Читать книгу Development-Induced Displacement and Resettlement: Causes, Consequences, and Socio-Legal Context - Bogumil Terminski - Страница 9

Among the four above-mentioned causes of internal displacement, mobility caused by economic development is the latest to acquire mass proportions. Development-caused displacement and conservation-caused displacement are thus regarded as among the youngest categories of mass involuntary human mobility within internal borders. However, even in antiquity we can find examples of population displacement linked to the expansion of agriculture, urbanization and re-urbanization, and indeed the creation of large dams. Perhaps a limited scale of displacement can be associated with the creation of dams in many ancient empires of the Middle and Far East. Internal resettlement has always served the economic interests of narrow political groups. Various forms of involuntary relocation were practised extensively under the totalitarian rule of Imperium Romanum. The capture of a city was often accompanied by displacement of its inhabitants. The problem of forced relocation associated with development might also have been present in ancient China (e.g., accompanying the construction of the Grand Canal in the 6th century BC) as well as in feudal Europe. The intensive colonial expansion of the 18th and 19th centuries caused the first large-scale population displacement associated with development. One product of the colonial era has been the negative standards of implementation of development projects established and maintained in several parts of the globe, leading to social exclusion of and discrimination against especially vulnerable sections of the population.

The first example of development-induced displacement on a mass scale occurred as a result of colonial expansion in the Americas. A common practice of conquistadors in Latin America was the displacement of entire indigenous populations from the cities where they lived and the establishment of new administrative settlements in the same place. New authorities displaced indigenous populations from their homelands, forcing them to give up their former mode of existence. A well-known example of such displacement is the British colonialists' limitation of land and displacement of Aborigines from the coastal territories of South Australia that they had previously occupied. The expansion of the white man's settlements in the United States was accompanied by limitation of land and resettlement of Indians into specially created reservations. The Indian relocation from the west-southeastern part of the United States to the territory of present-day Oklahoma is an example of a mass displacement associated with the desire to take full control of a territory and its resources, such as gold.

We can also date back to the 19th century the first examples of population resettlement carried out by colonialists in India. As Walter Fernandes noted, by the 19th century India had already become an arena of forced relocations associated with the opening of coal mines in Jharkhand, tea gardens in Assam and coffee plantations in Karnataka[40]. The tradition of organized protests against development projects in India dating back to the late XIXth century. The first decade of the next century brought in the creation of large dams in India. The creation of the Mulshi dam on the Mula river in the Pune district was associated with the earliest known anti-dam movement, founded by farmers who had lost their lands. Founded in 1919, the Mulshi Satyagraha movement led by the charismatic Senapati Bapat is considered one of the first social movements to defend the interests of development-caused displaced people[41]. The aim of the movement was to protest against land acquisition and to defend the rights of the people affected by dam construction[42]. The activity of the Mulshi Satyagraha anticipated many modern resistance movements against land acquisition and forced displacement (including the Narmada Bachao Andolan)[43].

The dam mega-projects initiated in several regions of the world from the forties and fifties of the last century onwards have already led to a large increase in the level of development-induced displacements. Indian independence led to accelerated economic growth, largely based on dam construction. In developing countries, ascending the path to sovereignty and political autonomy, the creation of large dams was the necessary and the only effective response to growing energy needs. In 1947, Nehru drew attention to the economic and social benefits of the construction of dams, calling them "temples of modern India". Today, there are nearly 4,000 dams in India alone. Among the projects launched in the forties, it seems worth mentioning the construction of three dams: Tungabhadra (53,000 people displaced), Hirakud (110,000 displaced) and Gandhi Sagar (about 51–61 thousand displaced). A project which became a particularly important symbol of India's independence and economic development following the age of colonialism was the construction of Hirakud Dam, carried out between 1948 and 1957, and strongly supported by Nehru. It led to the forcible resettlement of 22,000 families, the total number of people affected by its construction being estimated at 150,000. A large number of families were evacuated from their hearth and homes without compensation from 1956 onwards. Another period of the intense growth of resettlement in India fell in the first half of the seventies. The construction of Ukai Dam (1972) and Pong Dam (1974) led to the displacement of nearly two hundred thousand inhabitants. As noted by Ray, the construction of Pong Dam (in Himachal Pradesh state) caused the displacement of more than 30,000 families. Only half of them received adequate financial compensation, and 3756 were displaced several hundred miles away to the culturally, ethnically and environmentally different Rajastan areas[44]. Similar problems resulted from the construction of Hirakud and Ukai dams (over 80,000 displaced). The construction of artificial dams was the subject of particularly strong controversy up to the end of the 1980s, thanks to what was perhaps the period's most famous case of forced resettlement: the development project in the Narmada Valley (called the Narmada Dam Project, or the Sardar Sarovar Project).

In China the construction of large dams became an element of the Maoist Great Leap policy, initiated in 1958. Prior to 1949, only twenty-three large to medium-size dams existed in China. Between 1958 and 1962 more than forty large dams were constructed and opened in that country. The creation of six of them—the Ertan, Lugube I, Shuikou, Xinanjiang, Sanmenxia, and Zhaxi—was associated with the involuntary resettlement of more than 100.000 people. From the very beginning the large development projects in China led to various practices that discriminated against minorities. The construction of Xinanjiang, implemented during the second half of the fifties, was associated with several forms of discrimination against and persecution of local communities.

The lack of previous experiences with dam building and hydraulic engineering, and its rapid implementation, has led to many industrial accidents associated with thousands of victims. The most notable example of dam related disaster was the 1975 collapse of the Banqiao Dam on the River Ru in Henan Province. According to the Hydrology Department of Henan Province, the dam failure killed approximately 171.000 people including 26.000 from the direct result of flooding and 145.000 during subsequent famine and epidemics. Unofficial estimates of the number of people killed by this disaster have run as high as 230,000 people. Since the early 1950s Chinese authorities built nearly 84.000 dams, 96 per cent of which were on a small scale. Between 1954 and 2011 3,459 dams had collapsed in China according to Zhang Jiyao, Chinese vice-minister of water resources[45].

Population growth led to increasing energy needs in many developing countries. One solution to this problem has been the construction of socially costly dams in several African countries. The Aswan High Dam on the Nasser Lake, built between 1960 and 1971, has had a very significant and positive impact on the social, economic and cultural transformation of Egypt. The construction of the High Dam has resulted in protection from droughts and floods, an increase in agricultural production and employment, electricity generation and improved navigation, the last being of benefit to tourism. On the other hand, the dam flooded a large area, causing the relocation of 100,000 to 120,000 Nubians, and submerging archaeological sites, some of which were relocated as well. The dam has also been blamed for coastline erosion, soil salinity and health problems. The other well-known example of this process is the construction of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River between 1955 and 1950.

A large scale of involuntary resettlement caused by centrally planned economic programs also characterized the area of the USSR. The first two five-year plans, implemented in the Soviet Union between 1929 and 1939, were heavily based on megaprojects (building of factories, dams and artificial canals, and development of heavy industry and mining). The national program of dam construction, begun in the USSR during the fifties, led to the displacement of as many as 1.5 million peoples (due to the lack of detailed statistical data it is not possible to determine its exact scale). According to very cautious estimates from recent years, the USSR's hydropower and irrigation projects alone led to flooding of an area equal to that of Bulgaria, displacing 170 towns and 2600 villages, and producing irreversible changes in the ecosystem.