Development-Induced Displacement: Problems, Policies and People

Some ten million people worldwide are displaced or resettled every year, due to development projects, such as the construction of dams, irrigation schemes, urban development, transport, conservation or mining projects. The results have usually been very negative for most of those people who have to move, as well as for other people in the area, such as host populations. People are often left socially and institutionally disrupted and economically worse-off, with the environment also suffering as a result of the introduction of infrastructure and increased crowding in the areas to which people had to move.

The contributors to this volume argue that there is a complexity, and a tension, inherent in trying to reconcile enforced displacement of people with the subsequent creation of a socio-economically viable and sustainable environment. Only when these are squarely confronted, will it be possible to adequately deal with the problems and to improve resettlement policies.

Chris de Wet is Professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, where he has been on the faculty for twenty-five years. His research for the last twenty years has concentrated on politically- and development-induced resettlement. From 1998 to 2002, he coordinated a project on development-induced displacement and resettlement for the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford, on which this collection is based.