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