Pakistan / key documents

This report was prepared by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Pakistan, for International Rivers. 

Executive Summary

Background

The planned 4,500MW Diamer-Bhasha Dam on the Indus in Pakistan is, at US$ 12.6 billion, one of the largest and most costly planned dams in the world. In August 2008, a fact-finding team visited the proposed site of the dam for one week to collect information and to document the public perception of the project. The team was composed of four Pakistani water experts: Mustafa Talpur, Iftikhar Hussain, Mohsin Babbar and Aimal Khan.

There will always be abundant snow and glaciers on the highest mountains of the world, the Himalayas. This snow will always feed the Indus and Ganges rivers and forever supply water to millions of people in South Asia and China.

These statements may no longer be true. Our warming climate is changing the Himalayas faster than any other region of the world. The mountains’ mighty glaciers, the source of most large Asian rivers, are melting.

The Unresolved Legacy of the World Bank's National Drainage Program in Pakistan - an Eyewitness Account

The World Bank's Inspection Panel (IP) issued its investigation report for the Bank-funded Pakistan National Drainage Program in 2006. The IP report found that Bank management had violated six of the Bank's safeguard policies in the NDP project, contributing to the loss of lives and livelihoods in Pakistan's southern Sindh province. In response to the findings of the IP investigation, Bank management outlined measures they would take to address the policy violations and problems in the NDP.

This article by Ann-Kathrin Schneider first appeared in World Rivers Review in February 2007. It is a plea to the World Bank to take responsibility for the Bank's failed projects and to compensate those harmed by its failures. The article discusses the World Bank-funded National Drainage Project in Pakistan that violated six of the Bank's safeguard policies and led to the loss of lives and livelihoods in Sindh province, Pakistan.