ABSTRACT
The Itaparica Dam project shows sensationally how, even with good intentions by all parties, inadequate planning and failure to see the long-term consequences of short-term actions can lead to tremendous waste, without the intended benefits. The chapter aims to distinguished five categories of resettlers: irrigators, waiters with good prospects of receiving water, waiters with uncertain or poor prospects, true urbans, and pararurals. Polo Sindical's primary platform—the insistence on a land-for-land resettlement package near the lake for all displacees—in hindsight was intransigent and unsound. The siting, design, and extent of the irrigation program were driven more by lending factors and global resettlement strategies than by conditions on the ground or by a broad vision of the departees as "beneficiaries" of a national development program. The World Bank helped finance both the urban and rural components of the resettlement program. The resettlement plan had two stages: first, the physical relocation of the population; and second, the development of the irrigation schemes.
