NARMADAs and, Tehris have been hogging the limelight inIndia, while a more dramatic and potentially devastatingdam on the drawing boards of a neighbouring country -Nepal -has hardly been heard of here. The name of the damis Arun in, a project designed to be constructed on the Arunriver valley. The dam will be 68 m high, 155 m long, with a400 mw capacity.
The size of the project is staggering and the estimated costis bigger than the annual national budget of Nepal. To put it inperspective, one must also note that Nepal's hydelpowerpotential is 83 million KW, which is equal to the combinedinstalled hydroelectric capacity of the United States, Canadaand Mexico.
The Arun in project struck the headlines in recent monthsmore for the World Banks involvement in it than because ofits magnitude. A 1992 internal Bank review had revealed thatmore than 1/3rd of the projects the Bank has undertaken werefailures, and that the deterioration of the Bank's loan portfolio was "steady and pervasive". Another report in the sameyear submitted by the Morse Commission on the SardarSarovar dam had condemned the Bank's project as beset byincompetence, negligence and institutionalised deception.
In response partly to this introspection and public criticism, the Bank established an inspection panel to report to itsboard of Directors on the problems of the implementation ofthe Arun in hydroelectric project. The Bank was confrontedwith a sustained campaign, the thrust of which was that the100-plus km access road to the dam would cause massived6orestation and threaten rare and endangered trees andpiant fife. The project itself, its opponents pointed out, woulddisplace about 2,700 families and would adversely affect thelives of the 450,000 indigenous people who inhabit the valley.The other criticism was that the Bank's commitment to thedam will "crowd out" public investments in other desperatelyneeded@areas such as education, nutrition, and health.
The Bank set up the inspection panel in September 1993 toinvestigate issues raised by filed complaints. The complaints,according to the Bank's policy, were to be filed by the people ofNepal, presenting their viewpoints in a collaborative (not individual),capacity. The panel submitted its preliminary reporton December 16, 1994, which indicted the Bank's handling ofthe Arun iii project and stated that it was not in conformitywith the Bank's policies on information disclosure, indigenouspeople, environmental and social concerns.
The bottom line of the report was that the planners of theproject did not sufficiently appreciate a number of economically and environmentally acceptable options. The project'sexecution would have an adverse effect on the country'spoverty alleviation prograr@mes and it would cause seriouslong-term damage to the environment. The drawbacks of theproject were truly grave.
The panel's report has ;attracted serious internationalattention, resulting in deft foot-dragging by the Bank and other donor countries. It hag provoked debate on the status of the WB's panel and the procedures it adopts as an investigative agency.
The Bank's prescription that only citizens ofthe affected 6ountry could make valid complaintsto the panel, and that too collectively, raises theperennial problem of locus standi. Some countrieslike India and the United States have wroughtjudicial revolutions through innovative deviceslike public interest litigation and class action suits,especially in the field of environment.
Environmental NGOS the world over haveforged informal but effective alliances to fightagainst ecologically destructive projects mountedin the name of "development". The campaigns ofGreenpeace, Friends of the Earth and other NGOSin Japan, the Netherlands and Germany are E2 proverbial. These legal developments deprive the Southern NGOs of the benefits of cooperation and the clout of their better organised Northern environmental crusaders.
An equally debilitating feature is the Bank's obsession withsecrecy. It is counterproductive and militates against 2 important facets of democratic governance: transparency and peopie's participation in decisionmaking. The Bank's recent exercises in this direction are too tentative and halfhearted.
---Rahmatullah Khan is professor ofInternational Law at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.