ADB issues resettlement planning document

Asian Development Bank (ADB) has issued a "Resettlement Planning Document" for Balochistan Water Resources and Rural Infrastructure Development Project.
According to ADB sources, the pre-feasibility studies for potential subprojects carried out during the Project Preparatory Technical Assistance (PPTA) and the project design that emerged from subsequent loan processing indicate that involuntary relocation is unlikely under the project.
In particular, land will primarily be made available for project development activities through voluntary donations through a process of community participation and consultation.
In addition, the subproject selection criteria have been developed with a view to further minimising the scope for resettlement impacts under the project. However, assuming that some resettlement impacts, including minimal land acquisition, and temporary loss of livelihood, might emerge during detailed design of its subprojects, a Resettlement Framework (RF) has been prepared setting out the policies and processes that will be used in formulating resettlement plans (RPs) for subprojects which have resettlement impacts.
The Resettlement Framework provides policy and operational guidelines to address resettlement impacts, if any, that might arise from: (i) land acquisition; (ii) acquisition of houses/structures; (iii) loss of livelihood owing to temporary loss of access to, or loss of productive land, or other property; and (iv) loss of community property resources.
This Resettlement Framework outlines the legal, institutional and implementation framework to guide the compensation for lost assets, livelihoods, community property, and resettlement and rehabilitation of project-affected people in accordance with the ADB's Policy on Involuntary Resettlement (1995) and domestic laws and regulations.
ADB sources mentioned that the impact of the project will be reduced poverty and increased resilience to periods of drought in poor farming communities in Balochistan province. The project outcome will be more sustainable and remunerative farming systems in some of the poorest districts in Pakistan. The project will also proactively assist rural communities in forming community organisations so that they are able to effectively operate and maintain the investments in water resources infrastructure, and provide short-term employment opportunities for the rural poor during the subproject construction process.
THE PROJECT COMPONENTS ARE: (i) community development and support; (ii) community managed irrigation and water resources development; (iii) rural access roads; (iv) agricultural support services; and (v) project implementation support.
Project activities will be implemented in 12 of the poorer districts of the province selected according poverty incidence, drought affectedness and coverage by other donor funded projects. Social components including resettlement will be integral to the project and will be monitored and reported together with other project-supported development activities.
Commenting over the "Irrigation development", Resettlement Framework revealed that minimal land acquisition is anticipated from the irrigation development activities.
For example, the alignments of existing main conveyance channels will be used. The subproject selection criteria mandate that the pond areas of the small storage dams will only be in uncultivated, undivided, communal land belonging to the collectivity that will be benefiting from the increased water availability or on state land with similar characteristics. (The average storage area is estimated to be less than 1 square kilometers, and thus is likely to be very small in any event.)
In command area development, small watercourses at the individual farmer's field level will be rehabilitated and improved, directly benefiting individual farmers.
Small water supply schemes that communities might suggest will require negligibly narrow rights of way off of the existing conveyance channels. Thus, the scale of the irrigation development activities likely to emerge from the project is such that those negatively impacted will almost always also be directly benefiting from the subproject investments. Rural access roads: Asphalt topped roads will be constructed on existing dirt tracks.
While such tracks will also be widened in many instances, the very low population density and absence of commercial development in the project area provides considerable flexibility in widening existing rights of way, and make it highly unlikely that permanent structures or cultivated land will be affected in the process.
PROJECT DESIGN FEATURES: Minimal negative impacts are also anticipated given the project's primary reliance on voluntary land donations and because the beneficiaries themselves will be involved in identifying, designing and implementing subproject activities. Such households will be identified during the community mobilisation process prior to subproject development, and are likely to include those with small landholding (less than 5 acres), headed by females, persons with disabilities, or the elderly.
However, where adverse impacts cannot be remedied through a change in alignment or modification in structure, or where communities/individuals refuse to voluntarily donate their land, and permanent loss of land, dwelling or commercial infrastructure, or loss of crops and trees, or temporary loss of livelihood or closure of a business, or temporary loss of access to land is unavoidable, affected persons will have to be compensated.
In Balochistan, land can be grouped into three broad categories and tenure: (a) privately-owned land which includes cultivated land as well as all other arable lands; (b) non attributed, non cultivated lands, and (c) state land.
Most irrigated land is permanently distributed and the individual land rights are formally registered in government-administered cadastral records with the name of the owners, size and source of water for each plot of land as well as the occupancy rights of tenants, if required.
The non-attributed, non-cultivated lands are community or tribal property under communal (tribal) tenure.
These constitute between 90 percent and 95 percent of the total area, which is under the control of a community. They also include communal grazing lands and communal woodlots, the use of which is regulated by the customary rules of the community or tribe (nomadic pastoralists are allowed to use these rangelands for free). This land may eventually be divided up and distributed to individuals according to present shares of their clans and sub clans and brought into cultivation (usually under rainfed or flood irrigation).
All state land is under the control of government departments. In the case of state-owned forests, these can be further sub divided into four classes on the basis of their legal designation and protection:
According to ADB report, it is expected that the alignment of channels can be modified feasibly through only minor adjustments to circumvent habitation clusters. Since the impact zone of water channels is narrow, the occasional homestead, commercial, or agricultural structure that may fall in their path could be compensated within the original community or the remaining portion of the affected person's holdings, without loss of existing social networks, clientele, or markets.
ADB report mentioned that losing agricultural land to a main distribution channel creates a relative advantage for contiguous land. The contiguous land tends mostly to be of the same owner. Those losing a portion of their land to the canal are not only at an advantage over the rest in terms of irrigation, but also in terms of the value of their land increasing more than the rest. With the distribution canal running along the edge or through their remaining land, they thus comprise the head of the system.
Loss of undivided, uncultivated collective land for infrastructure constructed for a community project identified and demanded by the community itself may be valued and accepted as part of the beneficiary contribution for the investment, after confirming that no one with an interest in that land, including any squatter or encroacher, is being coerced.
Nevertheless, losses to vulnerable individuals, even though beneficiaries of the subproject investment, will need to be compensated. By losing land, people who have small landholdings run a high risk of impoverishment as it would remove the main foundation for their productive systems and livelihoods.