The environmental impacts of development in Latin America, and around the world, are most intense for citizens living near massive projects. But decisions on the largest, most damaging projects almost always have an international component. The best way to stop these projects is through strong local activism, supported by national and international alliances. Here is one example of a global campaign to challenge a flawed project.

Working Across Borders:
Global Challenges Need
Local Solutions and Strong Alliances

By Kay Treakle

I n 1992, I stood beside the Paraná River in Paraguay with friends from the Paraguayan environmental group Sobrevivencia, looking out on what is arguably South America’s largest boondoggle – the Yacyretá dam. Paraguay and Argentina, with the financial backing of the World Bank, were building the 67 kilometer dam for flood control and electricity generation. The benefits of this $19 billion project were highly dubious given the extreme levels of ecological, economic, and social damage that construction had already wrought. At 85 percent complete, the dam was called a "monument to corruption" by then-President Carlos Menem of Argentina, even some World Bank staff called it an ecological disaster. That day in 1992 marked the beginning of a north/south advocacy partnership to stop further destruction from the Yacyretá dam. Citizen activism in Paraguay at that time was just emerging. The 35- year reign of Paraguay’s dictator, General Alfredo Stroessner, ended in 1989. Opposition to the government had been so suppressed by the long years of tyranny that local communities near Yacyretá would not even consider publicly opposing the project. The dam-building authority, Entidad Binacional Yacyretá (EBY), was a product of a brutal dictatorship. Standing up to the EBY required carving out a new role for citizen action, based on the newly won, but largely untested freedom of Paraguayan people. It took Sobrevivencia more than three years to build trust, confidence, and a critical mass of community support before they were confident enough to publicly challenge the dam and to demand accountability from their own government and the World Bank.

In 1994, the dam’s gates were closed and the reservoir filled to 75
meters deep, permanently changing the ecosystem, hydrology, and economy of the second largest river system in Latin America. Below the dam, on the Paraná River between Argentina and Paraguay, massive fish kills decimated the population of surubi and dorado, fish species vital to river communities. Above the dam more than 50,000 mostly poor people were displaced and thousands more were affected. Many people, including an indigenous community, now lived in conditions vastly worse than before the dam was built. The Bank’s resettlement plan was based on an old, inaccurate census done by the bi-national government agency created to build and manage Yacyretá. Their plan left thousands without compensation for their lost homes or livelihoods on the river.

As the governments turned to completing the second phase of the plan – raising the reservoir water level another seven meters – we were finally beginning to gain a foothold in the national and international political process to challenge the project. The next phase of the plan would drown a total of 1650 square miles, including the last remnants of a unique old-growth gallery forest, and threaten the spectacular Ybera wetlands. Sobrevivencia was determined to stop any new loans that would expand the reservoir and make the World Bank compensate all those whose homes and livelihoods had disappeared underwater.

A cadre of professionals at Sobrevivencia worked for years collecting evidence. My principal contact was Elías Díaz Peña, a UStrained hydrologist who had worked on scientific studies used in the original planning for Yacyretá. His colleagues included biologists, anthropologists, doctors, architects, and engineers. They knew their river and its inhabitants inside and out: every creek, pond, and wetland; every species and their ecological relationships; and every community, mayor, and political official. Their analysis shot holes through the Bank’s justification for raising the reservoir, and documented how the Bank had violated its own policies on environmental assessment, resettlement, indigenous peoples, and habitat protection. In 1996 Sobrevivencia and local community leaders (with the assistance of Center for International Environmental Law) brought a claim to the World Bank’s Independent Inspection Panel asking for compensation for those displaced and environmental safeguards to minimize further damage.

Since the dam was paid for with international public funds, the
campaign to stop the project required an international effort as well. As director of the Latin America Program at the Bank Information Center (BIC) in Washington, DC, I was a watchdog, monitoring the environmental and social impacts of projects financed by the World Bank. While developing country governments devise and execute many projects that destroy natural resources and local communities on their own, the World Bank often provides the funding needed for huge unsustainable projects like Yacyretá. We knew that we would need to fight the dam not only on the ground in Paraguay, but in Washington, DC, at the World Bank’s headquarters.

Working in Washington, I assisted Sobrevivencia secure funds for the campaign and helped them navigate the Byzantine workings of the Bank’s internal processes and culture. In many ways, BIC’s role was to decode how Bank policies should apply in the Yacyretá project and to help Sobrevivencia bring the views of those affected by the project to World Bank officials in Washington. The investigation carried out by World Bank’s Inspection Panel confirmed many of Sobrevivencia’s allegations, and started an avalanche of consequences that are still being felt today. International attention exposed the corruption of public officials in Paraguay and Argentina and helped to create a network of organizations willing to defend the Paraná River from other wrongheaded projects. The international campaign against Yacyretá also contributed to a groundbreaking review by the World Commissionon Dams in 2000 that exposed the irreversible environmental and social impacts, and heavy economic costs that often accompany large dam projects. One of the report’s most critical recommendations opens the door for citizens to have a say in future decisions on dam projects: No dam should be built without "demonstrable acceptance" of affected people, and without free, prior and informed consent of affected indigenous and tribal peoples.

In campaigning for justice at Yacyretá, Sobrevivencia created new spaces for advocacy groups in Paraguayan politics. They reached beyond their borders, and together we learned how to work across cultures and continents. Along with thousands of other activists around the world, we fundamentally challenged the way the World Bank does business, and changed some significant Bank policies and practices for the better. There is still a long way to go. Protecting rivers and basic human rights requires citizen participation in decision-making – in other words, democracy. Strong citizen activism and stronger international alliances are how we will get there.

Kay Treakle is the former Executive Director of the Bank Information Center, where she monitored World Bank and International Development Bank projects with local non governmental organizations.