be produced by
project promoters and used to justify prior decisions to proceed with
destructive large dam projects.
15 The World Bank has never addressed in policy, research, or project
planning documents, the decommissioning of large dams after their useful
lifetime has expired due to reservoir sedimentation and physical
deterioration;
16 The World Bank has never properly assessed its record of funding
large dams and has no mechanism for measuring the actual long-term costs and
benefits of the large dams it funds;
17 Throughout its involvement in the Sardar Sarovar Dam in India's
Narmada Valley, a world-wide symbol of destructive development, the World
Bank has consistently ignored its own policy guidelines regarding
resettlement and environmental assessment, and attempted to cover-up the
conclusions of the severely critical official independent review, the Morse
Report. With the ongoing forcible evictions and flooding of tribal lands,
the Bank bears direct legal and moral responsibility for the human rights
abuses taking place in the Narmada Valley.
THEREFORE, the undersigned organizations:
* CONCLUDE that the World Bank has to date been unwilling and incapable
of reforming its lending for large dams; and
* CALL for an immediate moratorium on all World Bank funding of large
dams including all projects currently in the funding pipeline, until:
1 The World Bank establishes a fund to provide reparations to the
people forcibly evicted from their homes and lands by Bank-funded large dams
without adequate compensation and rehabilitation. The fund should be
administered by a transparent and accountable institution completely
independent of the Bank and should provide funds to communities affected by
Bank-funded large dams to prepare reparations claims;
2 The World Bank strengthens its policies and operational practices to
guarantee that no large dam projects which require forced resettlement will
be funded in countries that do not have policies and legal frameworks in
place to assure restoration of the living standards of displaced peoples.
Furthermore, communities to be displaced must be involved throughout the
identification, design, implementation and monitoring of the projects, and
give their informed consent before the project can be implemented;
3 The World Bank commissions, reviews, and implements the
recommendations of an independent comprehensive review of all 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. The review should evaluate the degree to which
project appraisals erred in estimating costs and benefits, identify specific
violations of Bank policies and staff responsible, and address opportunity
costs of not supporting project alternatives. The review must be conducted
by individuals completely independent of the Bank without any stake in the
outcome of the review.
4 The World Bank cancels the debt owed for large dam projects in which
the economic, environmental and social costs are found to outweigh the
realized benefits;
5 The World Bank develops new project appraisal techniques to assure
that estimates of the costs and benefits, risks and impacts, of large dams
under consideration are rigorously based on the actual experience with past
Bank-funded large dams;
6 The World Bank requires that any large dam under consideration be a
necessary part of a locally -approved comprehensive river basin management
plan, and that the project be a last resort after all less damaging and
costly alternatives for flood management, transportation, water supply,
irrigation and power supply are exhausted;
7 The World Bank makes all information on large dam projects, including
past and current projects and projects under consideration, freely available
to the public;
8 The World Bank requires independent monitoring and evaluation of
preparation of large dam projects and systematic monitoring and auditing of
project implementation, by persons outside the Bank and with no stake in the
outcome of the project;
9 A formal decision is taken by the Bank to permanently halt all
funding of large dams through the International Development Association
(IDA), funding which is inconsistent with the IDA-10 donor's agreement.
Endorsed by: -----------------------------------