Development-Induced Displacement and Resettlement: Causes, Consequences, and Socio-Legal Context

Economic development and involuntary resettlement caused by it may indirectly affect the character and dynamics of all other categories of displacement. The planning of development projects is often accompanied by conflict among local authorities, the private sector and displaced or affected communities over control of territory. Particularly strong conflicts over territory and its resources may precede the extraction of oil or development of open-cast mining areas. The consequence may be brutal clashes between local communities and authorities, or other forms of escalation of violence. The persecution of the Ogoni people caused by oil exploitation in the Niger Delta became a factor in the large scale of conflict-induced displacement from Ogoniland. The link between oil exploitation in southern Sudan and the dynamics of brutal displacement was so strong that separation of oil-induced displacement from the more general context of conflict-induced displacement was virtually impossible. Many common elements also connect resettlement caused by development projects with forced migrations due to long-term environmental changes. Pollution of land, water and soil caused by development projects may be a push factor in a secondary wave of forced migrations—this time caused by land degradation and environmental disruption.

IV. The difference between displacement, resettlement and evictions. When analyzing the contemporary picture of displacement caused by development and other factors traditionally perceived as aspects of development-induced displacement (such as displacement in city areas), we usually employ three different terms: displacement, resettlement and evictions. They have disparate meanings. The term "displacement" is used most often in the context of relocation related to deprivation of access to existing land and resources, unaccompanied by adequate support mechanisms for the affected people. The phenomenon of displacement is thus not limited to physical departure from the current homeland but is mainly associated with the loss of existing economic and social facilities and of access to the relevant resources, with no benefits gained in return. The term displacement is mostly applied to the situation of individuals, tribes and communities that have been cut off from their current socio-economic base and as a result have seen their standard of functioning deteriorate significantly. The category of resettlement has a definitely more process-related character than displacement. We use the term "resettlement" in the context of relocation based on previous plans and social consultations with affected communities, usually accompanied by adequate support mechanisms in the new place of residence. The costs of physical relocation and the depletion of former resources is thus compensated for by the support received in the new location. The third term often used to describe involuntary relocations connected with economic development is "eviction". On the most common understanding, eviction is compulsory removal of an individual from a territory (e.g. housing unit) to which he has no legal right. According to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights eviction is "the permanent or temporary removal against their will of individuals, families, and/or communities from the homes and/or land which they occupy, without the provision of, and access to, and appropriate forms of legal and other protection"[37]. Forced eviction can also include the situations when families or larger groups are resettled to the new territories with the assistance of the state. In scientific literature this category is mostly applied to relocations of illegal settlers, forced relocations due to conservation of nature, and evictions in urban areas, e.g. those associated with forcible clearance or demolition of slum areas.

V. Resistance of displaced or affected peoples against development projects. The problem of resistance against development projects has become an essential element of contemporary discourse on DIDR[38]. The growing local resistance against the negative consequences of economic development is highly visible in all parts of the world affected by DIDR. In particular, much recently conducted analysis refers to resistance against the construction of dams in India, Latin America and some African countries. Some of the resistance movements have contributed not only to modification of the original development plans and reduction of their social consequences but also to cancellation of the projects. The nearly ten-year campaign of protests by local communities was one of the causes of the decision in August 2012 to cancel construction of La Parota Dam in Mexico. Also in India we can list some examples of successful resistance against development-induced displacement and forced evictions. The resistance of inhabitants of 121 villages who faced displacement by the Koel-Karo Dam in East India successfully stopped the implementation of the project. The tradition of resistance of local communities against development projects in India dates back to the first decades of the last century. The growing scale of local community resistance in Latin America is part of the trend observed there towards political empowerment of indigenous populations as self-determined communities deciding for themselves on the direction of their way of life and economic development. Also in highly developed countries we have witnessed several examples of successful resistance against major development projects.

Resistance against development projects takes place on three levels: grassroots democracy (grass-roots movements), traditional non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and virtual resistance (through the internet). Much of the resistance is local and limited to protest against a single development project. However, the protest movements have pursued different objectives. The key goal for a large part of the resistance movement is the complete cancellation of controversial development projects (such as construction of La Parota dam in Mexico or the Polavaram Dam in Andhra Pradesh). Others set themselves the goal of minimizing resettlement or its potential adverse consequences. Some resistance movements have focused primarily on economic demands, including greater compensation in general or as compensation for lost land.

We can mention three basic levels of activity of civil society when protesting against and resisting the negative consequences of development projects:

· Grassroots movements (GROs). The term implies that the creation of the movement and its supporting group is natural and spontaneous, highlighting the difference between this form of organization and movements orchestrated by traditional power structures. Loosely organized and spontaneously initiated protest movements represent the most fundamental level of resistance against development projects. Almost always, they are organized to protest against a single project such as construction of a dam or road. However, the low level of their formal organization often reduces their effectiveness. A major problem for this type of local movement is the difficulty of promoting its aims and objectives outside the small group of directly affected people. That is why movements of this kind are often converted to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) or seek cooperation with other resistance movements. Taking as a point of reference the protest against construction of Polavaram dam in Andhra Pradesh, Bondla and Rao mentioned six basic forms of resistance of local communities against development projects. These include: a) rallies and dharnas, b) silent protests and submission of memorandums to government officials, c) organization of discussion forums and seminars on the issue to keep the voice of protest continuously heard, d) mass demonstrations involving eminent social activists, environmentalists etc., e) long marches, foot marches and cycle yatras to build solidarity and sensitize communities, and f) hunger strikes in relay[39].

· NGOs and Transnational Networks. Organizations of this kind operate on local, regional and even national levels. Local organizations opposed to single development projects are usually formalized types of grassroots movement. Their formalization, however, is often accompanied by an extension of their activities. We also see an increasing number of NGOs acting on a regional scale. Among the movements operating on regional or national levels as representatives of the broader interests of affected people we should mention the Mexican Movement of Dam-Affected People (MAPDER) and the Regional Commission Against Large Dams (CRAB) in Brazil. The other Brazilian resistance movements include the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB), established in 1991 as an autonomous national popular movement. It currently operates in 17 Brazilian states representing a network of communities affected by hydropower dams.

· Internet. The main area of resistance against development projects is, of course, that of direct protests led by local communities or activities implemented through local or regional non-governmental organizations. However, the internet plays a growing subsidiary role as a platform for the promotion of certain demands and the rapid mobilization of members. In recent years we have witnessed an increasing number of online sites giving voice to the interests of groups contesting development projects. The internet has proved to be an important tool for promoting the movement itself and its interests, and thus for carrying its demands beyond the small group of affected people. It also plays an important role in rapid mobilization (e.g. organizing protests) and contact with media or with similar movements. The activities of local resistance movements opposing development projects fit well with those of other anti-globalization movements. The importance of the internet as a forum for mobilizing and promoting the interests of such movements is likely to increase.

VI. Compensation principle. Different countries of the world are characterized by extreme diversity in their practice of compensation for people displaced or affected by development projects. The basic element which characterizes most developing countries is a narrow perception of compensation. In many of them the term "adequate compensation" is seen not in economic terms but above all as social and functional. Their goal is not, therefore, to improve or at least restore material and non-material conditions reduced or lost as a result of displacement, but to enable people to rebuild their mode of functioning in the territory. In highly developed countries the main aim of compensation is full restoration of material and non-material conditions lost through displacement. Thus the amount of compensation received by resettled people in Europe often greatly exceeds the economic value of abandoned properties, because the goal is not only to restore previous conditions but primarily to compensate for the non-material social consequences of resettlement. In the countries of the global south, because of a different perception of property rights, compensation is often intended not to accurately compensate for economic losses but to permit continued functioning in the new place of residence.

An often observed practice in the countries of the global south is lack of or very slight compensation received by people who have no legal right to the land they live on (such as tribals, adivasi people and several categories of illegal settlers). Another problem is the inadequacy of compensation for property left behind, in the form either of cash or of prospects for obtaining land in the new area. In the case of many development projects, at least in Latin America, the compensation received cannot even restore, let alone improve, the conditions of displaced and affected people.

Another extremely important issue is the form in which the compensation is received by displaced or affected communities. Compensation received as cash, practised during several development projects, is not always an optimal solution and may become the cause of serious social problems such as landlessness and joblessness. This is because compensation in cash often leads to improper expenditure by individuals who are unaccustomed to large amounts of it or who have followed a land-based economic model not based on money. Instead, it seems appropriate to resettle people in areas similar to those previously inhabited, thus allowing them to follow their accustomed economic model. Compensation should not be seen as a one-time process of redressing the loss caused by relocation. Very often displaced people cannot cope with the new economic situation presented by deportation; the difference between their former economic model and their actual needs is too great. It seems important, therefore, to ensure long-term economic support mechanisms such as new jobs or educational prospects. In many cases, social support mechanisms are the only means of preventing the potential multigenerational exclusion brought about by involuntary resettlement.

Compensation for lost assets, however, must be clearly distinguished from several forms of material support and social assistance. The right to compensation for lost property seems to be an important category of economic law, found inter alia in the text of ILO Convention No. 169 concerning indigenous and tribal peoples in independent countries. It therefore seems unacceptable to reduce their entitlement to only subsidiary mechanisms of social support.

IX. The right not to be displaced. The legal foundation of the right to protection from displacement is derived from the right to freedom of movement and choice of residence contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which guarantees that "everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence". A similar guarantee exists in the African Charter of Human and Peoples' Rights. In recent years the legal foundation of the right not to be displaced has been the provisions of the Guiding Principles of International Displacement. Particularly important are the provisions of principle 5, which require states to prevent and avoid situations that may lead to displacement. Forced displacement is a direct violation of the right to freedom of movement and choice of residence.

X. Human security context. Applying the concept of human security to the analysis of development-caused displacement leads us to a number of important research conclusions. In the case of much displacement caused by the escalation of violence or sudden or long-term environmental changes, decrease in the level of individual and community human security seems to be the fundamental cause of forced migration. Migration is therefore seen as a result of the impact of specific security threats. In most categories of development-caused displacement we can observe a somewhat different situation. The decline in the level of human security is not a cause but rather a consequence of development-induced displacement. Studies recently conducted by sociologists show that the consequence of multiple displacements caused by development projects is a significant increase in economic and social problems over those observed prior to the resettlement.

2. Historical considerations regarding development-induced population displacement and resettlement

Among the four above-mentioned causes of internal displacement, mobility caused by economic development is the latest to acquire mass proportions. Development-caused displacement and conservation-caused displacement are thus regarded as among the youngest categories of mass involuntary human mobility within internal borders. However, even in antiquity we can find examples of population displacement linked to the expansion of agriculture, urbanization and re-urbanization, and indeed the creation of large dams. Perhaps a limited scale of displacement can be associated with the creation of dams in many ancient empires of the Middle and Far East. Internal resettlement has always served the economic interests of narrow political groups. Various forms of involuntary relocation were practised extensively under the totalitarian rule of Imperium Romanum. The capture of a city was often accompanied by displacement of its inhabitants. The problem of forced relocation associated with development might also have been present in ancient China (e.g., accompanying the construction of the Grand Canal in the 6th century BC) as well as in feudal Europe. The intensive colonial expansion of the 18th and 19th centuries caused the first large-scale population displacement associated with development. One product of the colonial era has been the negative standards of implementation of development projects established and maintained in several parts of the globe, leading to social exclusion of and discrimination against especially vulnerable sections of the population.

The first example of development-induced displacement on a mass scale occurred as a result of colonial expansion in the Americas. A common practice of conquistadors in Latin America was the displacement of entire indigenous populations from the cities where they lived and the establishment of new administrative settlements in the same place. New authorities displaced indigenous populations from their homelands, forcing them to give up their former mode of existence. A well-known example of such displacement is the British colonialists' limitation of land and displacement of Aborigines from the coastal territories of South Australia that they had previously occupied. The expansion of the white man's settlements in the United States was accompanied by limitation of land and resettlement of Indians into specially created reservations. The Indian relocation from the west-southeastern part of the United States to the territory of present-day Oklahoma is an example of a mass displacement associated with the desire to take full control of a territory and its resources, such as gold.

We can also date back to the 19th century the first examples of population resettlement carried out by colonialists in India. As Walter Fernandes noted, by the 19th century India had already become an arena of forced relocations associated with the opening of coal mines in Jharkhand, tea gardens in Assam and coffee plantations in Karnataka[40]. The tradition of organized protests against development projects in India dating back to the late XIXth century. The first decade of the next century brought in the creation of large dams in India. The creation of the Mulshi dam on the Mula river in the Pune district was associated with the earliest known anti-dam movement, founded by farmers who had lost their lands. Founded in 1919, the Mulshi Satyagraha movement led by the charismatic Senapati Bapat is considered one of the first social movements to defend the interests of development-caused displaced people[41]. The aim of the movement was to protest against land acquisition and to defend the rights of the people affected by dam construction[42]. The activity of the Mulshi Satyagraha anticipated many modern resistance movements against land acquisition and forced displacement (including the Narmada Bachao Andolan)[43].

The dam mega-projects initiated in several regions of the world from the forties and fifties of the last century onwards have already led to a large increase in the level of development-induced displacements. Indian independence led to accelerated economic growth, largely based on dam construction. In developing countries, ascending the path to sovereignty and political autonomy, the creation of large dams was the necessary and the only effective response to growing energy needs. In 1947, Nehru drew attention to the economic and social benefits of the construction of dams, calling them "temples of modern India". Today, there are nearly 4,000 dams in India alone. Among the projects launched in the forties, it seems worth mentioning the construction of three dams: Tungabhadra (53,000 people displaced), Hirakud (110,000 displaced) and Gandhi Sagar (about 51–61 thousand displaced). A project which became a particularly important symbol of India's independence and economic development following the age of colonialism was the construction of Hirakud Dam, carried out between 1948 and 1957, and strongly supported by Nehru. It led to the forcible resettlement of 22,000 families, the total number of people affected by its construction being estimated at 150,000. A large number of families were evacuated from their hearth and homes without compensation from 1956 onwards. Another period of the intense growth of resettlement in India fell in the first half of the seventies. The construction of Ukai Dam (1972) and Pong Dam (1974) led to the displacement of nearly two hundred thousand inhabitants. As noted by Ray, the construction of Pong Dam (in Himachal Pradesh state) caused the displacement of more than 30,000 families. Only half of them received adequate financial compensation, and 3756 were displaced several hundred miles away to the culturally, ethnically and environmentally different Rajastan areas[44]. Similar problems resulted from the construction of Hirakud and Ukai dams (over 80,000 displaced). The construction of artificial dams was the subject of particularly strong controversy up to the end of the 1980s, thanks to what was perhaps the period's most famous case of forced resettlement: the development project in the Narmada Valley (called the Narmada Dam Project, or the Sardar Sarovar Project).

In China the construction of large dams became an element of the Maoist Great Leap policy, initiated in 1958. Prior to 1949, only twenty-three large to medium-size dams existed in China. Between 1958 and 1962 more than forty large dams were constructed and opened in that country. The creation of six of them—the Ertan, Lugube I, Shuikou, Xinanjiang, Sanmenxia, and Zhaxi—was associated with the involuntary resettlement of more than 100.000 people. From the very beginning the large development projects in China led to various practices that discriminated against minorities. The construction of Xinanjiang, implemented during the second half of the fifties, was associated with several forms of discrimination against and persecution of local communities.

The lack of previous experiences with dam building and hydraulic engineering, and its rapid implementation, has led to many industrial accidents associated with thousands of victims. The most notable example of dam related disaster was the 1975 collapse of the Banqiao Dam on the River Ru in Henan Province. According to the Hydrology Department of Henan Province, the dam failure killed approximately 171.000 people including 26.000 from the direct result of flooding and 145.000 during subsequent famine and epidemics. Unofficial estimates of the number of people killed by this disaster have run as high as 230,000 people. Since the early 1950s Chinese authorities built nearly 84.000 dams, 96 per cent of which were on a small scale. Between 1954 and 2011 3,459 dams had collapsed in China according to Zhang Jiyao, Chinese vice-minister of water resources[45].

Population growth led to increasing energy needs in many developing countries. One solution to this problem has been the construction of socially costly dams in several African countries. The Aswan High Dam on the Nasser Lake, built between 1960 and 1971, has had a very significant and positive impact on the social, economic and cultural transformation of Egypt. The construction of the High Dam has resulted in protection from droughts and floods, an increase in agricultural production and employment, electricity generation and improved navigation, the last being of benefit to tourism. On the other hand, the dam flooded a large area, causing the relocation of 100,000 to 120,000 Nubians, and submerging archaeological sites, some of which were relocated as well. The dam has also been blamed for coastline erosion, soil salinity and health problems. The other well-known example of this process is the construction of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River between 1955 and 1950.

A large scale of involuntary resettlement caused by centrally planned economic programs also characterized the area of the USSR. The first two five-year plans, implemented in the Soviet Union between 1929 and 1939, were heavily based on megaprojects (building of factories, dams and artificial canals, and development of heavy industry and mining). The national program of dam construction, begun in the USSR during the fifties, led to the displacement of as many as 1.5 million peoples (due to the lack of detailed statistical data it is not possible to determine its exact scale). According to very cautious estimates from recent years, the USSR's hydropower and irrigation projects alone led to flooding of an area equal to that of Bulgaria, displacing 170 towns and 2600 villages, and producing irreversible changes in the ecosystem.