Over the past 50 years Pakistan has pursued an aggressive water resource development program and built a series of storage dams, barrages, and canals all along the River Indus and its major tributaries in an attempt to meet the country’s ever-growing water and power needs. However, policy makers have rarely taken into account the adverse social effects these mega water projects have on indigenous peoples and have made inadequate efforts to compensate and rehabilitate affected communities. Pakistan lacks an official national policy on indigenous peoples, including peoples like the Kihals of the upper Indus region and the Mohanas of Sindh seriously affected by national development projects, and cannot safeguard their rights and interests as distinct communities.
Water resource development projects in Pakistan constitute a serious threat to indigenous ways of life as many of these projects displace entire communities and divert water to upstream regions which affects the livelihood of peoples downstream and causes serious ecological destruction, aggravating the problems of deforestation and pollution. Many people affected by past projects, such as the Tarbela dam project, the Chasma barrage, and the Mangla dam, are still waiting for the state to compensate them for their loss of land and livelihood. According to an assessment carried out by the World Dams Commission, the Tarbela dam project (completed in 1974) directly displaced 96,000 people, affected 32,800 hectares of land, and submerged 120 villages.
Construction and growing human settlements along the river have resulted in large scale deforestation and loss of riverine forests. The Kihals now have to travel further inland to collect lai plant to make their traditional baskets. The wetlands have been degraded and the water contaminated from unchecked waste discharge from urban centers. A large number of fishermen from the Sindh province have migrated to the area, attracted by the potential for working as harvesters, which has reduced alternative employment opportunities for the Kihals.
Furthermore, the Kihals represent a marginalized community with no political voice. Currently no official mechanisms exist to protect their cultural, economic, and social rights and interests. Despite the fact that the Kihals are directly affected by development projects, they have not been included in the assessment of peoples affected by dam projects and thus remain inadequately compensated.
Similarly, the centuries-old way of life of the Mohanas of Lake Manchar in the Dadu district of Sindh, is endangered by reckless waste discharge into the lake from the Main Nara Valley Drain (MNV) and the Right Bank Outfall Drain (RBOD). Lake Manchar is Pakistan’s largest fresh water lake and the Mohanas have lived on this lake for centuries. Considered to be directly descendent from the Moenjodaro settlement of the Indus Valley civilization, the Mohanas are lake fishermen that spend their entire lives living on house boats on Lake Manchar. Fishing is their main source of livelihood. However in recent years, the lake has become severely contaminated by toxic discharge of chemical fertilizers and human effluent from the MNV drain and the RBOD, and the salinity level of the lake has increased dramatically. A large percentage of fish have died and the surrounding mangrove area is so polluted that the number of migratory birds coming to the area has declined sharply. The spread of water-borne diseases has furthermore increased, causing serious problems for a community lacking adequate health facilities. The loss of biodiversity and livelihood resources has furthermore forced a large percentage of fishermen from Lake Manchar to migrate to other areas in search of employment opportunities.
The fishermen who remain in the area have been protesting the Right Bank Outfall Drain and the Main Nara Valley drain, urging the government to stop the harmful discharge. The fishermen have further joined local indigenous agriculturalists in the area, and with the help of the Pakistan Network for Rivers, Dams and People (PNRDP), created the “Manchar Bachayo Ittehad” (Save Manchar Committee), which serves as a forum for affected peoples to voice their opposition to the government’s reckless water development projects.
Although thousands of direct and indirect dam victims still protest the government’s lack of initiative to address the problems created by previous dam projects, in August 2001 the Pakistani government and the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) launched the ambitious and highly controversial Pakistan Water Vision 2025 project to build more storage reservoirs and irrigation canals upstream. The plans have been framed without any national dialogue and public consultation or participation. Civic society organizations believe that these proposed projects will have disastrous economic, ecological, and cultural consequences. The indigenous peoples of the Sindh province strongly oppose the Greater Thal Canal. The Canal will severely deprive a province already suffering from water shortages and droughts of badly needed water, and have disastrous effects on agriculture. Sindhi people both in Pakistan as well as in the United States have held protest rallies, demanding an immediate halt on the Greater Thal Canal project.
Pakistan Network for Rivers, Dams and People held a National Dams’ Conference in Karachi on June 10th, which provided a forum for the various communities to come together and voice their discontent with the government’s lack of commitment to community compensation. The forum criticized the government’s outdated policies, stating the need to replace the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 with a more comprehensive relocation policy. They also stated that the government departments in charge of rehabilitating affected peoples are grossly mismanaged, bureaucratic and corrupt and in need of reorganization.
The conference put forward a series of demands, calling for cessation of all water-projects along the Indus River; the adoption of the report of the World Commission on Dams as a guiding principle for policy-making and implementation; and adequate relocation and compensation for all direct and indirect affectees, demanding that the definition of “affectees” be broadened and that eligibility policies made more just. The forum also demanded environmental clean up projects and national participation in the policy-making and implementation process.
The government of Pakistan has almost completely ignored the impact of water resource development projects on tribal and indigenous communities downstream. A pressing need for immediate action exists to secure equal representation of indigenous peoples through formal mechanisms, and the recognition of their “otherness”, as well as a revision of proposed water projects to minimize the social costs, through community participation and dialogue.
