• East Timor: Survival, oil and sovereignty
• Laos: Asian Development Bank to support proposed Nam Theun 2 dam
• Malaysia: The plight of women workers in oil palm plantations
• Vietnam starts resettlement to make way for massive Son La dam

- East Timor: Survival, oil and sovereignty

"The strategy consisted of surviving." The population of Timor gave this answer to an Oilwatch delegation visiting the country a week after declaration of independence. To keep alive during the massacre unleashed and organised by the president of Indonesia. They even told us that the president of East Timor, Xanana Gusmão, acted as a magician to save his life, thanks to a sleight of hand, when he was detained in 1992. He owes his life to magic.

East Timor became an independent Republic on 20 May 2002, but its birth was accompanied by a big doubt. Was it an advantage or a disadvantage to be on top of a gigantic oil deposit? Could sovereignty grow amidst the pressure of multinational companies? Perhaps today, following the invasion of Iraq by the United States, the reply is simpler than it was then.

Nineteen thousand square kilometres of this small 32 thousand square kilometre island, belong to East Timor. The whole island is a testimonial of the long war waged since it was invaded in December 1975 by the regime of Soeharto, the Indonesian dictator. The invasion took place only 10 days after it had stopped being a Portuguese colony. With the "carnation revolution," Portugal renounced its colonies and East Timor started dreaming of sovereignty.

The army of the dictatorial government of Soeharto --who came into power just like most tyrants, with the support of the United States-- murdered half the population of Timor. This intervention took place with the blessing of Washington, which feared that Timor would turn towards socialism, as had other former Portuguese colonies.

Once Soeharto had fallen, and with the usual tardy intervention of the United Nations, a referendum was convened in which 78.5 % of the voters in East Timor voted for independence. The voting was not higher, due to the island's colonization programmes imposed by the Indonesian government. Following the referendum, killings again broke out, under the instigation of the Indonesian government and with the habitual impotence of the United Nations. East Timor conquered its independence by keeping itself alive.

Today, in spite of having achieved territorial sovereignty, Timor is facing serious difficulties and must wage another battle for the sovereignty of its heritage.

The new country has arisen with forests degraded by military action. The Indonesian army deforested large areas, and even defoliated the forest to fight the guerrilla.

With exports of a little coffee and the extraction of a little sandalwood, which has been devastated since Portuguese times, Timor has difficulties in structuring proposals that will enable it to have food sovereignty.

Not to mention energy sovereignty: its sources of energy, in addition to firewood, are kerosene, gasoline and diesel oil imported from Indonesia, which does not reach the majority of the population.

However, under the surface are enormous oil and gas reserves, not only offshore oil (existing in three regions) but also two areas of natural outcrops, with gas in one and oil in the other.

East Timor started its independent life in the midst of a total economic crisis and absolute dependence on international aid, mainly from the United Nations. Although as is frequent in these cases, aid is self-aid and of the funds invested in rehabilitation programmes, over 80% went to pay foreign consultants.

The situation is getting steadily worse. On 23 July 2002, Timor became a new member of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The tradition of this bank has been to invest in mega-projects and presently, within a policy of poverty reduction in the style of the IMF and the World Bank, it is supporting liberalization and privatization processes. As in the World Bank, decisions within ADB are taken by weighted vote and the weight is determined by investment in the bank, which gives Japan a weight of 13.1 when it comes to decisions, and Timor a weight of 0.3.

The plans for Timor are not the support of its sovereignty, but on the contrary, they aim at depriving it of its rights. Timor is making efforts to have control over its oil reserves in an unequal battle with Indonesia and Australia and under the pressure of large companies such as Shell and Conoco-Philips who are trying to find out who will give them greater privileges in order to decide with whom to negotiate. They are concerned over Timor's intention of introducing new taxes. Oil in Timor is a double trap: a constant threat to its sovereignty and the risk of becoming trapped in a bond-holding model of the economy.

Expectations over the income from gas and oil are very high. It is calculated that Timor could receive between 8 and 38 billion dollars over the next 30 years, depending on the frontier line established. To have an idea of the enormity of these figures, it is sufficient to say that the government's budget for the coming year is barely 77 million dollars.

The discussion on sovereignty has many sides. East Timor paid a high human price to gain territorial independence. Today all its assets are at risk, as reserves of this magnitude could potentially destroy the country.

Xanana Gusmão and his cabinet will again have to turn to magic to re-conquer sovereignty over their heritage. Hopefully, they will continue to believe in it and in the need to remain sovereign.

By: Esperanza Martínez, Oilwatch, e-mail: tegantai@oilwatch.org.ec

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- Laos: Asian Development Bank to support proposed Nam Theun 2 dam

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is funding a US$1.4 million evaluation and due diligence study of the proposed Nam Theun 2 hydropower dam in Laos. Despite the project's massive impacts on forests, under the terms of the Bank's proposed new forestry policy the ADB has no obligation to consider whether the Nam Theun 2 dam project complies with its forestry policy.

Earlier this year, the ADB announced via its web-site that it would be funding a "Power Sector Development" technical assistance project in Laos. According to Bank's information, the project is "to assist the Government of Lao PDR in undertaking the preparatory work for the development of a hydropower project in the country."

In response to a request for further information, the ADB's Sadiq Zaidi confirmed that the ADB will be carrying out an "evaluation and due diligence of NT2 [Nam Theun 2] to assess the social and the environmental impacts and to ensure that appropriate mitigatory and compensatory measures are included in the project design that complies with ADB's policies and guidelines."

Starting in the early 1990s, Bolisat Phathana Khet Phoudoi (BPKP) a Lao military-run logging company has clearcut the 450 square kilometre reservoir area of the proposed 1,000 MW Nam Theun 2 dam. BPKP has also logged in areas around the reservoir, including areas that are supposed to be protected. The company even logged an area that had been set aside as a community forest for future use by resettled villagers.

Although the dam may never be built, the Nam Theun 2 project has already had a major impact on the forests of the area.

Yet, the ADB's technocrats will not need to evaluate whether the project complies with the Bank's proposed new forestry policy. The policy is currently in draft form and due to be completed in June or July according to the Bank's Javed Hussain Mir. In the strange world of the ADB, just because a project affects forests, it does not mean that it has to comply with the Bank's policy on forests.

In 1995, the ADB launched a new forestry policy and optimistically claimed that it would, in future, "refuse to finance any rural infrastructure or public investment project that will, directly or indirectly, cause significant deforestation or forest degradation".

The ADB has failed to uphold this promise. In the Mekong Region, the ADB identified a series of major roads, railway lines, hydropower dams and electricity transmission projects, all of which if built, would have a major impact on the forests of the region. In 1996, the NGO Working Group on the ADB published a response to the ADB's forestry policy, which commented on the Banks' infrastructure plans for the Mekong Region: "There has been no analysis of whether and how this will contribute to forest destruction in the region. Similarly, the well-established link between construction of roads and increased commercial forestry has not been addressed by the Bank."

The major roads that the ADB is planning for the Mekong Region have little or nothing to do with helping farmers get their products to local markets; the roads are built to extract goods and in the case of Laos, timber in particular.

Route 9 cuts Laos in two and links Mukdahan in Thailand with the port of Dong Ha on the Vietnamese coast. The widening of the road will result in the forced eviction of more than 6,000 people currently living along the road. Route 9 is used by Vietnamese logging companies to export timber from Savannakhet to Vietnam and the road passes close to two National Biodiversity Conservation Areas. ADB project documents admit that "While the road rehabilitation will improve transport, this may also exacerbate illegal trade of wildlife and log export."

However, Route 9 forms part of the "East-West Corridor", one of the ADB's "flagship programs". Governments in the Mekong Region "must ensure that the national components of flagship programs get priority in their public investment programs," according to the ADB. "Flagship programs", it appears, are more important than the Bank's forestry policy and in December 1999, the Bank approved a US$32 million loan to Laos and a US$25 million loan to Vietnam to rebuild the roads that are to form the East-West Corridor. Further funding has come from the Japanese government.

In June 2000, only five years after it launched its previous policy, the ADB started a review of its forestry policy. In the same year, a Bank official speaking on condition of anonymity told Walden Bello, "Almost all forestry projects have failed - that is well known within the Bank."

This time around, the Bank is not falling into the trap of making promises it cannot keep. While the new draft version of the policy refers to the importance of participation, consultation, gender awareness, poverty reduction, capacity building and environmental security, what is missing from the draft policy is an analysis (or even an awareness) of the impacts that ADB-funded infrastructure projects have had on the people and forests of the region.

The new forestry policy, if passed by the Bank's board in its current form, would allow the Bank to fund the Nam Theun 2 dam and other massively damaging infrastructure projects, without taking into account the direct and indirect impacts of these projects on forests.

By: Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de

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- Malaysia: The plight of women workers in oil palm plantations

Women are more than half --around 30.000-- of the workforce in Malaysian plantations, and have been historically employed as unskilled, temporary contract workers doing the most menial and underpaid jobs. Urbanisation and industrialisation has pushed men and the young to work in the new industrial zones while women stay on and continue to take on any job so that they can have a house and basic amenities provided by the plantation company, which are otherwise beyond their reach. Thus, women have played the dual role of providing cheap labour and social stability.

In the early sixties, when synthetic rubber consumption controlled by industrialised countries rose to more than 60 per cent globally, rubber prices dropped sharply. Malaysia rubber plantations could not compete so the plantation sector was under pressure to diversify and introduced oil palm as the alternative crop. The country later became the world's top producer and exporter of palm oil, in a push which has encountered --and still is encountering-- strong opposition from indigenous peoples like those of Sarawak, who defend their traditional lands and forests from the devastating monoculture schemes that allow the country to insert in the global economy but at the cost of depriving the people from their livelihood.

The oil palm crops required more intensive 'care' from pests and the use of pesticides became a major requirement. Women were recruited as sprayers of pesticides and fertilisers -30,000 women are estimated to be working as such in the country, most of them Indian. The organisation Tenaganita --or Women's Force-- has been working with plantation workers since 1991. The compiled information about the work and life of plantation workers and the case studies of their exploitation as women and as workers has allowed the organisation to voice the plight of those women "poisoned and silenced", in a report produced together with Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Asia and the Pacific (the full report is available at http://www.evb.ch/index.cfm?page_id=1300).

The study reveals poor maintenance and leaks in the sprays, poor medical care and first aid facilities on the estate, and in some cases lack of protective equipment. Especially for women, the absence of medical monitoring and a total lack of understanding of how they are affected by these chemicals, make it difficult to assess the extent of the impact of pesticides and chemicals on them, on their reproductive health and on their unborn children. But the impacts are very real.

The skin is the body's largest organ; 90 per cent of exposure to pesticides occurs through the skin, and women have a thin skin which predisposes them to a high level of absorption of chemicals into the body. Very few women know that the highest absorption point is the genital area. They experience severe vaginal burning sensations after spraying but suffer in silence since they are ashamed to state this problem to the hospital assistants that usually are men, so the problem goes unchecked. The common symptoms of fatigue, back pain, very bad headaches, nausea, giddiness, tightness of the chest, chest pains, swelling breasts, are indicative of exposure to organophosphate and carbamate type of pesticides.

Pointing at the accountable players, the report underlines that the owners and the management of the plantations make the decisions on the tasks, the method of spraying, the type of pesticides used, the health care services and the actions taken when a complaint is lodged. The plantation industry has failed to set up safety committees and adhere to the Occupational and Safety Act. And worse, it has not given the workers appropriate information on the poisons they would have to handle and use. Though it is aware of the dangers that these poisons pose, it still continues to use very highly toxic pesticides. However, it has developed strategies so that it will not be made accountable. The industry has structured the task of spraying into the 'sub-contractual work' category. As such, the workers come directly under the supervision of the sub contractor. Many remain as temporary workers, and in this way the industry has abdicated its responsibility. Its concern is only profits and not the lives of the workers who bring in the wealth to the industry.

As for the pesticide industry, though it works closely with the plantation industry without coming directly in contact with the workers, it is responsible to ensure that the pesticides it manufactures and distributes do not poison workers, the public and the environment. However, the industry has not, or has been very slow, in taking action to address these issues, and has often been more vocal in denying that poisoning has taken place.

The Pesticide Board and the Department of Occupational Safety and Health are responsible to ensure protection and safety of the workers from poisons. Overall, there is a lack of monitoring of the sale, use and impact of the poisons in the plantations. The weak implementation of the regulations in the plantation sector has led to women workers being poisoned daily. Besides this, health or medical personnel have not been trained effectively to deal with pesticide poisoning and health. Thus the government is equally accountable for the current health crisis of plantation women sprayers.

The National Union of Plantation Workers (NUPW) though comprised by 60% of women, has failed to address the frightening reality of women workers and their daily exposure to poisons. The leadership has bargained for slightly higher wages for sprayers as a 'high-risk' job. The lack of gender perspective is reflected in the absence of programs for women and lack of women leaders in the Union itself.

The hiring of migrant workers, most of them employed as contract labour, is an emerging issue. Activities are often sub-contracted to businesses or agents who supply these contract workers to undertake various jobs on the plantation without becoming employees. They are unprotected by all the labour regulations, are highly mobile and face the high risk of being arrested, detained and deported. Thus these workers are also highly vulnerable and face acute risks to their health with no access to medical care or treatment.

Eventually, the reduction or prevention of toxicity related to pesticide usage in the country would entail, among other actions, that the use of hazardous compounds such as pesticides is banned and/or severely restricted, alternatives to chemical pest control are promoted in the country, and the gender perspective is integrated in the analysis of the occupational hazards of pesticides.

A women organisation has spoken loud. It has given voice to the "silenced" in an effort to counterbalance the harmful effects of a failed production pattern of large scale monoculture plantations which is artificial, insecure, and reinforces women exclusion with no benefit for the people at large.

Article based on: "Poisoned and Silenced. A Study of Pesticide Poisoning in the Plantations", Tenaganita, e-mail: tenaganita@yahoo.co.uk or tnita@hotmail.com , http://caramasia.gn.apc.org/tn_page0.html ; and Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Asia and the Pacific, e-mail: panap@panap.net, http://www.panap.net/

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- Vietnam starts resettlement to make way for massive Son La dam

In Vietnam's mountainous northwest, the Son La People's Committee has moved the first 52 people of a total of 91,000 that will be forcibly evicted to make way for the massive Son La dam. In March, the authorities moved eight families of indigenous White Thai people to a new site, 200 kilometres from their homes in Muong La district. At least 13 indigenous groups live in the 275 square kilometres that would be flooded by the reservoir behind the dam.

The National Assembly gave the go-ahead for the 2,400 MW Son La dam in December 2002. The dam, which is planned to be built 200 kilometres upstream of the existing Hoa Binh dam on the Da River, would be Vietnam's largest dam and would require the biggest eviction of people in the country's history.

The project's cost is estimated at US$2.5 billion, of which the Vietnamese government is looking for at least US$750 million from international sources. Electricity of Vietnam hopes to start construction in 2005 and to start generating electricity in 2012.

In addition to the 3,000 hectares of forest that the reservoir would drown, the dam would have a major impact on the forests of northwestern Vietnam. Most of the rice paddies in Lau Chau province would be flooded by the reservoir. To provide land for farms and villages for the people evicted from the Da River valley, forest on the hillsides around the reservoir will have to be cleared. Building the dam will require a large amount of timber. During the construction of the downstream Hoa Binh dam, 70 per cent of state timber production from the River Da watershed went to the dam construction site.

The Son La project has been intensely debated in Vietnam's National Assembly. In May 2000, the National Assembly asked for more information on relocation and compensation plans and for feasibility studies for a scaled-down version of the dam.

However, project preparation continued. In August 2001, Vietnamese government officials approved US$660 million for resettlement. On a visit to Lai Chau province, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Cong Tan told the provincial authorities "to start resettling residents so as to finish relocation work by 2005."

In March 2002, the National Assembly postponed a decision on whether to go ahead with the dam until the end of the year. Mai Thuc Lan, the deputy chairman of the National Assembly, told Vietnamese newspaper Tuoi Tre, "The preparation for the Son La hydropower project has not been done carefully."

The proposed dam has been studied for more than 30 years. Several international consulting firms have benefited from contracts to produce studies of the Son La dam, including the Moscow Institute of Hydroelectric and Industry, Electricity and Power Distribution Company (Japan), Designing Research and Production Shareholding Company (Moscow) and SWECO (Sweden).

Although World Bank officials say that the Bank will not fund the Son La project, it has funded studies on the dam. A World Bank Staff Appraisal Report dated April 1995, states that the Bank funded "engineering studies for the Son La hydropower project". Four years later, a World Bank study on the energy sector in Vietnam argued that from an economic perspective, "The Son La hydro plant appears promising."

In 1999, a joint venture of SWECO and Harza, a US engineering firm, won a US$1.3 million contract from the Vietnamese government to upgrade the plans to build the Son La dam. Montgomery Watson Harza (as Harza is known since its merger in 2001 with water company Montgomery Watson) is reported to be chasing the project management contract for construction of the dam. Montgomery Watson Harza is also part of the joint venture with Electricité de France that is hoping to build the Nam Theun 2 dam in Laos.

In 2001, an executive at Montgomery Watson Harza, perhaps frustrated at the National Assembly's lengthy decision making process on Son La, told Engineering News Record that Vietnam was "the worst of all worlds." He added, "They'll have to ease up in centralization of control."

One of the biggest concerns about the Son La dam is the fact that it would be located in an earthquake-prone zone. In February and March 2001, earthquakes rocked Lai Chau and Son La provinces. No one was killed in the earthquakes, but the cost of the damage to buildings and roads was estimated at around US$14 million.

The Hoa Binh dam, downstream of the proposed Son La dam site on the River Da, was built with financial aid and technical assistance from the Soviet Union. Soviet experts warned that major floods could cause the Hoa Binh dam to collapse and recommended building a second dam upstream.

The risks are huge. If the Son La dam were to collapse in an earthquake, it would send a huge flood wave down the River Da, threatening first the Hoa Binh dam and then Hanoi, some 300 kilometres away.

Dao Van Hung, Director General of Electricity of Vietnam, appears unconcerned about the potential risks of building the dam in an earthquake zone. Voice of Vietnam radio reported that he told the National Assembly in November 2002, "Currently, there are more than 300 hydro-power projects in the world whose dams are between 100 to 350 metres high. The Son La hydro-power plant's dam is only 115 metres high. As a result, I think Vietnamese workers and scientists are fully capable and experienced to calculate the volume of construction materials and appropriate structure for the dam to ensure maximum safety."

By: Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de

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