Open Letter to the Vice President of the World Bank

 

March 20, 2001

Ian Johnson, Vice President for 
Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development
The World Bank
1818 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20433

 

Dear Mr. Johnson:

I note that the World Bank has finally placed a revised version of the Involuntary Resettlement policy and the matrix of responses to public comments on the Resettlement website. However, the posting does not make clear when management intends to send the policy to the full Board, or whether Management will be required to make changes to the policy as a result of public comment.  I am fully aware that the policy has been posted only for “information.” However, you can be assured that the public will be commenting on the changes reflected in the latest posting.

In terms of process, I would suggest that Management develop and announce a mechanism for posting this new round of public input on the resettlement website, as was done in 1999. This will help to inform Board members and other key decision-makers about the range of information and debate. It will also serve to assure the public that their input has some value and is not going into a vacuum. A comment process that started well in 1999 has broken down in the past year and a half, as Management has been increasingly unresponsive to outside questions and analysis.  Posting the next wave of comments which you will receive on the web will serve as a small step towards rebuilding communication and credibility. It would also help to reverse the dangerous trend that we have observed lately, whereby Management places the Board in the position of having to act on the basis of incomplete or delayed information. I refer in particular to the practice of providing Board members with complicated revised drafts and supporting documentation only a few days prior to discussion at the two recent CODE meetings.

I would also like to point out that the March 6 version posted on the external website lacks certain language that was included in the version dated March 6 that was sent to members of the Board.  Compared to the draft circulated to the Board, footnotes 14, 15, 20, and 21 have been deleted from the version posted to the public (both versions are missing footnote 16).  Perhaps this omission was inadvertent, which is why I am writing to call it to your attention immediately. This omission could undermine the principle of public release of information, since the text in the footnotes has a direct impact on the rights of affected people.  For example, footnote 14, combined with Paragraph 7, will create a procedure that will allow the borrower to exclude from compensation “persons engaged in illegal use of natural resources.”  Footnote 15, which is illegible on the web, notes that involuntary resettlement of indigenous people can take place even in situations where such resettlement would have “significant adverse effects” on the “cultural survival” of those people.

I am also writing because I must take issue, for the record, with your assertion that this draft policy represents only a “reformatting” or a “conversion” of OD 4.30 into OP/BP 4.12 and that there are no changes.  I find this argument to be inconsistent with the words printed on the pages of the draft policy. There are numerous changes in the proposed Draft OP/BP 4.12 that are not at all derived from OD 4.30. Some of these changes result in significant weakening of the policy and redefining the rights of local people, and would particularly disadvantage indigenous people and ethnic minorities.

The following are examples of changes that cannot reasonably be attributed to a simple “conversion” or “reformatting” of the OD. These examples, and others, reflect significant policy changes that should be fully and openly discussed, not disguised as part of a simple conversion:

·        In addition to deleting the resettlement policy’s recognition of the vulnerability of those who are not recognized by national land legislation (compare OP para. 8 with OD para. 16), the cumulative changes in the OP would make those people even more vulnerable to displacement and less likely to receive adequate compensation for their losses. (See, for example, OP paragraphs 14(c) and 15, which together imply that people who lack title are not entitled to a resettlement plan (para. 6) or to compensation for loss of land.  See also OP footnotes 14 and 15, affecting “illegal” users of resources and indigenous peoples respectively, discussed above).

·        A substantive policy change -- justified to the Board as “clarifying” management’s position based on practice -- would deny a right to compensation for indirect impacts.  Limiting compensation to “direct” impacts is a change in the language of the policy, one that will externalize project costs to affected communities.

·        The Resettlement Committee did not get “converted” from the OD; it is a new mechanism/concept that did not exist before. 

·        The new language that allows borrowers to certify that they will not provide replacement land because it is not available at a “reasonable cost” is not a result of a conversion, it is a substantive and procedural change that allows borrowers to externalize the risk of spiraling land prices to the displaced persons who are least able to bear that risk.

·        The new procedural and substantive provisions that create a differential (and arguably discriminatory) treatment for parks-affected people are not derived from the OD.

·        Rather helping to clarify implementation, the OP introduces new terms and concepts which lack definition.  These include “resettlement assistance,” “direct impacts”, “illegal use of natural resources,” “reasonable price” and “process framework.”

It would appear that the argument about reformatting is being used to divert the Board’s attention from the fact that Management is proposing changes that significantly weaken the policy.  Simultaneously, this argument is being used to resist having to even discuss the possibility of improving the policy based on both past implementation lessons and current international standards.

Management’s refusal to incorporate, for instance, the findings of the WCD into the revised resettlement policy is a lost opportunity for the Bank and a blow to the years of multi-stakeholder commitment and analysis that went into the WCD process. Resettlement and Indigenous Peoples are two policy areas where the WCD recommendations have the most relevance for Bank operations.  In addition to ignoring the WCD, this revision effort has also ignored OED’s warnings that the draft policy is “biased in favor of planning instead of results,” and that the Bank is missing an opportunity to emphasize the right of development.  Voices from across the spectrum - implementing agencies, OED, anthropologists, NGOs – have been calling for the Bank to adopt a standard of improving, rather than restoring, standards of living. The restoration threshold has resulted in stagnation and impoverishment, and yet these comments are being rejected by Management.

We will be calling on members of the Board of Executive Directors to be wary of the flawed process and to look at the substantive changes in the OP/BP with a critical eye. It would be inappropriate for the Board to approve any changes that have the effect of weakening current World Bank policy.

Sincerely,

Dana Clark

cc:        James D. Wolfensohn, President

            Members of the Board of Executive Directors

            Achim Steiner, Secretary General, World Commission on Dams

            Joanne Salup, Director, Operations Policy & Strategy

            Steen Jorgensen, Social Development Department

Robert Picciotto, Operations Evaluation Department

Kristalina Georgieva, Environment Department

Robert Goodland, Environment Department

            Maninder Gill, Coordinator, Resettlement Thematic Group

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