The Development Potential of Land Settlement (the Egyptian Case)

The symposium on Social Research for Development was held on May 5-11, 1981, in Cairo, Egypt; by the Social Research Center (SRC) of The American University in Cairo (AUC). The Symposium was supported by funds from Battelle Human Affairs Research Center, Ford Foundation, International Development Re­search Center {IDRC}, and the Population Council. The theme of the Symposium was selected in respons.e to the increased con­cerns of social scientists, policymakers and funding agencies about the current status and new directions of social science research, its role in the pro­cess of social and economic development, and its contribution to policy-rele­vant issues. The Symposium, therefore, aimed at providing a valuable opportu­nity for the invaed participants to exchange ideas and views on social research findings, methodologies, priorities, strategies, and funding as they relate to policy issues of various aspects of social and economic developmenthttps://fount.aucegypt.edu/faculty_book_chapters/1831/thumbnail.jp

Interview with Thayer Scudder

An interview in four sessions, in December 2000, and January and February 2001, with Thayer (Ted) Scudder, professor of anthropology, emeritus, in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Dr. Scudder received his BA at Harvard College (1952) and his PhD at Harvard University (1960). He joined the Caltech faculty as an assistant professor in 1964, received tenure in 1966, and became a full professor in 1969. In this wide-ranging interview, he recalls his upbringing as a “college brat” in Swarthmore, where his father was a professor of English; his education at The Fenn School and Phillips Exeter; his early interest in bird watching and mountaineering, and his eventual turn, in graduate school, to anthropology. He discusses the fieldwork in the Middle Zambezi Valley with Elizabeth Colson among the Gwembe Tonga that led to his dissertation, and his subsequent studies on hydro-politics and the impact of resettlement of indigenous people to make way for huge dam projects, such as the Kariba Dam and the Aswan High Dam. He recalls Caltech in the mid-sixties, his first friendships there, and the advent of the social sciences program. He describes the Scudder theory of successful resettlement and its four stages: pre-dam planning; adaptation to new habitat accompanied by physiological, psychological, and sociocultural stress; community formation and economic development; and handing over to the succeeding generation. He discusses the impact of dams on people living downstream; his work on transboundary flood regimes; his appointment to the World Commission on Dams in 1998; and the findings in their November 2000 report and the various reactions to it

The Kariba Case Study

The Kariba Dam, completed during the second half of the 1950s, was the first mainstream dam built on the Zambezi River. Its construction was partially financed by the largest loan that the World Bank had given up until that time. Considered a successful project even by affected people based on cost benefit analysis, Kariba also involved unacceptable environmental and social impacts. The involuntary resettlement of 57,000 people within the reservoir basin and immediately downstream from the dam was responsible for serious environmental degradation which was one of a number of factors that left a majority of those resettled impoverished. Other factors included inadequate institutional capacity, inadequate opportunities, adverse rural-urban terms of trade, the war for Zimbabwes independence and the bankruptcy of the political economy of Zambia. Built as a single purpose hydro project, Karibas construction drastically altered, and regularized, the Zambezis natural regime. That adversely affected the flood recession agriculture of Zambian villagers living below the dam as well as the size and biodiversity of the Zambezi delta and the productivity of Mozambiques offshore fishery. Failure to properly drawdown the Kariba and Cahora Bassa reservoirs prior to increased rainfall during the 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 rainy seasons caused significant downstream loss of life, crops, and village and urban infrastructure in February-March 2000 and 2001

A retrospective analysis of Laos’s Nam Theun 2 Dam

I was appointed in 1997 at the start of the World Bank’s independent International Environmental and Social Panel of Experts for the Nam Theun 2 Dam. I made over 20 visits to Laos to carry out our analyses, before resigning in March 2014. This article concentrates on the Nakai Plateau resettlement and, where relevant, the dam’s Watershed Management and Protection Area, which included a large area between the future reservoir and the Vietnam border. It includes what I consider the main mistakes that were made during the resettlement process on the Nakai Plateau

Regional Planning For People, Parks And Wildlife In The Northern Portion Of The Sebungwe Region

A DLM case report on the rural community of Sebungwe, Zimbabwe.The purpose of this report is to provide the regional planners with more 'information on the people of the northern portion of the Sebungwe Region and especially on their economic activities and on possible development options for the area which, will facilitate the co-existence of both people and game. It deals primarily with the northern Sebungwe because that is the area with which I am most familiar

Okavango River Basin

The Okavango River Basin presents an incredibly dynamic and complex situation. It is a double challenge: first to convey the river’s importance in a policy-relevant way to all kinds of people interested in its management, and second to draw upon a vast literature in hopes of making useful suggestions for the way forward. Four sections follow. The first deals with the basin’s exceptional bio-cultural diversity. The second examines ongoing political economy, environmental, and international constraints to the basin’s sustainable conservation and development. The third section deals with the pioneering shift in the mid-1990s for Southern and Central Africa from a conflict-laden nationalist approach to international waters to the formation of the Permanent Okavango River Basin Water Commission (OKACOM) in 1994 and to a “water for peace” approach. The final section presents some suggestions on the way forward during the 21st century

A Comparative Survey of Dam-induced Resettlement in 50 Cases

(unabridged version of the methodology and quantitative analysis with all tables) What follows is an expanded version of the statistical section from Chapter 3 of The Future of Large Dams: Dealing with Social, Environmental, Institutional and Political Costs. It presents a statistical analysis of resettlement outcomes associated with 50 dams in areas of the world where most future dams will be built. Living standards improved in only three of 44 cases where there was sufficient data to assess outcomes. In another five cases they appear to have been restored. In the remaining 36 cases, a majority of resettling households were further impoverished as defined by five of Michael Cernea’s eight impoverishment risks. Five factors in various combinations were associated with impoverishing outcomes. They were lack of staffing capacity, lack of finance, lack of political will, lack of opportunities available to resettling households and lack of household participation in the resettlement process. Other impoverishing factors included unexpected events and resettler inability to compete with host and immigrant populations. Improved outcomes tended to be associated with a single agency responsible for all aspects of dam planning, financing and implementation

Rivers and roads: A political ecology of displacement, development, and chronic liminality in Zambia's Gwembe Valley

The construction of Kariba Dam in 1958 ignited a legacy of livelihood insecurity and chronic liminality that reverberated through subsequent generations. A community under one chief was split into two marginal resettlement sites more than 200 km apart. Sixty years after the dam's construction, and following a series of cyclical shifts between access to and alienation from international development programming, the World Bank has returned to initiate the new Bottom Road, which at last reconnects these two communities. It has also released funds for a new irrigation development and support program. Research presented here suggests that, while the Bottom Road is spurring economic growth, it is also delivering capitalized outsiders, eager to claim land and water resources from long‐resident Gwembe Tonga farmers. Analysis of two commercial agriculture/irrigation schemes, at the road's southern and northern terminuses, reveals that new infrastructure often leads to rapid natural resource alienation and livelihood upheaval. Integrating the lens of chronic liminality with the hydrosocial cycle, we situate these projects within a broader regional history of land and water privatization and reveal how water‐linked development interventions produce vulnerabilities for particular segments of the local population