by Jenina Joy Chavez-Malaluan*
One thousand two-hundred participants gathered in Chiang Mai on May 3-5, 2000 to discuss and protest issues around the Asian Development Bank. A significant aspect of the gathering, dubbed the People’s Forum 2000, is the participation of busloads of ordinary people, of villagers directly affected by ADB projects, who traveled hundreds of miles from all over Thailand to present their cases before the People’s Forum. One such group came all the way from the Khlongdan subdistrict province, easily a thousand kilometers from Chiang Mai, to protest the construction of the Samut Prakarn Wastewater Management Project which threatens their environment and livelihood.
The Project: What’s Gone Wrong?
The Samut Prakarn Wastewater Management Project is a co- financed project by the ADB and Japan’s Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF). It involves the construction of a 200 kilometer-long pipe system and a wastewater treatment facility that will collect and treat wastewater from over 4,000 factories in the Samut Prakarn province. Since 1995, the ADB disbursed a total of US$230 million for the project.
The project was originally intended for two smaller wastewater plants in the Bangpu and Bangplakod subdistricts. The Thai government later moved the project to the Khlongdan subdistrict, 20 kilometers from the original site. The result was a much bigger and much more expensive project than was originally planned. Allegations of corruption and payoffs were rife.
Worse, no environmental impact assessment was done for the new site, and villagers decried the lack of proper consultation and information drive on the project. Aggravating the villagers’ concern is the fact that the treatment facility is not designed to extract and treat many heavy metals and toxic chemicals from the wastewater it collects. The project will release on a daily basis half a million cubic meters of treated wastewater into the sea near Khlongdan and will affect 1,900 rai of fertile mangrove forests and shrimp and shellfish breeding grounds. Thirty thousand households (10,000 of them are from the Khlongdan subdistrict) face the direct threat of displacement and loss of livelihood by the project.
The Villagers’ Demand
The villagers are opposed to the Samut Prakarn Wastewater Management Project on various grounds. The project is destructive to the local environment and ecology, and threatens the livelihoods of local residents. There are deep concerns that the project is riddled with corruption and hence not entirely faithful to the benefit of the community. It clearly violates the ADB’s policy of conducting environmental assessments for all environment-related projects. And finally, the project goes against the King of Thailand’s appeal for Thais ‘to take the path of sufficiency’.
The villagers therefore demanded that the ADB stop all loan disbursements for the project immediately. They are unwilling to wait until results of studies, assuming they will be done, are known. A further demand is the taking up of the Khlongdan case during the ADB’s Annual Governors’ Meeting, and a resolution of the issue at the end of the meeting.
The ADB’s Response
In an attempt to get a serious response from the Bank on the issue, the People’s Forum invited the Executive Directors (E.D.s) representing the major stockholders to meet with the villagers. Only three E.D.s -- Cinnamon Dornsife representing the United States; John Lockhart representing Australia, Hongkong (China) Cambodia, and five Pacific Island countries; and Ulwe Heinrich representing the United Kingdom, Germany, Turkey and Austria – showed up.
The three E.D.s were clearly impressed by the show of force of the Khlongdan and nearby communities. Equally impressive for them, and for other participants, was how pointed the issues raised by the villagers were, and how clearly they were able to present them. To all this, the E.D.s could only offer pieces of advice and few active commitments.
The American E.D. alerted the villagers to four possibilities. One, she invited them to call the ADB’s anti-corruption hotline, a toll- free number and an internet address people can use to report alleged anomalies in ADB assisted projects, intimating that “100
of all allegations of corruption brought to (ADB) are investigated.” Two, she encouraged the villagers to explore the Bank’s Inspection mechanism, which was created to investigate claims that the Bank has violated its own policies. Three, she enjoined the villagers to bring their case directly to the Thai E.D., Prasit Ouchin. And four, she promised to brief the (ADB) President representatives on the Khlongdan issue who were scheduled to face the People’s Forum the following day.
Despite this and the German E.D.’s pronouncement that as far as the ADB is concerned, “as long as you are not convinced that it is your project, something is wrong, and something must be done”, however, little comfort was given the villagers. The E.D.s stopped short of saying that, while they will do the best they can, the case is best brought up somewhere else. That is, the project was started through the efforts of the Thai government, and the ADB ONLY gives out loans. What this response implies is that, since the ADB is not responsible for the implementation of the project, it cannot really stop it.
Whose Responsibility?
Pinning down where the ultimate responsibility over ADB- financed projects lies is indeed a big issue. Governments applying for loans from the ADB remain primarily responsible for the projects they approach the ADB for. They are therefore the best targets of advocacy. But the ADB cannot escape liability. One needs only to look at the Bank’s track record, and how projects invariably fall into set categories, and often set designs, to know that the Bank is a principal party in projects that pass through it. When the ADB provides resources for the implementation of a project, it cannot cop out when things get messy.
The ADB has a long history it prides itself with, notwithstanding the string of failures and controversies tainting many of its projects. Re-packaging itself into an anti-poverty regional institution remains nothing but a self-serving propaganda unless it owns up to its responsibility. It should in the Khlongdan case put its foot down and declare, as it should have done many projects ago, “The buck stops here!”
At this point, the villagers will do best to complement its protest actions with a formal protest before the ADB. Then the ball is on the ADB’s court. The ADB can choose to confirm long-standing allegations that it is not serious in living out the limited concessions it conceded to civil society in matters of participation and environment and social sensitivity of projects.
Or, it can choose to take the Khlongdan case as an opportunity to show its commitment to these concessions. Upon formal complaint of the villagers, the ADB should immediately suspend the project. It should then conduct an independent investigation on the many allegations brought up by the Khlongdan villagers, at the same time conduct an environmental impact assessment, and on the basis of the results take final action on the matter. The process will only be complete if the ADB follows its own policy on participation, and inform the process of local sentiments.
* Jenina Joy Chavez-Malaluan is a Research Associate at Focus on the Global South. She works on regional economic initiatives in South East Asia.