Women organize to negotiate land compensation for the impacts of the Hydel factory

Tanahun indigenous women have formed an advocacy group – Masto Lafa Bheja (literally “women’s friends group” in the Magar language) – on behalf of their community, which will likely be forced to relocate due to the proposed Tanahun hydroelectric project. Tanahu to build a 140 meter power station. one meter high which will submerge their land.

Uma Sara Magar, the group’s secretary who lives in the district’s Paltyang village, says she is not opposed to the infrastructure project per se, but is concerned about the impact of the relocation to its community.

“On one hand, the project is a development initiative, but on the other, it will displace us from the area where we have been living since the time of our great-great-grandparents,” Magar said. “Now I don’t know which one is better.”

Arzoo Rana, program coordinator of the Indigenous Women’s Legal Awareness Group (INOWLAG), an NGO that provides legal support to indigenous women, understands Magar’s confusion.

“They have lived on this land for generations,” Rana said. “So there are so many intangible things that are not going to be offset by money.”

The awareness group has been helping local women negotiate with project management for seven years.

The Nepal Electricity Authority launched the Tanahu hydropower project in 2009 by submitting an initial environmental impact assessment to the Nepal government. Tanahu Hydropower Limited (THL)—a subsidiary of the Nepal Electricity Authority which is leading the project—estimates that the $505 million project will produce 585.7 GWh of energy per year. The project was confronted many setbacksalthough the company plans to complete the project by June 2026.

Nepal is one of 23 countries to have ratified the International Labor Organization Convention No. 169 relating to Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, which states: “When the resettlement of such peoples is considered necessary as an exceptional measure , this resettlement will only take place with their freedom. and informed consent.

Rana said that the fact that the Nepal government has accepted this international instrument gives the community leverage to raise their voice and demand their rights. “(The indigenous community) has the right to say yes or no to the project, depending on how the project is going to impact their daily lives,” Rana told the Post.

Community leaders say that they had not been informed in advance of the project. Therefore, in February 2020, the community filed a complaint with the Asian Development Bank Accountability Mechanism and the European Investment Bank Complaint Mechanism. The Asian Development Bank and the European Investment Bank provide $150 million and $80 million, respectively, for the project.

Negotiations for compensation with the residents of Damauli and whose lands will be submerged after the construction of the dam have blocked the project. The Nepal Electricity Authority’s 2018 Indigenous and Resettlement Plan identified 547 affected households, a total of 3,919 people, who expected to lose land, structures or trees as a result of the project, which would make these households eligible for compensation.

In 2017, the distributed project Rs330 million to 162 landowners. However, a 2021 independent land valuation survey report, initiated by the Office of the Special Projects Facilitator of the Asian Development Bank, estimated the land value to be higher than THL’s initial estimate. The report estimates that registered fertile land should be compensated to the tune of Rs 1,822,500 per ropani (0.0509 hectares), although it says the valuation can vary by up to 50 percent depending on the parcel of land .

The same report states that the project should compensate unregistered land to the tune of Rs 17,000 per ropani, and that the project should compensate unregistered common land (government-owned land that community members use for grazing, collection of fodder and minor forest products) by providing alternative government-owned land for these purposes, in accordance with the policy of the Asian Development Bank.

Currently, only 13 households have not yet accepted the compensation amount, according to INOWLAG. They resist because they not only want money from the government, but also land, so they can move somewhere else together and maintain their collective identity as an indigenous community.

It is with this objective that Masto Lafa Bheja was created in 2022: to negotiate a land-for-land agreement with the project.

Abandoning their land will uproot the lives of indigenous peoples due to their historical connection to Damauli and the generational knowledge of the land that the group has acquired.

“The indigenous community is entirely dependent on natural resources and has a very symbiotic relationship with nature,” Rana said. “Land, water and natural resources are their livelihood. »

If each household receives the compensation money and moves to different places in Nepal, the community will not only lose its land but also its collective identity.

“Members of this indigenous community live together because their lives and language are interconnected,” Rana said. “If they are dispersed as individual families in different places in the country, then their identity as an indigenous community, their language and their culture will also gradually disappear. »

And this shared identity is what Masto Lafa Bheja wants to preserve and for this, he wants the project to provide new land in exchange for those which will be flooded with water after the construction of the dam.

“They say, ‘If we move, we want to move as a community.’ Give us a place where we will live together as we live,’” Rana said.

Community members identified nearby government land to which they could move; however, the project did not provide this land as compensation.

INOWLAG also provided training in financial knowledge, legal knowledge and women’s rights to around twenty women from Masto Lafa Bheja. They hope that if these women and their families move, they can move equipped with new business and entrepreneurial skills.

“We’re trying to empower them to do that,” Rana said.

Over the past seven years, Rana has seen more women getting involved in negotiations.

“Before, it was mainly the men who negotiated; the women would just sit there and be part of the group,” Rana said. “Now they are participating and having meaningful conversations. »

Masto Lafa Bheja recently secured funding from independent INOWLAG donors to invest in its capabilities and leadership.

INOWLAG hopes that Masto Lafa Bheja will continue to defend his rights and those of his community.

“That’s what we expect from them: to have an opinion, to ask questions,” Rana said. “It’s amazing to see them grow and become more confident.”