February 20, 2006	Monday	Muharram 21, 1427

THE Interim Report of the Asian Development Bank’s “Sindh Coastal and Inland Community Development Project” to alleviate poverty and improve environment in Karachi and in eight talukas of Thatta and Badin deals with consequences rather than the causes responsible for the poor socio-economic conditions.

The report admits that “In the costal areas, the uncertainty of water and the mismanagement of water resources has caused enormous hardship and there is little prospect of change at least in the short- to medium-term. It is not just the physical consequences of less water but the ensuing social, economic and environmental damage stemming from failure to adequately foresee or provide for the consequences”

The scope of report is restricted to “Formulation of an investment project to :

(i) address or at least contribute towards improving the condition of coastal and marine fisheries and related sources and (ii) increase incomes of coastal communities.

The report says “the arid coastal environment along Sindh has degraded over the last 50 years. This has been mainly due to drastic reduction of Indus River discharge, increasing salinity caused largely by poor drainage and sea water intrusion.”

Cause and consequence: With construction of series of dams and barrages, Indus delta has suffered the worst environmental consequences due to steeply declined freshwater release below Kotri barrage; sadly termed as “wastage” by the highly responsible people, without accounting the damage it has caused to once thriving coastal communities and economies.

The ADB report rightly recognizes that most attempts to solve problems did not produce meaningful results; most had sought to deal with obvious manifestation of needs. In other words, they responded to “consequences” rather than “causes”.

A critical review of the report however shows that regrettably the ADB report itself ends up at “repeating the same” and “responding to consequences rather than causes”.

Two volumes of the report spread over more than 300 pages keeps hovering around the actual “cause” but always prescribing the cure to “consequences”. If one keeps following the footprints of disaster in coastal areas, one cannot fail to identify the two basic reasons i.e. shortage of fresh water inflow and exploitation of local resources without benefiting the local communities.

But is must conceded that the ADP report admits that “very clearly the project is unable to tackle the largely policy issues of water management simply because it is an area fraught with national political implications.”

Under the circumstances, the $50 million ADB is bound to go direct in the bottomless pit; a graveyard of donor funded development projects which often add little to the development of people and more to the heap of unsustainable debt.

The root cause of poverty has a very strong and obvious link with bad policies, bad politics and overall bad governance. Politically skewed decisions made in favour of “the powerful” have been the major threat to sustainable development.

The incursion of sea has virtually wiped Shah Bandar from the map and surrounded Keti Bandar with a unique sea defence bund and a road that is the only connection with the mainland. Both townships are now greatly diminished in terms of population and natural resources.

The limitations of ADB prescriptions-like many others in the past-are obvious since it is working in support of government; a government which believes that the fresh water flow below Kotri is a waste. The ADB report does not refer to Sindh government report sea intrusion has encroached over 1.2 million acres of land in coastal parts of just two districts.

Hence investment in projects that do not address the root cause of the problem are like pouring water in a broken pitcher, which needs plugging the hole first. Any thing falling short of addressing policy and political issues, will always be limited to treating the “consequence” and evaporate with the passage of time.

Institutional reforms: a major emphasis of the report revolves around institutional reforms in Fisheries Department and institutional strengthening of Coastal Development Authority for which the ADB loan of $50 million is being extended. Institutional reforms have been the most favourite prescription of all big donors.

No doubt, public sector institutions are riddled with inefficiencies, lack of coordination, weak service delivery, chronic corruption and absence of accountability and stakeholder participation. All these diseases need proper cure.

Yet all this is easily said than done. Way back to late 90s, “institution reforms” within water sector mainly irrigation departments and Wapda were undertaken. Under $785 million National Drainage Programme, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank allocated over $57 million for institutional reforms.

The NDP ended up in further deteriorating institutional working in Irrigation department; where half- baked Provincial Irrigation and Drainage Authorities (PIDAs) are now breathing their last.

The Sindh chapter is without salaries for last more than eight months. The NDP example should have been a lesson for ADB. It still wants to proceed with yet another experiment. The report quotes Einstein that “repeating the same process and expecting the different outcome amounts to insanity”.

My own observations as a member of provincial steering committee of NDP as Civil Society representative for about two years are as follows:

* Lack of ownership: Irrigation department officials were one voice against these institutional reforms. Even the then Secretary of Irrigation Department would not hesitate to disown the reforms in steering committee meetings. The reforms were always considered as external agenda and never viewed as a need from within. The fate of reforms was obvious.

* Interestingly with all open opposition to reforms, the same department was assigned the task to transform Irrigation department into PIDAs. Senior retired bureaucrats of the department were made top managers of the reshaped body, which took reforms one step forward and four steps backward. Eventually PIDAs were reduced to the stock of old wine in the new bottle.

* There was no clarity of post-project continuity of these reforms. Once NDP files were put in the shelves, PIDAs are left high and dry. There is hardly any budget and human resource available to carry forward the reforms. As a result, the reformed shape of Irrigation department is now badly deformed.

* There was no adequate representation of civil society in NDP. The provincial steering committees would have only one representative from civil society who had no utility for more than a dozen officials. In practice, it was a mere cosmetic representation.

* A major donor of NDP, the World Bank also now puts onus of the failed reforms on government of Pakistan, as donors normally do in cases of failure. The reasons for this failure mentioned in a recent World Bank document( Report No. 34081-PK) are a food for thought. Some of these are quoted below.

* Overly complex and ambitious project design that failed to address the realities of political economy embedded in the profound changes the reforms sought

* Lack of ownership, particularly by the PIDs who saw the reforms as a threat to their existence and monopoly on water distribution, and offered immense resistance and inertia to the changes the reforms sought to bring.

* Lack of champions both at the working level and at the political levels

* Focus on organizations not on instruments and incentives;

* Lack of attention to sequencing, prioritization and the “rules for reformers”.

* Lack of a detailed strategy for implementing the key elements of the reforms.

The proposed reforms proposed by ADB report in fisheries sector need greater deal of learning from past failures or it would amount to embarking upon another misadventure.

No institutional reform can yield results without associated policy reforms. The ADB report acknowledges that “the power and influence of the middleman and moles is so pervasive that the poor fishermen of Badin and Thatta will remain poor, whatever fisheries infrastructure is put into region.”

Ironically the report does not mention that powerful sea lords, illegal trawling, use of banned nets, exploitative contract system and fishing rights to Rangers in Badin and Thatta are among the major “causes” of the poverty of coastal fishermen.

Without addressing these serious policy and operational issues, no institutional reform will put any crack in the strong poverty wall surrounding the livelihood of poor coastal communities.

Stakeholder voice: Public consultation is considered as a tool to diagnose the problem at ground level and understand the actual community needs to frame the projects. The process becomes ceremonial, if experts have to go by their own judgment and treating people’s needs secondary. In this case, the situation is not much different.

During public consultation, the stakeholders specially local communities identified drinking water supply, health facilities, link roads, teachers, management of irrigation water and mitigation of losses from the system, livestock improvement as their major needs. All these community suggestions are vetoed one by one in the last 10 pages of Volume I of the report. Instead new propositions based on “expert” approach have been prescribed.

Towards civil society: The consultants do not consider civil society voice worth contemplating. A critical comment on civil society says; “after examining the situation, it is clear there are various levels of capacity and focus within civil society. Some of them are little more than vehicles for mercenaries and political activists.”

With these feelings this project will hardly respect civil society inputs and will become a playing field of experts as happened with another mega project in Badin district called Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD).

LBOD experience: It would not be out of context to refer here a mega failure of the same donor’s funded project. ADB was the second largest donor after the World Bank in the LBOD project. It provided $122 million under a loan signed on December, 14, 1984. The ADB was also a major donor of NDP where it provided a loan of $285 million.

Both big projects suffered a miserable end and no one except donors and Wapda appreciates them. Stakeholders at the time of design raised concerns on the design and approach adopted for effluent carrying canal of LBOD called “Tidal Link Canal”. The LBOD structure badly failed within very short span of time and was in fact a major cause of the devastation by 1999 cyclone in Badin. No wonder people of Badin, specially of the coastal parts consider LBOD as a major cause of their resource degradation and resulting poverty.

The report also sidetracks from political issues other than water shortage. In case of Badin, the base of poverty is directly linked with exploitation of mineral resource of Badin.

According to Pakistan Energy Book-2003, Badin produced about 27,822 barrels oil per day, amounting to approximately Rs53 billion in that year. In 2003, Badin contributed over 43 per cent of local crude oil production. A district with such an enormous resource lying beneath its soil appears highest on deprivation index of 16 districts of Sindh.

Details can be seen in a research report in 2002 by “Social Policy and Development Center”. Badin stood 61 out of 91 districts surveyed for Human Development Index by UNDP in 2003. This is another “area fraught with national political implications”, which obviously ADB sponsored report would never want to capture. It is evident that if Badin is given a fraction of its oil production, it will never need donors.

Fishermen in Badin have also been suffering at the hands of Rangers. Recently, the costal fisher communities launched a protest campaign against the rangers. According to the costal communities, the rangers have been a major “cause” of snatching livelihood from the poor costal fishermen.

Water bodies, namely Shakoor dhandh, Adda Khan, Shaikhani Ghari and Sim Nullah were given to the Thar (Indus) Rangers Badin in 1977. But in 1994, permission was cancelled. In early 1980s, the rangers had requested to the government for permission to its jawans, posted in Badin for law and order duties, to catch fish for their consumption. The permission was granted.

The Rangers occupied lakes and ponds in the Badin district one by one and at present they have fully control over a dozen big coastal lakes, a large number of network of small ponds, and private lands.

The Thar Rangers appoint contractors and the fishermen are forced to sell their fish and shrimp catch to these favoured people. They offer contractors rock-bottom prices for their catch. As a result, the big-sized shrimp sold in Karachi for Rs300 is bought from local fishermen for Rs15-Rs20. The local fishermen are not allowed to take fish for their families.

The contractor system needs threadbare discussion since it is a major policy issue. All such important “causes” have been given secondary importance in the ADB report. In fact, these are the areas that have a strong bearing on economy of coastal communities and need to be addressed with all seriousness.

The ADB document suggests a novel approach of introducing pilot integrated mariculture pond system in coastal areas. The model, if successful may be expanded over an area of 25,000 hectares benefiting 50,000 people in the area. Interestingly, the start-up cost of this set-up has is estimated at $1,800-2,300. Considering the level of poverty among the coastal communities, this is not a small amount. But, if the model becomes successful, only commercial investors will be able to pour money in the business.

No provision has been made in the proposed projects to lessen the miseries of those displaced people who lost their livelihood due to sea incursion.