Indigenous Peoples rights violated in hydropower projects across Nepal, report finds

A human rights group this week released a report accusing four hydropower projects in Nepal funded by multilateral development banks (MDBs) of violating the rights of Indigenous Peoples to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), leading among other things to severe biodiversity harm.

The report by Accountability Counsel and Kathmandu-based Lawyers Association for Human Rights of Nepalese Indigenous Peoples (LAHURNIP) found that the MDBs backing these projects have fallen short on enforcing their own environmental and social policies, causing “irreversible harm to communities and the environment”.

“The due diligence that development banks are required to perform – including direct engagement with communities and field assessments – has been inconsistent at best and entirely absent at worst,” said Sutharee Wannasiri, communities associate at Accountability Counsel.

“Development banks have not only failed to uphold the commitments they made under their own policies, but in many cases, they have actively enabled the erosion of these protections by repeatedly overlooking alarming records of rights violations and allowing project proponents to act with impunity.”

Read the full article from Carbon Pulse here and the full report “Hanging by a Thread: Indigenous Peoples Rights in Renewable Energy Transition” here.