Publication:
Managing Social Risks and Impacts from Hydropower Development: Sharing Experience from a Medium-Sized Dam Project in Vietnam

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (2.43 MB)
843 downloads
English Text (257 KB)
90 downloads
Published
2020-09-01
ISSN
Date
2020-09-15
Editor(s)
Abstract
The Trung Son dam is a medium-sized hydropower dam (260 megawatts) that was developed with the aim of achieving social and environmental sustainability. Experience gained from the Trung Son Hydropower Project can provide relevant information for dam projects of a similar size. This report is the result of a knowledge-sharing exercise conducted at the end of 2019 by the World Bank with Trung Son Hydropower Company Limited (TSHPCo) participation. The project benefitted from a decision-making process based on an adaptive management principle, defined by a framework of measures and implementation process. Detailed activities can evolve if they remained consistent with this framework. Experience gained from the Trung Son Hydropower Project demonstrates how relocation evolved, requiring continuous negotiations and engagement of all stakeholders to deal with unexpected problems. The critical management of downstream impacts during reservoir impoundment requires mitigation of specific risks. Assessed during the project preparation stage, downstream impacts associated with reservoir impoundment will be minimized through maintenance of a minimum environmental flow. The Trung Son reservoir area is rapidly evolving, with a newly created infrastructure network bringing both opportunities and challenges. To further provide support to local households and their communities, the scope of the corporate social responsibility of TSHPCo will need to be confirmed, and interaction with the local government is likely to continue over a long period of time.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Nghi, Nguyen Quy; Lenihan, Martin H.; Saint-Pierre, Claude; Phuong, Nguyen Thi Minh; Dan, Phan Huyen. 2020. Managing Social Risks and Impacts from Hydropower Development: Sharing Experience from a Medium-Sized Dam Project in Vietnam. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34442 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Gender Biases in Resettlement Processes in Vietnam
    (Taylor and Francis, 2021-07-18) Nghia, Nguyen Quy; Phuong, Nguyen Thi Minh; Hang, Do Thi Le
    The impacts of development-induced resettlement disproportionately affect women, as they frequently face more difficulties than men to cope with disruption and changes. Women’s situation might further deteriorate if there is no mechanism for affected households to enjoy meaningful participation and consultation in the resettlement process. This paper is the result of policy analysis, project implementation experience, and findings of a cross-sectional survey of 876 affected households in Vietnam. We examine women's participation in resettlement processes in large infrastructure projects in Vietnam. The survey findings revealed the limited participation of women in the resettlement processes from all perspectives (meeting attendance, resettlement implementation, and making decisions) at community and household levels. Gender-stereotyped prejudice from community members and the gender-ascribed household division of labor were key factors inhibiting women’s meaningful participation. The paper also discusses the implications of the findings for impact assessment practice. We call for a shift in how resettlement is prepared and implemented towards a more comprehensive and gender-informed approach, with a view to making affected people genuine beneficiaries of resettlement programs.
  • Publication
    Influencing Project Design Through Participation : Pakistan Ghazi-Barotha Hydropower Project
    (Washington, DC, 2001-07) World Bank
    The Ghazi-Barotha Hydropower Project is a major run-of-river power project designed to meet the acute shortage of power in Pakistan. It is being implemented by the Water and Power Development Authority of Pakistan (WAPDA). The project consists of a barrage located near Ghazi village in the North West Frontier Province, a 52 km long concrete lined power channel and a power complex located near Barotha village in the province of Punjab. It is expected to have an installed capacity of 1450 MW and provide an estimated energy output of 6600 GWh. The project is a major element of the Government's strategy for meeting future power demand in Pakistan. Impacts of the project include changes of land use in areas temporarily and permanently acquired for construction. This will affect about 20,000 people, including resettlement of 179 families with a surveyed population of 899 persons. From the earliest stages of project development, assessment of social impacts was incorporated into the evaluation and selection of alternatives for the siting of major infrastructure components. The analysis of alternatives has allowed for a significant reduction in the extent of resettlement and archeological impacts. The project serves as an example of inclusive project planning. Communities and NGOs worked with social scientists and engineers to develop engineering solutions to mitigate adverse social impacts and to make the project design responsive to social concerns.
  • Publication
    Enhancing Development Benefits to Local Communities from Hydropower Projects : A Literature Review
    (Washington, DC, 2009-05) World Bank
    The World Bank began a three-year pilot initiative to develop a framework for enhancing development benefits to local communities in hydropower projects. There has been a wide array of approaches in the past two decades that all have in common the objective of designing and implementing means and mechanisms to ensure local communities a more equitable share of project benefits. The World Bank intends to design and test a framework of enhancing development benefits that can be applied to hydropower projects and that can be tailored, at the same time, to the particular circumstances and characteristics of individual projects. This initiative is based on the hypothesis that hydropower projects planned in environmentally and socially sustainable manner can provide a large range of development benefits to local communities. Structure of this report: chapter one provides an introductory background to the literature review briefly explaining the current context of hydropower projects, the scope of the assignment and the structure of this report. Chapter two offers the core of the intellectual discussion by describing the approach and methodology utilized for the literature review, by describing the existing literature on benefit sharing in hydropower projects, by stating the constraints in enhancing development benefits and the existent gap in the literature. Finally, chapter three offers the main conclusions on the outcome of the literature review on enhancing development benefits to local communities.
  • Publication
    New Approaches for Medium-Scale Hydropower Development in Vietnam
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012-01-01) Spencer, Richard; Gencer, Defne
    This paper provides an overview of the Trung Son hydropower project preparation experience and highlights the innovative features of the project, primarily focusing on the adoption of new approaches in project design and integration of social and environmental concerns. Through disseminating the Trung Son project experience, this paper is intended to contribute to the sustainable scale-up of medium scale hydropower in Vietnam, based on practical experience. This paper was funded by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) as part of a broader activity supporting sustainable hydropower development in Vietnam. Resources from the AusAID-East Asia infrastructure for growth trust fund supplemented those available to the World Bank task team in charge of the project. This paper is made up of three parts: Part A introduces the Trung Son hydropower project. Part B presents highlights from the Trung Son hydropower project, focusing on the main themes addressed during preparation. Part C contains the authors' conclusions about why the Trung Son hydropower project experience matters, and discusses the features that make it a good example for future scale-up of sustainable hydropower development in Vietnam as well as for hydropower development in other countries.
  • Publication
    Enhancing Development Benefits to Local Communities in Hydropower Projects : Technical Workshop
    (Washington, DC, 2010-06) World Bank
    The technical workshop on enhancing development benefits to local communities in hydropower projects was held in Washington, D.C., on June 26, 2008. It was hosted by the Social Development Department (SDV) and Water Anchor (ETWWA) of the World Bank. The workshop aimed to provide a platform for a discussion of past and current practices, as well as how to construct development benefits mechanisms within the specific context of hydropower projects. It also provided a forum for sharing knowledge as to how development benefits mechanisms may be applied to Bank-financed projects. The workshop had five sessions and brought together more than 60 experts from different sectors in different regions of the World Bank. Sixteen speakers gave presentations. The workshop had discussions on enhancing development benefits to local communities in hydropower projects and also covered issues pertaining to the broader range of benefit-sharing, including World Bank engagement in hydropower projects, legacy of hydropower, notion evolution, approaches and mechanisms, and good practices in benefit-sharing of hydropower projects. A range of mechanisms are available to enhance and share benefits. Benefit-sharing consists of a combination of monetary and non-monetary mechanisms adapted to specific project contexts. Monetary development benefits are linked largely to economic rent, fair distribution, full compensation, entitlements, national priorities, and optimization of opportunities, and include basically taxation, royalties, preferential rates, revenue sharing, development funds, and joint ownership. The non-monetary development benefits include, for example, allocation of fishing rights in reservoirs; priority hiring of local community members during construction; start-up support for local companies; capacity building; multipurpose infrastructure; rural electrification; and access to improved infrastructure.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    Quantitative Analysis of Road Transport Agreements (QuARTA)
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-04-13) Tanase, Virginia; Kunaka, Charles; Latrille, Pierre; Krausz, Peter
    Road freight transport is indispensable to international economic cooperation and foreign trade. Across all continents, it is commonly used for short and medium distances and in long distance haulage when minimizing time is important. In all instances governments play a critical role in ensuring the competitive advantage of private sector operators. Countries often have many opportunities to minimize the physical or administrative barriers that increase costs, take measures to enhance the attractiveness and competitiveness of road transport, or generally nurture the integral role of international road freight transport in the global trade logistics industry. Road freight transport is critical to domestic and international trade. It is the dominant mode of transport for overland movement of trade traffic, carrying more than 80 percent of traffic in most regions. Generally, nearly all trade traffic is carried by road at some point. Therefore, the cost and quality of road transport services is of critical importance to trade competitiveness of countries and regions within countries. In fact, road transport is fundamental to modern international division of labor and supply-chain management.
  • Publication
    World Development Report 2017
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017-01-30) World Bank Group
    Why are carefully designed, sensible policies too often not adopted or implemented? When they are, why do they often fail to generate development outcomes such as security, growth, and equity? And why do some bad policies endure? This book addresses these fundamental questions, which are at the heart of development. Policy making and policy implementation do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they take place in complex political and social settings, in which individuals and groups with unequal power interact within changing rules as they pursue conflicting interests. The process of these interactions is what this Report calls governance, and the space in which these interactions take place, the policy arena. The capacity of actors to commit and their willingness to cooperate and coordinate to achieve socially desirable goals are what matter for effectiveness. However, who bargains, who is excluded, and what barriers block entry to the policy arena determine the selection and implementation of policies and, consequently, their impact on development outcomes. Exclusion, capture, and clientelism are manifestations of power asymmetries that lead to failures to achieve security, growth, and equity. The distribution of power in society is partly determined by history. Yet, there is room for positive change. This Report reveals that governance can mitigate, even overcome, power asymmetries to bring about more effective policy interventions that achieve sustainable improvements in security, growth, and equity. This happens by shifting the incentives of those with power, reshaping their preferences in favor of good outcomes, and taking into account the interests of previously excluded participants. These changes can come about through bargains among elites and greater citizen engagement, as well as by international actors supporting rules that strengthen coalitions for reform.
  • Publication
    World Development Report 2008
    (Washington, DC, 2007) World Bank
    The world's demand for food is expected to double within the next 50 years, while the natural resources that sustain agriculture will become increasingly scarce, degraded, and vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In many poor countries, agriculture accounts for at least 40 percent of GDP and 80 percent of employment. At the same time, about 70 percent of the world's poor live in rural areas and most depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. World Development Report 2008 seeks to assess where, when, and how agriculture can be an effective instrument for economic development, especially development that favors the poor. It examines several broad questions: How has agriculture changed in developing countries in the past 20 years? What are the important new challenges and opportunities for agriculture? Which new sources of agricultural growth can be captured cost effectively in particular in poor countries with large agricultural sectors as in Africa? How can agricultural growth be made more effective for poverty reduction? How can governments facilitate the transition of large populations out of agriculture, without simply transferring the burden of rural poverty to urban areas? How can the natural resource endowment for agriculture be protected? How can agriculture's negative environmental effects be contained? This year's report marks the 30th year the World Bank has been publishing the World Development Report.
  • Publication
    Global Economic Prospects, January 2025
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16) World Bank
    Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.
  • Publication
    Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2024
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-15) World Bank
    The Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2024 is the latest edition of the series formerly known as Poverty and Shared Prosperity. The report emphasizes that reducing poverty and increasing shared prosperity must be achieved in ways that do not come at unacceptably high costs to the environment. The current “polycrisis”—where the multiple crises of slow economic growth, increased fragility, climate risks, and heightened uncertainty have come together at the same time—makes national development strategies and international cooperation difficult. Offering the first post-Coronavirus (COVID)-19 pandemic assessment of global progress on this interlinked agenda, the report finds that global poverty reduction has resumed but at a pace slower than before the COVID-19 crisis. Nearly 700 million people worldwide live in extreme poverty with less than US$2.15 per person per day. Progress has essentially plateaued amid lower economic growth and the impacts of COVID-19 and other crises. Today, extreme poverty is concentrated mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and fragile settings. At a higher standard more typical of upper-middle-income countries—US$6.85 per person per day—almost one-half of the world is living in poverty. The report also provides evidence that the number of countries that have high levels of income inequality has declined considerably during the past two decades, but the pace of improvements in shared prosperity has slowed, and that inequality remains high in Latin America and the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa. Worldwide, people’s incomes today would need to increase fivefold on average to reach a minimum prosperity threshold of US$25 per person per day. Where there has been progress in poverty reduction and shared prosperity, there is evidence of an increasing ability of countries to manage natural hazards, but climate risks are significantly higher in the poorest settings. Nearly one in five people globally is at risk of experiencing welfare losses due to an extreme weather event from which they will struggle to recover. The interconnected issues of climate change and poverty call for a united and inclusive effort from the global community. Development cooperation stakeholders—from governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector to communities and citizens acting locally in every corner of the globe—hold pivotal roles in promoting fair and sustainable transitions. By emphasizing strategies that yield multiple benefits and diligently monitoring and addressing trade-offs, we can strive toward a future that is prosperous, equitable, and resilient.