HANG THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

These purveyors of the pastoral dream have a hidden neocolonialist agenda. Having achieved the highest levels of development in the West they want to freeze underdeveloped countries in pastoral poverty. The West does not need any more large dams, has built enough. Europe exploited the world´s environment to achieve its development. Now they want to prevent us from exploiting the natural resources in our own backyard, with even the best measures of environmental mitigation. So that we are condemned to perpetual underdevelopment. So that the difference between the advanced nations and backwards ones can be institutionalised. Let us oppose their neocolonialist agenda disguised as environmental idealism..– Nepal´s Minister of Water Resources, Pashupati SJB Rana speaking at a workshop on "Managing the Environmental Impact of Water Resources Development" in late June..June was "hang the environmentalist" month in Nepal, with the chorus led by Water Resources Minister Pashupati SJB Rana, followed by an assortment of establishmentarian politicos and bureaucrats, and journalists who do not read. The focus of their ire was activists and intellectuals who were allegedly ob-structing the construction of the Kali Gandaki A project..Kali Gandaki A is a relatively modest but important power project in central Nepal which needs to be built to meet the country´s growing energy needs. Interestingly, none of the activists was saying that Kali Gandaki A should not be built. Instead, what they were going on about was the lack of transparency in decision-making related to the project, and asking why its estimated cost had suddenly escalated in recent years..Why should there be so much aggravation when questions are raised about the high cost? Rather than answer the question, the tack has been for politicians, bureaucrats and newsmen to lambast "environmentalists" for being anti-dam, anti-development and anti-national. They blame the "environmentalists" for having "lost" Arun III for Nepal, and are fearful that the same thing will happen with Kali Gandaki A.."Environmentalism" is a dirty word, according to this crowd, and there is no convincing them that it was not "environmental" arguments that killed Arun III, the project which was cancelled by the World Bank last year. Instead, it was the challenge by well-informed specialists who put forward cogent arguments on the need for in-country capability-building and the economic risks of an inappropriate project. Those who successfully opposed, and whom the World Bank heard before making its decision to back out, were not eco-fundamentalist dam-haters. The arguments against Arun III, however, do not apply in the case of Kali Gandaki A..While the World Bank might have learnt its lesson from Arun III, the Nepali establishment certainly hasn´t: witness the continuous atavistic baying all of the month of June against "environmentalists" when a) the activists have not called for cancellation of Kali Gandaki A, and b) when these activists have not uttered a word about the environmental unsuitability of Kali Gandaki..A social scientist, some day, will make an enquiry into the current state of mental stasis in the Nepali government. He/she will learn that the country has been led up the garden path by powerful and arrogant politicians supported by weak bureaucrats and advised by the unlettered. They will use any argument as long as it is in their interest, which is to tender, tender, tender. Thus, they need not even understand all that the term "environmentalist" means to use it over and over as the bogeyman to fulfil their own ends..While the government employs the services of clowns and comedians to counter the "environmentalists", it does not answer the one questions that the activists have: why has the cost of Kali Gandaki A skyrocketed? In November 1993, a panel of experts from the Asian Development Bank stated that the base cost of Kali Gandaki would be USD 280 million. The project estimate now, in mid-1996, is USD 450 million after so-called "design simplifications". The fear of cost-padding on the one hand and unnecessary donor conditionalities on the other are genuine, and the government is asked to respond..As Minister Rana goes about calling activists names, he gets carried away. All who oppose dams are part of a conspiracy of Western powers who do not want progress in the South, he says (see sidebar). These are arguments that are passe by a decade at least, and the minister does serious discredit to Nepalis when he implies that they are incapable of questioning projects on their own and that they are tools of the "foreign hand"..The campaign against "environmentalists", unfortunately, represents the state of Nepali politics today, directed as it is by the arrogance of power unrestrained by ideological underpinnings, an inability to envision development, and a lack of self-confidence. It is so much simpler to label all those who disagree with you as anti-development and anti-national.