Legacy

• June 2008 World Rivers Review: Legacy Issue
  

In Nigeria, floodplains and wetlands are rich sources of livelihood for millions of people. These wetlands communities have been losing ground for many years, however. Nigeria's most important wetlands, the Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands, have shrunk by as much as two-thirds in the past 30-40 years because of diversions from dams, irrigation developments and drought. Fisheries, farming and wildlife are all impacted by these hydrological changes.

• June 2008 World Rivers Review: Legacy Issue 
  

An interview with Elizabeth Bevington, a member of a team of 20 pro-bono lawyers with Holland & Knight, LLP (H&K), which advises COCAHICH on the Chixoy negotiations.

Involvement of a well-respected neutral facilitator is key. We began the process with a government agency in charge of human rights as the organizer and moderator of the meetings. That process did not work well, and we recommended involving a neutral party. After some due diligence, Roberto Menendez of the Organization of American States (OAS) was identified as a potential mediator and all parties accepted. This change marked the beginning of the real advances in the process.

• June 2008 World Rivers Review: Legacy Issue 
  

The majority of the world's major rivers have been dammed, leaving a legacy of environmental and social harms that has truly changed the planet. But managing dams in ways that mimic natural river flows can help offset the worst damages.

The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), which transfers water from the mountain highlands of Lesotho to South Africa, is one of the world's largest water-resource developments. In addition to affecting tens of thousands of people living in the reservoir area, the project has, to one degree or another, impacted some 150,000 people living downstream of the dams.

• June 2008 World Rivers Review: Legacy Issue
  

Fifty years ago, Tonga communities were forced to give up their traditional homeland during construction of Kariba Dam. Unforgiving terrain combined with the country's devolving political and economic situation have left the Zimbabwean Tonga facing greater challenges than their Zambian relatives, whose community well-being deteriorated following an inadequate resettlement. Starting in 2000, the Tonga-led Basilwizi Trust in Zimbabwe began helping rewrite the future of its people. International Rivers' Africa campaigner Terri Hathaway caught up with Boniface Mutale, Director of Basilwizi Trust. Born shortly after his family's resettlement, Mutale is leading one of the strongest efforts to combat the effects of displacement which continue to batter new generations of Tonga.

• June 2008 World Rivers Review: Legacy Issue 
  

"History does not allow injustices to vanish just because we are unable to address them."  Colombian author William Ospina

The fight for justice made by the communities affected by the Chixoy Dam in Guatemala has been going on for more than two decades. Their story is stupefying. At the time the dam was being built, horrendous persecution and even massacres of people in the dam region took place at the hands of the dictatorship. The indigenous Maya-Achí communities that lived on lands adjacent to the Chixoy (Negro) River where the dam was being built did not escape the hatred of the brutal regime. People lost the river, their land, fruit trees, animals, sacred sites, their dignity and, too many, their lives. Close to 6,000 people suffered ill effects from the dam, and at least 400 were murdered.

The survivors' resilience is admirable and humbling. For many years communities have organized, sought out national and international allies, protested, wrote letters, and met officials of the Guatemalan government, and project financiers at the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Community leaders sought remedy for wrongs doing committed against their loved ones as the dam was being planned, built and put into operation.

• June 2008 World Rivers Review: Legacy Issue 
  

Our world is full of serious problems, from escalating violence and war to global food and water shortages to increasingly deadly natural disasters. With so many urgent issues, why should we care about the legacies of large dam development?

World Rivers Review, Vol. 23, No. 2

Kariba Dam, on the Zambezi River in what is now Zambia and Zimbabwe, was the engine for the African copper mining industry, generating wealth for colonialists, and then to spur development of the two countries after independence. It was the World Bank’s first dam project. It is also one of Africa's most notorious cases of a people wronged in the name of national development.

As the World Bank plunges back into the large dam business, the legacy of its past dam projects remains unresolved. This briefing paper highlights the ongoing social, environmental and economic problems of a number of Bank-funded dams, and provides recommendations to address this legacy.