KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct 24 (Asia Water Wire)  - “Death” and “destruction” is how Amir Mandhro, a local journalist, defined a donor-funded drainage project in his community. Another resident, Gul Mohammad Dal, likened it to a “thief” that invaded their homes and is boldly walking away with their gold. “We can see our fortune slipping away but remain helpless,” he said.

   “The drain has taken away our right to live,” Nazar Ali, Dal’s neighbour, pointed out. “At one time we ruled the area, and now we have been thrown into abject poverty and reduced to grovelling. The drain has affected all of us in the coastal villages. So many have left their generations’ old occupation and migrated as there is nothing to eat. We have no road, no schools and no health centres either. It seems our leaders have forgotten we exist.”

   So desperate have these indigenous people become that they have decided to speak out against what is called the Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD), funded by a mix of organisations that include the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA), Asian Development Bank, Saudi Fund for Development, the British Overseas Development Administration, Canadian International Development Association, Islamic Development Bank, OPEC Fund and the Swiss Development Fund.
 
   So one sultry October day, more than 1,000 men gathered under a colourful marquee for a people’s assembly held in Behdmi, a village in Badin district to discuss their opposition the project.

   The residents’ finally bore fruit when it was reported by the ‘Dawn’ newspaper on Sep. 27 that a report by the World Bank inspection panel found serious flaws in the project. The panel report had been submitted on Jul. 19.

   But it has actually been more than a decade since locals began voicing concern over the donor-funded mega drainage project. The ongoing National Drainage Project (NDP) is still ongoing, and the LBOD, completed in 1995, later became part of it. The estimated project cost is 635.7 million U.S. dollars.

   One of the largest saline water drainage schemes in Asia, the drain crosses through 200 km of agriculture land of Sindh province. It is a virtual cauldron of heavy metals, chemical and organic particles, insecticide and pesticide that would then dump all of its poison into the Arabian Sea.

   Ironically, the drain was designed and launched to address the twin problem of waterlogging and salinity in order to salvage thousands of acres of fertile land – areas that otherwise be rendered barren.

   At its first stage, now complete, it was aimed at controlling the water table and providing drainage facilities to about 516,000 hectares in the three districts of Sindh -- Nawabshah, Mirpurkhas and Sanghar. Badin just happened to be the tipping point where this chemical-laden drainage water would be disposed off into the Arabian Sea.  

   Locals questioned the design of the Tidal Link (the final 26-mile long and 92 feet wide drainage canal connection of the LBOD to the sea). The link, one of the components of the drain (along with Cholri Weir and the Chotiari Reservoir), cuts across areas inhabited by the coastal people, the wetlands and the ‘dhands’ (interconnected lakes/lagoons). They said it would choke the natural flow of the water.

   This was proven true that same year, in 1995, when part of the link was washed away by the floods and large tracts of agriculture land were inundated with toxic effluent.

   The salinity balance of the surrounding wetlands has also declined given profound changes in the ecosystem. The Tidal Link passes through two lagoons, Nurri and Jubho, which come under the 1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance. Locals say the contamination of the lakes has led to a marked decrease in the migratory birds as well as fish species due to loss of vegetation.

   Simultaneously, the local NGOs and their civil society fraternity had been aggressively trying to make the government realise that the World Bank’s policies would damage their way of life and exacerbate their poverty.

   Terming it an “ecological disaster”, Dr M Tahir Qureshi, director of the Ecosystem Unit at IUCN's Sindh Programme Office, said the drain posed more of a human problem than a tactical one. “Foreign consultants are not aware of the site condition or the physiology of the place,” he added.

   The first major setback to the LBOD project came in May 1999 when the tropical cyclone category 2A hit the coastal towns. The already damaged link developed 56 breaches on both sides of the tidal link. The Cholri Weir, built to maintain water levels in the ‘dhands’ and protect them from the effluent, was also partially destroyed. Hundreds of villages were submerged in the effluent and the ‘dhands’ got contaminated.

   The third time was during the May 2003 floods when emergency was declared after over 300 people from villages in Badin and Thatta died, thousands were displaced and their livestock and standing crops perished.

   Despite poor supervision and insufficient attention to technical trouble shootings, work on LBOD went on. This nonchalance on the part of the government led the local people to form a Save Coast Action Committee (SCAC) in 2003.

    On Sep. 9, 2004, the committee requested an inquiry by World Bank’s IDA Inspection Panel. By November, panel members had undertaken a visit to verify the eligibility of inspection and recommended a full investigation. In May 2005, they, along with their consultants paid a detailed visit, recalled Mustafa Talpur, a senior programme officer for ActionAid in Islamabad.

   Among their many concerns, the action committee claimed that the NDP was faulty because it had not taken into account the “social and environmental difficulties inherent in the existing disposal route” or explore “alternative routes”. It added that the environmental assessment “lacked legitimacy” and underestimated the project’s negative impact on marine resources, biodiversity, local ecology, critical habitats and protected areas. In violation of the Bank’s policy, there was no environmental management plan (EMP) for the NDP and the one for the LBOD had been “long delayed”, it also said.

   But most of all, the committee said, there was absolutely no consultation with civil society during all the preparatory work.     

   The inspection panel’s report also observed “significant technical mistakes”  in the designing of the Tidal Link embankments, which had “substantial inherent risks”. It also said that the link was not in harmony with the prevailing winds and the natural flow of water.

   The report also blamed the designers for not evaluating “the likelihood that under prevailing meteorological conditions, high surface water run off from upstream areas would coincide with high water levels in the Arabian Sea”. The panel remarked that the main drain should have been designed with “a higher safety margin”, adding it also “observed instances of poor quality of construction”.

   The panel concluded that these technical faux pas had “contributed to suffering of the local people in lower Badin” and heightened the risks to local people from flooding. The situation, the panel said, can get serious, “during heavy rainfall inland and high tides and storm at sea coincide”.

   “I fail to understand,” said 82-year old teacher Faqir Nathu Khan, “how such highly educated and intelligent people could make such a silly mistakes in their designs that has cost us our lives and land? The community knew from the beginning that such a project spelled disaster, and we had been trying to make them understand but they just would not listen.”

   But Nasir Ali Panhwar of the Sindh Programme of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), understands it all too well. “Like you have various mafias in say transport, construction etc, there is a mafia in the development sector too. Donor agencies and their team of foreign consultants and pockets of government all collude for their personal gains to shamelessly get megaprojects approved. These are nothing but bad news for the poor.”

   So that day in Bedhmi, the people gathered discussed the findings of the panel and what should be done next.

   Asked to comment on the findings, John Wall, the Bank’s country director, politely hedged. In an email message to this reporter, he said: “As I understand the Inspection Panel rules, I am not allowed to comment on the report. He passed on the burden to an expert Dale Lautenbach, who responded by saying: “The board of the Bank will be reviewing the findings at a meeting at the end of October and until they have had this discussion, we are not free to talk about it in public.”    

   “The drain should be closed down,” Bilawal Lund said. “There should be automatic gates to stop the backflow of seawater into the drain,” said Bahadur Khan. There were many who were of the opinion that the drain should be diverted and drainage disposed into Shakoor Dhand, in the adjoining Rann of Kutch, part of which is in India.

   “In the 1960s the area was flooded and it rained non-stop for 30 hours,” recalled Allah Bachayo, a local journalist. “But within the next three days, the water had receded and it was dry again. It doesn’t happen like this any more. Now when it rains, villages after villages get inundated for months,” he said.

   “The World Bank should accept responsibility of the disaster and no new megaprojects should be initiated till they rectify this,” said Mohammad Ali Shah, of Fisherfolk Forum. He was referring to the Bank’s recent engagement of developing a Sindh Coastal Areas Development Programme.

   Meantime, residents want the breaches in the embankments of the tidal link repaired immediately.

   “The Bank and WAPDA in their bid to get rid of this white elephant is trying to force it down our throat,” said Ali Bux, provincial minister for population welfare. The WAPDA, having completed it, had handed it over to the Sindh government which, in turn, is reluctant to take ownership of the faulty drain.  Bux favoured local people involvement in rehabilitation and restoration of the drain.

   At the end of the forum, a Behdmi Declaration was issued that demanded that a “full independent investigation” be carried out “against the institutions that designed the project” and accountability for such a “heinous crime”.

   The committee also demanded that the World Bank loan should be converted into grants and the money spent on the affected people. “We don’t want charity, but since we’ve lost our livelihood, we should be provided with alternative jobs and our area developed by building roads, schools and health care. They said some 4,000 to 5,000 jobs should be created to pull the people out of the cycle of poverty.

   Along with the restoration of the affected area and the lakes, the locals demanded, “drain water must be treated before disposal into the sea so that it does not pose a threat to marine life”. They also asked for an assessment of the losses incurred by the community during the 1999 cyclone and the 2003 floods, adding that compensation must be paid.

   The scale of the drain project was huge, involving the construction of about 1,950 km of surface drains, 2,000 tub-wells, 5,000 structures and 2,000 km of buried drains plus improvement to the irrigation supplies and construction of a reservoir to store 0.8 MAF of irrigation water.

   Of the total cost of the project, approximately 60 percent was to be met by international donor agencies and 40 percent by the Government of Pakistan and Government of Sindh.

   The project was implemented by the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) of the Pakistan government and the Irrigation and Power Department of Sindh. The Irrigation department was responsible for canal remodeling works while WAPDA looked after during and associated works. (END/IPSAP/AWW/ZE/JS/241006)