SHAM CONSULTATIONS: NO MORE
Statement by Indian Peoples Movements along with Environmental and Social Action Groups condemning the World Bank’s Consultations on Environmental and Social Safeguards Review
The World Bank Group is conducting what it claims are consultation meetings, “announced with as much advance notice as possible to facilitate informed participation from a diverse set of stakeholders” to review and update its environmental and social safeguards policies. Once these ‘consultations’ are concluded, it is reported that the Bank will consider these areas, through internal dialogue, consultations, and a global series of dialogues with external experts, for reform.
It is clear that the World Bank is in no way doing anything different from what has been done in past decades. Many such reviews have been conducted and thousands of groups and individuals have participated in the hope of seeing genuine reform of the institution’s policies and possibly its democratization, only to be utterly disappointed. The current exercise, therefore, is yet another charade to mask the true intentions of its major shareholders: France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, who are grappling with serious economic downturns and are conveniently using the Bank to force open global investment opportunities with scant regard to environmental and social impacts.
If the World Bank was seriously concerned about the impacts of its investments, then the best test would have been to demonstrate sensitivity in their investments. In India, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Bank’s private sector lending arm, is complicit in massive human rights and environmental violations that form the basis of a majority of its investment. For instance, the IFC lending to Lafarge in Meghalaya, mortgaging tribal lands protected under the 6th Schedule of Indian Constitution, to do illegal mining activities had been exposed even in the Supreme Court of India. Similar is the case of the IFC financed the super-mega USD4 billion Tata-Mundra 4000 MW power project in the ecologically sensitive Kutch region of Gujarat. World Bank-funded big hydropower projects like Allain Duhangan and Rampur projects in Himachal Pradesh and mega coal projects like Tata Mundra have been registered to get millions of dollars as free doles under the fraudulent Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) scheme under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change. The massive coal based project will clearly accentuate global warming emissions while the big hydro projects are neither clean nor sustainable. The World Bank has further endorsed such environmental crimes by offering a USD 1 billion loan to the Fifth Power System Development Project, which essentially is a transmission line for huge coal based thermal power plants including Tata-Mundra, Reliance-Sasan Power and Reliance-Krishnapatnam Power. By participating in such a manner, the Bank conveniently escapes blame for the disaster and yet benefits from financing ‘development projects’.
Some years ago, the IFC played down its intention to finance the expansion of the notorious West Coast Paper Mills (WCPM) in Karnataka. WCPM is a company that has worked without any functioning environmental safeguards for decades ultimately resulting in ecological devastation of the biodiversity-rich Kali River. This dastardly act of WCPM has however now been rewarded by the IFC with 17 half-yearly loans of approximately Rs. 150 crores since 2011.
The World Bank’s Policy on Piloting the Use of Borrower Systems for Environmental and Social Safeguards has in the past decade been a mantra to pave the way for promoting investment at any cost. Over a decade ago the World Bank funded the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests’ Environmental Management Capacity Building Project. The result was a massive dilution of India’s environmental and social safeguard norms. The resultant processes gave voice to those within the administration and industry who were crying hoarse that the carefully evolved rigour of “forest” and “environmental” clearance standards in India was thwarting economic growth. Now again the Bank is offering to lend USD 1 Billion for the Ganga Action Plan following the same infrastructure-centered, governance-ignoring model that has failed over the last 25 years, while at the same time funding river-destroying hydropower projects like the Vishnugad Pipalkoti project upstream. The Bank’s funding to the Tehri Hydro Development Corporation has been challenged before the World Bank’s own Inspection Panel, but the Bank is indulging in propaganda against the critics rather than withdrawing from the project. None of the affected people from any other ongoing or past Bank funded project or groups working with them have been invited to these consultations.
Many such examples can be cited to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the so-called environmental and social safeguards of the Bank are nothing more than a veneer of protection to mask the real impacts of this dangerous financial institution which works only to increase profitability of its shareholders at any cost.
The World Bank is extremely inventive in producing documents and jargons that sound good, feel good, and are often genuinely trusted by many. It relies heavily on maintaining a good reputation and positive opinion of itself within governments and wider society, especially the media, in advancing its objectives. The current exercise is a part of this process. But, as is said, if the proof is in the pudding, then that would have been best revealed by the World Bank saying “NO” to many investments that have disastrous consequences. Instead, it has gone on to not only aggressively finance such projects, but also defend such investments as necessary components of the “globalization” process that it actively propagates.
Even if we were to assume for a moment that the current exercise of ‘consultations’ is a genuine effort of the World Bank to consult stakeholders, the documents accessed on the range and depth of these ‘consultations’ reveal that they are highly segregated and sectoral. Moreover, participants have been carefully selected and largely include only those who may say what the Bank wants to hear. There is nothing public about such exercises, held, as they normally are, in highly secure 5 Star hotels in capitals around the world, with little or no prior information to the public. Further, World Bank officials typically ‘consult’ bureaucrats and do not engage with Legislators or Parliamentarians.
The best indicator of the shallowness of this exercise is evident since the communities grievously hurt and suffering from the Bank’s lending and investment policies are not invited to these consultations. As a matter of fact, looking at things globally, the only complaint that the IFC’s Compliance Advisor/ Ombudsman has processed for Compliance Audit against a Financial Intermediary lending is from a project in India: IFC lending to IDFC and IIF, which in turn used that money to fund a destructive thermal power project of the notorious GMR Energy. Despite a formal complaint pending review against this investment, the Bank, its bureaucracy and consultants, have not invited the complainants and affected communities to the current ‘consultation’ process, thus revealing the sham and mockery that the current review mechanism is!
Former World Bank employee, India’s Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and Planning Commission Vice Chair Montek Singh Ahluwalia, have repeatedly stated their opposition to genuine, democratic decision-making about environmental issues, and India’s Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has even infamously stated: “willing to tolerate debate, and perhaps even dissent, as long as it does not come in the way of 8 per cent growth”. The World Bank is in fact involved in putting substance to such wishes of these top politicians. In such a political climate, the World Bank’s environmental and social safeguards are mere window dressing. Exactly two decades ago the Bank had to get out of the Narmada Project, which was a historic development brought about by peoples’ struggles. However, the disaster created by the World Bank’s early funding to the Narmada project is still continuing, with lakhs of people suffering while the project is still far from complete. The Bank has clearly learnt no lessons and refuses even to follow the recommendations of the World Commission on Dams.
It took peoples’ movements, grassroots networks and allied organisations across the world more than 30 years to pressurize the World Bank Group to formulate and have in place mechanisms that would safeguard social-environmental-cultural-traditional interests of communities affected by the Bank’s financing of so-called ‘Development projects.’ However, it took the World Bank, in particular IFC, only one stroke of destructive imagination to bring in the new model of ‘Financial Intermediary Lending’ that wiped out all mandatory requirements posed by environmental and social safeguard principles on lending, as ‘Intermediaries’ are not bound by such standards. At a time when the FI model of lending in India by the IFC and the World Bank at large are expected to cross the halfway mark of their collective investments, it does not make any sense at all for the World Bank to be holding reviews of their environmental and social safeguards; they simply do not matter at all to the actual practice of the World Bank group’s member agencies.
The current ‘consultations’ are a complete sham and must be denounced by anyone genuinely committed to the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), climate justice, sustainable development through democratic decision-making and the Principle of Intergenerational Equity.
Signatories:
1. National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM)
2. National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers (NFFPFW)
3. National Fishworkers’ Forum (NFF)
4. National Hawkers’ Federation (NHF)
5. National Handloom Weavers Federation (NAHFED)
6. National Domestic Workers Union (NDWU)
7. National Cyclists Union (NCU)
8. All India Forum of Forest Movements (AIFFM)
9. South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People (SANDRP)
10. Bharat Jan Vigyan Jathha (BJVJ)
11. Adivasi Mahila Mahasangh, Jashpur, Chhattisgarh
12. Alternate Law Forum, Bangalore
13. Beyond Copenhagen Collective
14. Bhindrai Institute for Research and Social Action (BIRSA), Jharkhand
15. Citizens Concern for Dams and Development, Imphal, Manipur
16. Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties, New Delhi
17. CIVIC, Bangalore
18. Delhi Forum
19. Delhi Solidarity Group
20. Dialogue on Indigenous Culture and Environment (DICE) Foundation, Kohima, Nagaland.
21. Dynamic Action, Kerala
22. Environment Support Group (ESG, Bangalore)
23. Equations, Bangalore
24. FOCUS on the Global South
25. Forum for Indigenous Perspectives & Action, Imphal ,Manipur
26. Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan, Mumbai
27. Himdhara – Environment Research Collective, Himachal Pradesh
28. Indian Social Action Forum, New Delhi
29. Institute for Democracy & Sustainability (IDS, New Delhi)
30. Intercultural Resources (ICR, Delhi)
31. International Rivers, India
32. Jan Jagruti Kendra, Chhattisgarh
33. Jan Sangharsh Vahini, Delhi
34. Jharkhand Mines Area Coordination Committee (JMAAC)
35. Kerala Swatantra Matsya Thozhilali Federation – Independent Fishworkers Federation of Kerala (KSMTF)
36. Kriti Team, New Delhi
37. Lok Shakti Abhiyan, Odisha
38. Machimaar Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan
39. Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, Badwani, Madhya Pradesh
40. MATU Jan Sanghattan, Uttarakhand
41. Mozda Collective, Gujarat
42. Nadi Ghatti Morcha, Chhattisgarh
43. Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA)
44. North East Peoples Alliance, Manipur
45. Odisha Chas Parivesh Surakhya Parishad (Odisha)
46. Partners in Justice Concerns – India
47. Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti, Gujarat
48. People’s Campaign Against Water Privatisation
49. People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Karnataka
50. Plachimada Samrakshana Samiti, Kerala
51. Programme for Social Action (PSA, India)
52. Right to Food Campaign, Uttar Pradesh
53. River Basin Friends, Assam
54. River Research Centre, Kerala
55. Society for Rural Urban & Tribal Initiative (SRUTI, Delhi)
56. Srijan Lokhit Samiti, Singrauli, Madhya Pradesh
57. Theeradesa Mahila Vedi, Kerala
58. Urban Research Centre, Bangalore
59. Vikalp Social Organisation, Uttarakhand
60. Vimochana, Karnataka
61. Water Initiatives, Odisha
CITIZENS GROUPS AND PEOPLE”S MOVEMENTS STALL WORLD BANK’S
‘CIVIL SOCIETY CONSULTATIONS’
PRESS RELEASE 11th April 2013, New Delhi
Citizens’ groups, people’s movements, socio-political activists from across India organised themselves to protest and force cancel the ‘civil society consultations’ of the World Bank Group in India. The World Bank has been conducting consultations for review and update of their environmental and social safeguards policies all over the world. The World Bank claims that these meetings “announced with as much advance notice as possible to facilitate informed participation from a diverse set of stakeholders”. In India, the three consultations were scheduled in Delhi (5th April), Bangalore (8th April) and Bhubaneshwar (10th April).
In Delhi and Bangalore, groups and individuals made their way into the consultations and raised objections to the way in which the WB has held the social and environmental safeguards review process. Holding placards and banners that read: “World Bank Quit India”, the demonstrators got the WB consultants and review team to call off and cancel the two consultations. In Bhubaneshwar, around 60 activists, including 10 affected persons from the IFC funded GMR Project, protested outside the Hotel Trident, the five star venue that hosted the consultation. Villagers affected by bank-funded projects were disallowed from participating and presenting their views in what is being advertised as ‘consultations with civil society’. While in Delhi and Bangalore WB could not do the consultation, the Bhubaneshwar one was shamelessly conducted under the shadow of police.
Once these ‘consultations’ are concluded, it is reported that the Bank will consider these areas, through internal dialogue, consultations, and a global series of dialogues with external experts, for reform. The core policies under review are the eight environmental and social safeguard policies namely Environmental Assessment, Natural Habitats, Pest Management, Indigenous Peoples, Physical Cultural Resources, Involuntary Resettlement, Forests, Safety of Dams – as well as the Policy on Piloting the Use of Borrower Systems for Environmental and Social Safeguards.
Experiences of groups and communities, engaging with these processes in last thirty odd years, to see genuine reform of the institution’s policies and possibly its democratisation, have been utterly disappointed. These ‘consultations’ are only used by the Bank to legitimise their destructive funding practices. When the bank continues to invest in coal fired thermal plants, mega dams and large hydropower projects, which are destroying lives, livelihoods and the natural environment, review of environmental & social safeguards is mere lip service. This round of consultations by the World Bank is facing protests in several other countries including Indonesia, Philippines, etc. for similar reasons.
If the World Bank is seriously concerned about the impacts of its investments, then the best test would have been to demonstrate sensitivity in their investments. In India, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Bank’s private sector lending arm, is complicit in massive human rights and environmental violations that form the basis of a majority of its investment. For instance, the IFC lending to Lafarge in Meghalaya, mortgaging tribal lands protected under the 6th Schedule of Indian Constitution, to do illegal mining activities had been exposed even in the Supreme Court of India. Similar is the case of the IFC financed the super-mega USD4 billion Tata-Mundra 4000 MW power project in the ecologically sensitive Kutch region of Gujarat. World Bank-funded big hydropower projects like Allain Duhangan and Rampur projects in Himachal Pradesh and mega coal projects like Tata Mundra have been registered to get millions of dollars as free doles under the fraudulent Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) scheme under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change. The massive coal based project will clearly accentuate global warming emissions while the big hydro projects are neither clean nor sustainable. The World Bank has further endorsed such environmental crimes by offering a USD 1 billion loan to the Fifth Power System Development Project, which essentially is a transmission line for huge coal based thermal power plants including Tata-Mundra, Reliance-Sasan Power and Reliance-Krishnapatnam Power. By participating in such a manner, the Bank conveniently escapes blame for the disaster and yet benefits from financing ‘development projects’.
It is clear that the World Bank is in no way doing anything different from what has been done in past decades. Many such reviews have been conducted and thousands of groups and individuals have participated in the hope of seeing genuine reform of the institution’s policies and possibly its democratization, only to be utterly disappointed. The current exercise, therefore, is yet another charade to mask the true intentions of its major shareholders: France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, who is grappling with serious economic downturns and is conveniently using the Bank to force open global investment opportunities with scant regard to environmental and social impacts.
The World Bank’s Policy on Piloting the Use of Borrower Systems for Environmental and Social Safeguards has in the past decade been a mantra to pave the way for promoting investment at any cost. Over a decade ago the World Bank funded the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests’ Environmental Management Capacity Building Project. The result was a massive dilution of India’s environmental and social safeguard norms. The resultant processes gave voice to those within the administration and industry who were crying hoarse that the carefully evolved rigour of “forest” and “environmental” clearance standards in India was thwarting economic growth. Now again the Bank is offering to lend USD 1 Billion for the Ganga Action Plan following the same infrastructure-centered, governance-ignoring model that has failed over the last 25 years, while at the same time funding river-destroying hydropower projects like the Vishnugad Pipalkoti project upstream. The Bank’s funding to the Tehri Hydro Development Corporation has been challenged before the World Bank’s own Inspection Panel, but the Bank is indulging in propaganda against the critics rather than withdrawing from the project. None of the affected people from any other ongoing or past Bank funded project or groups working with them have been invited to these consultations.
Even if one is to assume for a moment that the current exercise of ‘consultations’ is a genuine effort of the World Bank to consult stakeholders, the documents accessed on the range and depth of these ‘consultations’ reveal that they are highly segregated and sectoral. Moreover, participants have been carefully selected and largely include only those who may say what the Bank wants to hear. There is nothing public about such exercises, held, as they normally are, in highly secure 5 Star hotels in capitals around the world, with little or no prior information to the public. Further, World Bank officials typically ‘consult’ bureaucrats and do not engage with Legislators or Parliamentarians.
The best indicator of the shallowness of this exercise is evident since the communities grievously hurt and suffering from the Bank’s lending and investment policies are not invited to these consultations. As a matter of fact, looking at things globally, the only complaint that the IFC’s Compliance Advisor/ Ombudsman has processed for Compliance Audit against a Financial Intermediary lending is from a project in India: IFC lending to IDFC and IIF, which in turn used that money to fund a destructive thermal power project of the notorious GMR Energy. Despite a formal complaint pending review against this investment, the Bank, its bureaucracy and consultants, have not invited the complainants and affected communities to the current ‘consultation’ process, thus revealing the sham and mockery that the current review mechanism is!
It took peoples’ movements, grassroots networks and allied organisations across the world more than 30 years to pressurize the World Bank Group to formulate and have in place mechanisms that would safeguard social-environmental-cultural-traditional interests of communities affected by the Bank’s financing of so-called ‘Development projects.’ However, it took the World Bank Group only one stroke of destructive imagination to bring in the new model of ‘Financial Intermediary Lending’ that wiped out all mandatory requirements posed by environmental and social safeguard principles on lending, as ‘Intermediaries’ are not bound by such standards. At a time when the FI model of lending in India by the IFC and the World Bank at large are expected to cross the halfway mark of their collective investments, it does not make any sense at all for the World Bank to be holding reviews of their environmental and social safeguards; they simply do not matter at all to the actual practice of the World Bank group’s member agencies.
The current ‘consultations’ are a complete sham and must be denounced by anyone genuinely committed to the principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), climate justice, sustainable development through democratic decision-making and the Principle of Intergenerational Equity.
Speakers at the Press Briefing held in Delhi on the 11th April included:
Clifton D’Rozario (Alternate Law Forum – Bangalore)
Himanshu Thakkar (South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People – SANDRP)
Rajendra Ravi (National Cyclists Union)
Vimal Bhai (Matu Jan Sangathan, Uttarakhand)
Madhuresh Kumar (National Alliance of People’s Movements)
Media Release
New Delhi. 3 July 2012
Tata Mundra: Eminent Panel finds serious social and environmental violations.
Recommends immediate suspension of financing and calls for full project review
New Delhi: “The (Tata Mundra Ultra Mega) project has disproportionately high social, environmental, and economic costs. The company, the licensing agencies of the Government of Gujarat and India, and the national and international financial institutions have either ignored or willfully neglected the high social and environmental costs and did little to mitigate them” a report released by an independent fact finding team said here today.
The report adds: “The Social Impact Assessment and Environmental Impact Assessment are misleading and erroneous, having excluded a large number of communities whose loss of livelihood was overlooked. Cumulative impact studies required to understand the overall impacts were not done. The governments and the IFIs are equally complicit in the violations by the company.”
Coming at a time when India is facing its worst coal crisis with rising prices and supply shortage, the report signifies yet another body blow to the 4000 MW Tata Mundra project.
The panel recommends that “International Financial Institutions should undertake an immediate review of the project to examine adherence of their safeguard polices; until such a review is done, their financial assistance to the project should be suspended.” Among the banks in question are the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
The report was authored by a team led by retired Chief Justice of Sikkim, S N Bhargava. Other members include Dr. Varadarajan Sampath (former Ministry of Earth Sciences Advisor of the Government of India); distinguished journalist and author Praful Bidwai; Jarjum Ete (former Chairperson of Commission for Women in Arunachal Pradesh), and Soumya Dutta (National Convener of the Bharat Jan Vigyan Jatha). The team visited Mundra in April and May 2012, met senior company staff including its CEO Mr. KK Sharma, held meetings with affected communities and perused voluminous documents to inform its findings.
The fact finding was carried out at the request of communities impacted by the Tata Mundra Ultra Mega Power Project (UMPP). The report found that the concerns communities raised about India’s first UMPP are complex, disturbing, and require comprehensive investigation, which should cover not just environmental and social harms but also economic impacts and destruction of livelihoods. The reported policy violations, including breaches of applicable IFC Performance Standards and ADB Safeguards – a key project financier – are significant and can be irreversible, warranting an independent and objective probe.
Located in an ecologically-fragile area of Kutch and sited within the vicinity of the Mundra Special Economic Zone, the Tata UMPP is one of several large-scale energy projects within a 70-km stretch that are projected to produce a total of 22,000 MW of power.
“The findings of this report was revealing to us. What was most shocking was that the licensing agencies, the concerned Ministries at the Center and state, and the international financial institutions failed to monitor the project closely and did almost nothing to prevent the enormous damage it is causing to flora and fauna, and the people. We hope the concerned authorities will take appropriate actions immediately” said Justice Bhargava who headed the fact-finding team.
The US$ 4 billion Tata plant is financed by a consortium of banks including the IFC, ADB, the Export-Import Bank of Korea, and the Korea Export Insurance Corporation. Local financiers include BNP Paribas and Indian sources such as the State Bank of India, India Infrastructure Finance Company Ltd., Housing and Urban Development Corporation Ltd., Oriental Bank of Commerce, Vijaya Bank, State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur, State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Travancore, and the State Bank of Indore.
What the panel finds
1. The Environmental and Social Impact Assessments filed by the company were deficient. The company failed to account for significant social, economic, and environmental damages caused by the project in its EIA and SIA, and even neglected to identify certain communities as project affected.
2. The IFC and ADB failed to require the company to conduct a cumulative impact study. The project, sited in the vicinity of several other large-scale polluting industries, will have significant cumulative impacts on the local population and environment, yet no cumulative impact assessment has been performed.
3. The IFC and ADB failed to require the company to conduct and/or disclose chemical pollution studies. The fact-finding team confirmed high chemical content and increasing acidity in the outlet water from the project, which is detrimental to fish eggs and larvae. This harm warrants further, in-depth investigation.
4. The IFC and ADB failed to require the company to conduct adequate, meaningful, and informed consultations with the affected communities. The communities repeatedly complained about the lack of consultation before the project started and failure to share key information about the impacts and mitigation plans.
5. The project violated its environmental clearance by destroying inland ecosystems. Large stretches of mangroves, dry-land forests, and biodiversity-rich creeks were destroyed for the construction of the inlet and outfall channels and other associated activities of the project. The team could not find the required forest clearance for this destruction, which the company refuses to own up to.
6. The project violated its environmental clearance by adopting a one-through cooling system. The project was permitted for a closed-cycle cooling system, but installed a cheaper, more environmentally-destructive one-through cooling system.
7. The project blocked access to fishing and grazing grounds. Access roads for the fisher-folk and the pastoralists to fishing and grazing grounds have either been blocked or diverted, forcing villagers to take an unusually long route and pay more for their transport, and resulting in considerable delay for women returning from the markets after selling fish.
8. The project has caused drastic reduction in fish catches, destroying the livelihoods of local fisher-folk. Available fish-catch data indicate considerable reduction in fish catch in the past three years since the adjacent Adani plant was commissioned, which has been exacerbated by the partial commissioning of Tata Mundra. Communities fear total loss of aquatic wealth when the project is fully operational, along with their livelihoods as fisher-folk—a clear violation of IFC policies.
9. The project failed to thoroughly examine or adequately address the health and environmental impacts of ash contamination from the project. The partially-operational plant is already contaminating drying fish, salt, and animal fodder in the area, causing significant health concerns. Salt contamination has been demonstrated to cause an increase of diseases and abnormal abortions in cattle. Further, heavy metals contained in toxic coal ash—such as cadmium, lead, selenium, and mercury—are known to bio-accumulate in animal and human bodies.
10. The project ignored the potential impacts of radioactivity from the coal ash pond. Independent readings taken as far as 400 meters away from the ash pond recorded radiation levels that were double those found in the villages. While this reading is about half the permissible limit, the project is only one-fifth operational, with four more units planned. None of the impact assessments have addressed this.
11. The company significantly underestimated its bid, resulting in cost overruns and increased energy tariffs for customers. In its bid for the Mundra UMPP, Tata Power significantly underestimated the material cost of plant construction and the operational cost of fuel—namely imported coal—resulting in significant cost overruns. With the project only one-fifth completed, the company is already seeking to be released from its negotiated Power Purchase Agreement with five states, asking for an increase of the agreed-upon electricity tariff by 35% for average individual consumers.
What the panel recommends
The company is urged to compute and monetize all the social and environmental costs and add these to the project costs; compensate all local people for their livelihood losses; create a fund for the restoration of mangroves destroyed; restore people’s access to fishing and grazing grounds, and to salt-pans unconditionally; and employ all possible pollution control measures on a war footing, to save this fragile zone from further damage.
The Governments of India and Gujarat are urged to put a moratorium on permission to any more industry/power plants in Mundra/Kutch; issue show cause notice to the CGPL/Tata Mundra for multiple violations of clearance conditions; form independent expert committee(s) to thoroughly investigate all pollution, contamination, and radioactivity hazards within a reasonable time frame; and direct all national banks/financial institutions to adopt and enforce mandatory social and environmental safeguard policies at a reasonable timeframe.
The international financial institutions are urged to undertake an immediate review of the project to examine adherence of their safeguard polices; suspend financial assistance until such a review is done; putting in place an independent monitoring mechanism to ensure strict compliance of their safeguard policies. Meanwhile, the national financial institutions should adopt social and environmental policies and implement them scrupulously in this project. The implementation should be monitored by independent agencies, which include the affected people’s representatives.
Download the full report (PDF 2MB):
http://www.bicusa.org/en/Document.102931.aspx
For more information and interviews with the Fact Finding team contact:
Soumya Dutta:
Email: soumyadutta.delhi@gmail.com
Cell: +91.9213763756
Colombia: Complaint Filed Against World Bank Group For Funding Eco Oro Minerals Gold Mine In Fragile Colombian Wetlands
http://indigenouspeoplesissues.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15345:colombia-complaint-filed-against-world-bank-group-for-funding-eco-oro-minerals-gold-mine-in-fragile-colombian-wetlands&catid=23&Itemid=56
Downstream community submits complaint to the IFC’s Ombudsman
Today, local groups in Bucaramanga, Colombia filed a complaint against the World Bank Group’s investment in Eco Oro Mineral’s Angostura mining project with the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), the independent grievance mechanism of the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The complaint cites, among ten main concerns, the IFC’s failure to evaluate the potentially severe and irreversible social and environmental impacts of the project, a large-scale gold mine located in a fragile, high-altitude wetland, called the Santurbán páramo, which provides water to over 2.2 million Colombians.
The Committee for the Defense of Water and the Santurbán Páramo, a coalition of nearly 40 groups living downstream of the project in Bucaramanga, asserts that the IFC, the World Bank’s private-sector lending arm, ignored its own policies before investing US$11.79 million in Greystar Resources – now Eco Oro Minerals – in 2009. The IFC bought shares before the company had completed required environmental and social impact assessments.
IF-EYE INDIA UPDATE IN HINDI – JANUARY 2012 (COURTESY: BIC-INDIA) Update January 2012 Hindi
World Bank pushing dirty coal and massive hydro
The Bank’s energy projects in Kosovo and India are being lambasted by critics for threatening livelihoods and the environment.
The Bank’s energy strategy, which is supposed to be an input into the broader infrastructure review (see Update 77), is still stalled because of deadlock at the Bank board (see Update 76, 75). The Australian executive director at the Bank tried to broker a compromise over the controversial paragraph about whether it should continue funding coal-fired power plants in middle-income countries, but his tenure at the board ended before he was able to negotiate a solution.
In early September three Kosovar NGOs – KIPRED, FIQ and the GAP Institute – published a report on Energy Projects in Kosovo, which said the national energy strategy, “drafted by the government in cooperation with the World Bank, USAID, the European Commission, and others, fails to address quality-of-life issues. The whole process of developing new generation and distribution capacities has been marred by lack of transparency, discordance between international agencies and powers, and a failure to consult with civil society organisations.”
The Bank is considering three coal-power related projects for Kosovo, including more financing for technical assistance, support to a private company to run a lignite (brown coal) mine and power plant, and a partial risk guarantee for the privatisation of electricity distribution to facilitate the new lignite plant’s operations.
The NGOs fault the Bank for ignoring its own criteria for screening coal projects under the Strategic framework for development and climate change (see Update 71, 69). Instead “the Bank, in cooperation with the Kosovo government, is pushing for the privatisation of energy generation without carrying out other necessary studies and before addressing the issue of energy accountability. There are, as of now, no Bank studies on alternative energy sources, technical and commercial losses have not yet been tackled, energy efficiency is not a priority, and very little is being done in terms of developing projects that aim to address issues related to this field.”
A mid July investigation published by newspaper The New York Times suggests the Bank is merely doing the bidding of the US, its major shareholder. It notes that while the US is opposing coal project finance from the Bank (see Update 69) it is supporting the lignite project because of “a complicated mix of geopolitics … and entrenched bureaucratic interests”. This has made the Bank very nervous about the project and Bank officials insisted on speaking anonymously to the reporter writing the story.
In their report, the Kosovar NGOs recommend that prior to the lignite plant going forward the Bank should insist on “energy efficiency, reduction of technical and commercial losses of energy, and investment in transmission lines with neighbouring countries”, as well as “studies on solar energy capacity, wind energy capacity, and energy capacity from geothermal sources.”
Indian controversies
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Bank’s private sector arm, investment in the Tata Mundra coal power plant (see Update 73, 59) is now stuck in limbo. It is being investigated by the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, the adjudicator for disputes on IFC projects. Lodged by fishing and farming villagers, the complaint was accepted as eligible in July. It claims that due to flawed design and execution, including breaches of mandatory client obligations, the mammoth coal-fired power plant is destroying the livelihoods of thousands of families and will cause irreparable damage to fragile marine resources and agriculture.
However, increases in the cost of coal mean the plant may never be completed, suggesting that the IFC backed a project that was never commercially viable without implicit fossil fuel subsidies. Tata had planned to import coal from its affiliated mine in Indonesia at below-market prices, but thanks to a G20 commitment to phase out all fossil fuel subsidies, Indonesia will now require all overseas sales of coal to be benchmarked to prevailing international market prices. In early August the Indian government confirmed that it would not modify the power purchase contract to raise the tariff paid for power from the plant, putting into doubt the ability of the project to turn a profit. On top of that, in mid August the government of the Indian state of Gujarat, where the plant is located, appointed a retired supreme court judge to investigate accusations of corruption and abuse of power in the granting of land for the port where the coal would unloaded before being sent to the power plant.
Coal is not the only controversial energy source in India, as the Bank also announced in early August a $648 million loan for the 444 megawatt Vishungad-Pipalkoti hydro-power project in the northern state of Uttarakhand. In July 2010, project-affected villagers complained to the Bank about lack of consultation and improperly prepared Environmental Impact Assessments. Despite government assurances about consultation, in July 2011 the Matu Peoples’ Organisation, which is representing affected villagers, wrote to the minister of environment complaining that “for the second time a very important study is going to be discussed in the [Expert Appraisal Committee on River Valley and Hydroelectric Projects] without putting it in the public domain. … Here the question arises what happened to public consultation? When did it happen? Without any public consultation and putting the report in public domain, the report has been given a green signal.” The organisation is now demanding the cancellation of logging permits given to make way for the dam.
‘Green’ bonds?
In May the IFC announced that it has raised $135 million by issuing green bonds, the proceeds of which are reserved for “investing exclusively in renewable energy, energy efficient, and other climate-friendly projects in developing countries”. However, it has transpired that these bonds are already being used to finance projects which fall under the Bank’s definition of ‘low-carbon’, rather than ‘renewable’, a category that includes controversial energy projects whose climate and environmental impacts have been questioned (see briefing). The IFC admits that projects will include the “rehabilitation of power plants and transmission facilities”, and already medium sized hydro-power projects are being financed.
Karen Orenstein of NGO Friends of the Earth US doubts the credibility of this initiative: “The jury is still out as to whether the IFC’s green bonds are truly green or merely green-washing. In addition to funding climate friendly technologies like wind and solar, green bonds can also fund fossil fuel-based technologies and potentially large hydropower and industrial scale biomass. These are hardly ‘green’ initiatives.”
Where to next?
A June report by Indian NGO Vasudha Foundation with Oil Change International and ActionAid International noted that “only 9 per cent of the World Bank Group‘s energy portfolio in [fiscal year] 2009 and 2010 targeted increasing energy access for the world’s poorest”, and called for the Bank to “increas[e] energy access for the poor through clean, decentralised energy sources.”
A July letter from 48 US-based organisations to US legislators called on them to “make provision of funds for the general capital increase contingent on the World Bank Group adopting an energy sector strategy – with clear guidelines, metrics, and timetables – that: . finances only non-fossil-fuel-based clean energy technologies.”
Despite the pressure from civil society groups, the politics of approving a final version of the new energy strategy will only get more complicated as the climate change negotiations scheduled for December in Durban, South Africa approach.
Link to the article:
http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/art-568872
