Resettlement strategies and challenges in dam construction projects: A discourse

Large-scale engineering or development projects have both positive and negative impacts. While these projects are essential to economic development and human livelihood, their construction can have potentially dire consequences if adequate measures are not implemented to address their negative impacts on people and the environment. One example of such large-scale engineering projects is large dam project, whose common impact or risk is the displacement of people and consequently, necessitating the need to implement clear-cut and effective strategies for the impactful resettlement of Affected People. The recognition of the issue of displacement that large dam construction presents necessitated the World Bank’s introduction of the first Operational Manual on involuntary resettlement in 1980, later modified in 2004, to include two other objectives. With focus on dam-induced displacement and Resettlement, this term paper discusses resettlement strategies and challenges in dam construction using insights from existing literature and World Bank’s proposed framework.