Topic: public participation

RELEASE: Caribbean Freedom of Information Network launched at Landmark Conference

Lauren Zelin — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:55:32 -0400

11 Caribbean Countries Meet to Discuss Freedom of Information Laws in the Region

For the first time, Caribbean governments and civil society have come together to discuss access to information, public participation in governance, and access to justice at a landmark conference held in Kingston, Jamaica. Representatives from 11 Caribbean countries attended the “Regional Conference on Freedom of Information in the Caribbean: Improving Management for the Environment.”

At the close of the two-day conference on March 21, 2013, governments, civil society, and media announced the decision to launch a Caribbean network on freedom of information to support processes to improve standards for access to information in the region.

Dr. Carolyn Gomes, chairperson of the Access to Information Advisory Stakeholders’ Committee and Executive Director of Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) said, “freedom of information is the most powerful tool for ordinary citizens to arm themselves with the information they need to change their lives. Launching this freedom of information network will build opportunities for collaboration, learning and capacity building among information commissioners, civil society and media across the region.”

Countries reviewed the status and effectiveness of freedom of information laws, the number of requests for information being made in each country, and institutional structures for implementation and enforcement. Jamaica is one of seven Caribbean countries (Belize, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Cayman Islands) to have freedom of information laws in force. Five countries have draft laws pending, and Bahamas and Guyana have passed laws but they are not yet in force. Gaps in implementation were noted in Belize, Antigua, and St Vincent and the Grenadines, which have laws that have not yet fully been utilized by the public.

“Freedom of information laws ensure that citizens can access official documents from their governments and gives them a voice in decisions that directly impact them and the environment,” said Danielle Andrade, Legal Director of the Jamaica Environment Trust. “Using Jamaica’s Access to Information Act, we were able to obtain documents to build our legal case to compel the government to fix a non-functioning sewage treatment plant in Harbour View, Kingston.”

The event was a follow-up to the Rio+20 sustainable development conference in May of 2012, where ten countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) signed a declaration to work towards a legally binding, regional instrument to promote the implementation of the rights of access to information, public participation, and access to justice in environmental matters. Jamaica was the first Caribbean country to sign the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) Declaration on Principle 10, and Trinidad and Tobago joined in 2013.

“The LAC Principle 10 regional declaration is a game changing opportunity for the region,” said Carole Excell, Senior Associate at the World Resources Institute. “Caribbean governments need to embrace new regional approaches that seek to improve transparency, reduce conflicts over environmental decisions, and build capacity to implement new rights for citizens.”

Michelle Fife, Legal Advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of St. Vincent and the Grenadines stated, “this is a positive initiative which brings the region together on an important issue. Transparency is important to our government. With continued work we will build and strengthen our institutional capacity to improve access to information.”

The conference was funded by The Commonwealth Foundation, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Information Commissioner’s Office of the Cayman Islands. Organizers included the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET), World Resources Institute (WRI), The Access Initiative (TAI), Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), The Mona School of Business and Management, and the Access to Information Unit of Jamaica.

Vulnerability and Adaptation: Institutions

Kevin Lustig — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 09:47:11 -0400

There is a need for change in the structure and function of many national institutions if policies are to address the decision-making challenges posed by climate change, and to meet the needs of poor and vulnerable populations. WRI works to strengthen key institutions – such as an agriculture ministry, river basin authority, or village development committee – so that vulnerability and adaptation is integrated into core planning and programming.

Between Populism and Price Increases: Who Will Pay for the Cost of Renewable Energy?

Davida Wood — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:38:46 -0400

As feed-in tariffs gain traction as a policy mechanism of choice, we must keep in mind the bigger picture of the financial health of developing country electricity sectors.

It was not too long ago that the World Bank and other international financial institutions were drawing attention to the soaring debt levels of developing country utilities. In order for feed-in tariffs or other electricity policies to be effective, a comprehensive approach must address the financial and governance challenges that continue to trouble utilities. Most importantly, there must be transparent tariff setting processes that provide space for public scrutiny and input.

What are feed-in tariffs?

A feed-in tariff is a guarantee that renewable energy producers will be able to sell the electricity they generate at a price set in advance by the government. As of December 2010, 78 countries, states, and provinces have passed feed-in-tariffs for renewable energy, including a rising number of developing countries. Read more >>>

Tariff setting is a central issue that links both the financial and governance aspects of utility performance. In the past 10-15 years, reform efforts have pressed for tariffs to be raised in order to cover the full costs of providing electricity. The transition to cost-recovery principles has been a rocky policy path, which has alternated between social unrest directed at rate increases, and populist solutions which reinstated subsidies and incurred further debt. Missing in all of this has been a formal process in which consumers can engage in rate setting and decision-making about how to structure subsidies and price impacts.

A Lack of Public Input

In developing countries there are few institutions structured to allow for stakeholder engagement in a way that can accommodate a range of analyses and approaches. Unlike in the United States, where independent regulatory institutions came into being as a result of consumer protest against market manipulation by monopolies, developing country regulators were established to create an enabling environment for private investors. As a result, institutional processes for disclosing information and incorporating public input tend to be underdeveloped.

If independent agencies exist at all, they often lack sufficient mandate, authority and capacity to implement these tasks. When a lack of open, transparent processes combine with an absence of visible regulatory actions to curb inefficiencies, consumer confidence is lost. The lack of formal channels for integrating consumer perspectives has had adverse effects. With the lack of institutional space in which to explore a range of solutions, consumers have typically taken to the streets or threatened political stability in response to tariff increases that have been viewed as inequitable.

Consumers and Price Increases

In Indonesia, for example, the government was unable to sustain significant tariff increases even in spite of World Bank and Asian Development Bank loan conditionalities. Yet a closer look at the positions of consumer and public interest organizations show that they do not necessarily reject price increases per se.

A forthcoming Asian Development Bank (ADB) study notes that leading public interest organizations support Indonesia’s April 2010 decision to remove the electricity subsidy for consumers who use more than 6600W per month. This position is not new. What consumer groups have been protesting since the beginning of the sector reform program is the lack of transparency around tariff setting and subsidy processes. They argue that the lack of an independent regulatory process has meant that short term political interests have dominated subsidy determinations, resulting in poorly targeted subsidies and other inefficiencies. In all that time, prices have barely risen. One cannot help but wonder whether earlier openness to alternative perspectives – and formal process for considering them – may have hastened the path to financial recovery. Even now, public interest groups in Indonesia are calling attention to the lack of a clear tariff methodology and involvement of a body that could represent the public.

A Role for Civil Society

Civil society perspectives are particularly valuable in the context of the impending impacts of renewable energy. In the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, for example, the utility’s massive debt must be attributed to multiple types of subsidy payments that the state government has not transferred. As in Indonesia, tariffs have not been raised even as the costs of providing electricity have risen. As a state with one of the highest deployments of renewable energy in India, exceeding the national target of 10%, part of the deficit is linked to renewable energy subsidies. When tariffs are inevitably revised, the voices of consumers will be ever more important in the dialogue about how the costs are covered.

In Thailand, consumer groups advocate that renewable energy policy should be bundled with energy efficiency and demand-side management, rather than deployed in isolation. Attention to energy efficiency would not only bring the costs renewable energy down, but would curb the tendency of Thai utilities to overinvest, an inefficiency which has had an even bigger impact on tariffs.

In Indonesia, civil society organizations argue that subsidies for renewable energy, as for any other policy, should not come as a “blank check”, but should be linked to public interest objectives and regulatory oversight. Already, several corruption investigations are underway in connection with alleged price mark ups and manipulated tender processes. At one solar PV project, the cost of installation was increased by nearly 20% as a result.

In the Philippines, analysts note that there is a serious tendency to keep marginalized sectors, especially those who are non-industry players, out of energy decisionmaking processes. For example, the voices of indigenous peoples and local communities are ignored in the development of power and fuel projects. This lack of transparency and public participation in energy planning and development has led to compromised environmental principles and standards as well as social conflict resulting in escalating costs for the country. This should be avoided as the Philippines implements its recently enacted Renewable Energy Act; otherwise support for renewable energy would diminish.

Consumers have an important role to play in the rate setting process, providing analytic expertise, helping to reduce information asymmetry, and demanding better corporate governance and performance standards from utilities. They can also provide important input into the setting of investment priorities and the distributional impacts of tariff design.

Building Capacity and Participation

Yet the potential of civil society to participate in decision-making processes about the price and impact of renewable energy is far from realized. Prayas’ recent study “Clean Energy Regulation and Civil Society in India” documents the poor public response to the renewable energy tariff orders issued by Indian state regulatory commissions. The study, which reviewed regulatory proceedings and conducted stakeholder interviews in five Indian states, concluded that the lack of reliable data about renewable energy, including resource availability, costs, and performance means that only a handful of technically sophisticated CSOs are able to properly analyze regulatory decisions and the data that underpin them, and this work depends on the availability of adequate resources.

It also corroborates a global survey by the U.S. National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) which concluded that regulatory bodies tend to focus on investor issues and do not recognize the role of civil society participation, creating the perception of regulatory capture. For most CSO’s, the focus on investor issues has meant that the regulatory process is of little value to them.

Breaking the Cycle of Non-Engagement

Thus begins a cycle of non-engagement, for when CSOs stay away from regulatory proceedings, the perception that the process has been captured by project developers is reinforced, and has the potential to build popular suspicion of renewable energy generation rather than a constituency that demands more ambition.

To break this cycle, countries must build stronger regulatory institutions and transparent and accountable decision-making processes. There must also be investments in capacity building for the effective participation of civil society organizations. The political and economic sustainability of feed-in tariffs cannot be separated from the larger governance context of tariff-making processes and utility struggles with financial liquidity.

The authors are partners in the Electricity Governance Initiative, a global network of civil society organizations dedicated to promoting transparent, inclusive, and accountable decision making in the electricity sector. WRI and Prayas serve as the Secretariat for the initiative.

Agricultural Land Grabs Threaten Local Property Rights and Sustainable Development

Mercedes Stickler — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:09:27 -0400

With large-scale agricultural investments on the rise, the rights of local people must be protected.

Large-scale land acquisitions for agricultural use by both local and foreign commercial entities – often dubbed “land grabs” - are on the rise worldwide. Often touted as a form of economic development, these investments could have profound negative effects on the environment and rural livelihoods if transactions go through without the meaningful participation of affected peoples and due consideration for the many benefits they derive from nature.

Land provides the very platform on which sustainable lives and livelihoods are built. As a result, the land on which people build their homes and organize their communities is directly linked to their quality of life. Seventy-five percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, and a majority of rural livelihoods depend primarily on natural resources to provide food, fresh water, and a healthy environment, among other benefits. Reliable access to land and the ability to make decisions about land use is therefore critical to rural economies.

The Importance of Recognizing Local Land Rights

In many developing countries, however, local peoples’ rights to land are not recognized or enforced by governments. Often times, governments make decisions about how land and natural resources will be used without consulting the people who depend on those resources for their livelihoods. People who rely on customary or traditional rights are particularly vulnerable to losing their land because there is little or no official documentation of their rights to protect them from their land being taken by someone else. This is a serious problem in Africa, where formal tenure covers only some 2 – 10% of all land.

The Risks and Opportunities of Large-Scale Agriculture Investments

Rising global demand for food and biofuel crops has driven a recent wave of large-scale agricultural investments in the Global South. Following the food price spike in 2007-08, media reports suggest that up to 56 million hectares of land were targeted for agriculture and forestry investments in less than one year, compared with an annual average cropland expansion of 1.9 million ha between 1990 and 2007.

Case studies have found that land transfers of hundreds and even thousands of hectares have been made without due consideration of existing rights or potential impacts on ecosystem services and the livelihoods they support. As a result, these investments may undermine sustainable development in countries already struggling to escape poverty.

In Ethiopia, for example, official government data in five of its nine regions indicate that a total area of at least 1.2 million ha – roughly 8.6% of the country’s cultivated area – were transferred to domestic and foreign commercial entities between 2005 and 2010. Although production data are scarce, media reports indicate that land acquired by Saudi Arabian companies in Ethiopia will be used to produce vegetables, flowers, and rice for export to nations in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Ethiopia is due to receive food aid for 5.7 million people in 2011 from the United Nations World Food Programme.

The size of individual deals can be staggering – in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a Chinese company has reportedly acquired rights from the central government to some 3 million ha of forest land across three provinces where indigenous people and other communities still rely on forests for their livelihood and culture. This transaction represents roughly two-thirds of the entire area in DRC that is potentially suitable for growing oil palm but not yet cultivated.

The scale of these transactions alone makes it even more imperative that the customary rights of local people be recognized and the impacts on existing land uses, especially forests, be considered. Large-scale land acquisitions that ignore customary rights not only risk undermining local livelihoods; illegitimate deals can slow investment implementation, damage company reputation, and even undermine regional stability – as demonstrated by the role that a high profile 1.3 million ha deal in Madagascar played in that country’s 2009 coup.

Governments often justify these transfers by citing their potential contribution to economic growth – however, any gains in national accounts (which to date appear few) risk being greatly outweighed by negative impacts on local livelihoods. Increased investment in agriculture can be used to promote sustainable development through the introduction of new technology and improved management of natural resources using an integrated planning approach. To achieve broad-based economic growth and increased standards of living, however, major agricultural investments must respect customary and traditional rights and mitigate or compensate negative impacts on the ecosystem services that support local livelihoods.

As food production will likely need to double in the next forty years to feed an additional two billion people by 2050, demand for agricultural land is likely to remain high. There is therefore an urgent need for governments, civil society, and the private sector to work together to improve the governance of agricultural investments in ways that are environmentally sustainable and accountable to local people.

WRI at the World Bank Land Conference

WRI is excited to be participating in this year’s Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, April 18-20, 2011, in Washington, DC. Below are several events that feature WRI staff and research:

April 19th 4:00-6:00 PM (panel): Monitoring Land Acquisitions from Different Angles: Is There Scope for Collaboration? - Manish Bapna, WRI Executive Vice President and Managing Director, will chair a panel addressing monitoring land acquisitions with regard to IFC performance standards, lessons learned on participatory monitoring of large land deals, and civil society responses to large-scale land acquisitions.
April 20, 8:00-9:30 AM (panel): Land Tenure in the Context of REDD+ and Climate Change - Fred Stolle, WRI Senior Associate, will present on “Shifting cropland expansion to degraded areas: Experience from Indonesia’s POTICO project.” This panel will also address country-level perspectives on making REDD operational, tenure issues at REDD project sites, and the large-scale acquisition of forest rights.
April 18-20th (exhibit): Focus on Africa: An Interactive Educational Tool on Land Tenure and Property Rights. The Focus on Africa website, a joint initiative of WRI and Landesa, with support by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to inform policymakers and development practitioners on critical land tenure issues. The tool provides land tenure experiences and lessons from six sub-Saharan African countries – Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda. Please visit the site - http://www.wri.org/property-rights-africa/.

For more information about WRI’s participation, please contact Emily Norford at enorford@wri.org or +1 (202) 729-7754.

Engaging Communities in Carbon Capture and Storage Projects

Jonathan Lash — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 17:42:01 -0500

This piece originally appeared as the Foreword to Guidelines for Community Engagement in Carbon Dioxide Capture, Transport, and Storage Projects.

There is no single quick fix or technological silver bullet that will reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are altering the Earth’s climate. Rather, a range of technologies and strategies will need to be employed to keep global temperature rise below the 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit danger threshold identified by scientists.

Some of these solutions (think energy efficiency or wind and solar power) are tried and tested, but need scaling up; others are emerging and not yet commercially available, but offer great potential. Carbon dioxide capture and storage or CCS falls into the latter group. A suite of technologies that together can be used to sequester carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions from power stations and other major industrial sources, CCS is now moving from demonstration projects to commercial-scale pilots.

Read the Report

Most credible analyses project a key role for CCS as a bridging technology between today’s fossil fuel–based global economy and the low carbon societies of tomorrow. To be effective in helping contain global emissions, however, CCS deployment would need to accelerate dramatically over the next three decades, which is where community engagement, the subject of this report, comes in.

As an emerging technology which involves injecting carbon dioxide into geologic formations, CCS has drawn wary reactions from some communities around the world where demonstration projects have been sited or proposed. Too often, the reaction from regulators, project developers and local authorities has been to view public opinion and local communities as a barrier to technology deployment. This report takes the opposite tack: it starts from the position that project developers and regulators should treat host communities as partners whose questions and concerns can improve the project and who should be consulted in the design, development and operation of CCS projects on their doorstep.

To be clear, this report does not aim to make a case for or against CCS. Instead, it outlines how local communities can help shape decisionmaking around CCS projects, and in so doing build wider public support for the emerging technology.

Too often, the reaction from regulators, project developers and local authorities has been to view public opinion and local communities as a barrier to technology deployment. This report takes the opposite tack.

The report builds on WRI’s previous consensus-building stakeholder effort, which resulted in the publication of the Guidelines for Carbon Dioxide Capture, Transport, and Storage, a technical guide for CCS projects. This complementary publication is the product of the collective experience and best thinking of more than 90 experts and stakeholders involved in CCS across the world, including academics, project developers, regulators, nongovernmental organizations and community groups.

The resulting conclusions are intended to serve as international guidelines for regulators, local decisionmakers (including community leaders, citizens, local advocacy groups, and landowners) and project developers as they plan and seek to implement CCS projects. The guidelines will be road tested with CCS projects in the field, and the experience gained integrated into a revised edition of globally-applicable best practices.

Whether CCS will be viable at commercial scale is yet to be proven. Without public buy-in, however, the chances are slim that the technology will be deployed at meaningful scales for climate change mitigation. Transparency and consultation are prerequisites for this buy-in. WRI hopes this report will provide a basis for best practice engagement on CCS projects worldwide, which will help enable the public to judge the technology on its own merits.

Guidelines for Community Engagement in Carbon Dioxide Capture, Transport, and Storage Projects

Maggie Barron — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 06:41:48 -0500

Executive Summary

CCS and Climate Change Mitigation

Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) encompasses a suite of existing and emerging technologies for capture, transport, and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) that together can be used to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel power generation and other industrial sources. Achieving cuts in energy-related CO2 emissions is critical to avoiding more than a 1.5 degree Celsius (°C) (2.7 degree Fahrenheit [° F]) rise in global temperatures by 2050 and the irreversible and damaging impacts such a temperature rise would have on people and ecosystems. The scale of the climate change challenge requires a portfolio of clean energy technologies and energy efficiency efforts, and most credible analyses project that CCS will have to play a substantial role in achieving the necessary emissions reductions (see Appendix 3).

CCS has been tested at a small scale, and there are a few industrial operations around the world, including in North America and Europe, which already capture and store small quantities of CO2 emissions underground. However, the technology has not yet been demonstrated at the scale required for application to commercial power and industrial plants. To address this gap, governments of many major economies have announced plans to support commercial-scale CCS demonstration projects that store more than 1 million metric tons of CO2 annually. Several are currently being built in Europe, China, Australia, and Canada, and many more are in the planning stages, including in the United States. Leading industrial nations, through the G8, have called for 20 such demonstration plants to be launched by 2010, with a view toward broad deployment by 2020.

Actions taken to demonstrate transformational clean energy technology over the next decade will define the solutions available to help solve the climate problem. Commercial-scale CCS demonstration projects are required to demonstrate whether or not the technology should play a major role in bridging today’s fossil fuel–driven world and tomorrow’s low- or zero-carbon economy. Yet, as with the introduction of many new technologies, proposed CCS projects have been met with mixed reactions from the public, and in particular from the local communities asked to host them.

Community Engagement in the CCS Context

Project developers and technical experts in CCS often cite the public as a “barrier” to CCS deployment, because decisions on whether individual projects move forward often significantly depend on the local community’s acceptance or opposition. The case studies from the United States, the Netherlands, and Australia featured in this report suggest that communities often have more concerns and questions about CCS than about more established industries and technologies. The guidelines for community engagement, however, were written with the belief that decisions on individual demonstration projects ultimately hinge on site-specific factors, including the needs of the local community. While much social science research around CCS to date has focused on gauging public attitudes toward the technology or on education and outreach best-practices for project developers (see Appendix 2), we focus instead on providing recommendations for creating a culture of effective, two-way community engagement around CCS projects.

In addition to project developers and host communities, there is a third partner essential to effective community engagement around CCS: regulators. In some countries, regulatory frameworks governing CCS development and deployment, including rules for community engagement, are already in place (see Appendix 1). In others, an environmental regulatory framework for CCS does not yet exist, and the advent of demonstration plants is forcing regulatory policymakers to make real-time decisions about how to ensure projects move forward safely, and what level of public participation should be required in the decisionmaking processes. The engagement around any one project, therefore, is contingent on the interactions of three primary groups: local decisionmakers (typically on behalf of those in the community), regulators, and project developers. All three groups are addressed in this report. It is important to underscore upfront, however, that effective community engagement is measured by the success of the engagement process, and is not contingent upon agreement between the project developer, regulator, and community on the outcome or the design of the CCS project. Nevertheless, effectively engaging communities can help move CCS projects forward and foster continuing constructive relationships between project developers and communities. Such relationships can help ensure that commercial-scale CCS demonstrations and any subsequent commercial projects progress in such a way that local economies, values, ecosystems, and people are respected, and the potential of the technology in helping to mitigate climate change is fully realized.

About the Guidelines

The Guidelines was drafted by authors at WRI in close consultation with an international group of stakeholders (see inside front cover) with specific expertise and experience in engaging local communities regarding deployment of CCS technology. This effort builds on WRI’s previous 2-year consensus-building stakeholder effort that resulted in the Guidelines for Carbon Dioxide Capture, Transport, and Storage, a set of technical guidelines for how to responsibly proceed with safe CCS projects. The community engagement guidelines for CCS are intended to serve as international guidelines for regulators (including those in both regulatory policy design and implementation capacities); local decisionmakers (including community leaders, citizens, local advocacy groups, and landowners); and project developers to consider as they plan and seek to implement CCS projects.

The Guidelines begins with an introduction that describes their intent, a working definition of community engagement, and why effective engagement is an essential element of CCS deployment. It then provides an overview of relevant CCS technology issues, including the status of CCS technology, regulatory and permitting processes, and the timeline and various stages of a representative CCS project. The report then reviews existing relevant experience in community engagement, presented in six case studies from CCS projects. These studies were drafted by stakeholders engaged in the development of the Guidelines who had a hands-on role either in engaging the local community or in decisionmaking around the featured project. Chapter 4 of the report presents the guidelines for community engagement on CCS.

This effort was initiated with a hope of providing a set of best practices to guide the engagement of future commercial CCS projects, if the demonstration projects prove successful. The guidelines for regulators are designed to guide regulatory authorities responsible for overseeing CCS projects but also offer recommendations for improving the public participation rules as new regulations are drafted. The guidelines for local decisionmakers highlight how, in some cases, communities can take a proactive role in shaping the engagement around a potential CCS project, rather than a passive role as purely receiver of information. Finally, the guidelines for project developers highlight principles and activities that can be employed to promote effective community engagement and involve the local community in the CCS project.

The guidelines are separated into five categories as summarized in the table above. The full text of the guidelines follows, presented by audience. In Chapter 4, the guidelines are presented by engagement principle, with an introductory overview of each issue.

For more information, contact Sarah Forbes, Francisco Almendra, or Micah Ziegler

Freedom of Information Laws Spreading Around the World

Lalanath de Silva — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 11:55:13 -0400

Lalanath de Silva, Director of WRI’s Access Initiative, answers questions on how the “right to know” is evolving in both developed and developing countries.

September 28th is the 8th International Right to Know Day, which focuses attention on issues of government transparency. What do you think when you look back on the “Right to Know” movement in recent years?

This year we have much cause to celebrate, because there has been an explosion of new Freedom of Information Acts (FOIAs) around the world. By the last count, over 80 countries have enacted some form of FOIA, and the vast majority of these have been introduced in the past five or six years. FOIA laws are quickly becoming the norm. Transparency is becoming the global norm. And governments that do not adhere to these principles are having much more trouble justifying their positions. That said, there is still a lot that needs to be done to improve implementation of these laws. Our research has shown that practice lags behind.

What is behind the recent boom in Freedom of Information Acts?

When a government is transparent, there is less room for corruption and more room for accountability. That’s why FOIAs are becoming standard good practice in the international community. International organizations, Multilateral Development Banks, and bilateral donors including USAID are all looking to see whether government transparency is part of the legal system as they decide where to give aid. But this isn’t just about international pressure. There has also been increasing demand from within countries. Civil society and citizens’ groups have really made some impressive progress. As the old saying goes, “sunshine is the best disinfectant.”

Why is promoting freedom of information laws important to an environmental organization like WRI?

Making the right environmental choices - as consumers, voters and shareholders – depends on having access to accurate information on the issues that confront us every day, from the quality of the food we eat, to the impacts of corporate supply chains, to the voting records of parliamentarians. Much of this data is held by or can only be forced into the open by government.

Where have you seen progress on Freedom of Information?

Bangladesh and India have made good progress. Chile too has just passed new FOI legislation. Indonesia passed a FOIA in the past few years, and has been making special efforts to be more transparent.

On this issue, the division between developing and developed countries is shrinking.

Mexico has one of the best examples of a well-functioning FOIA. In Mexico, information isn’t just released to the person who requested it. It’s released to everyone. This means that different people do not have to reinvent the wheel each time with different FOIA requests, which saves a lot of time and effort. When it’s released once, it’s public for everyone. IFAI, the Instituto Federal de Acceso a la Informacion, puts information online and also webcasts hearings on information request appeals. The vast majority of requests so far have been for personal information, like birth certificates or pension records. Before the new law, people had trouble accessing this kind of information even about themselves. Interestingly, the new law is also used by government agencies to get information from other government agencies!

What does Freedom of Information mean in more developed countries?

Well, the United Kingdom did not even have a right to information five years ago. But in 2009, because of their new law a young journalist made a request for Members’ of Parliament (MP) expenditure statements. Her request was denied by th Speaker of parliament but she won her appeals including one in the country’s Highest Court – the House of Lords – which ordered the release of the information. When the reports were released, all of this questionable spending with public funds came to light – pool cleanings, replacing chandeliers, etc. There was a huge public uproar, and the Speaker ended up resigning. It rocked the entire government establishment, all as a direct impact of a freedom of information request. And now, people can access their MPs’ expense reports online.

In the United States, the debate has evolved towards a more modern sense of what “Freedom of Information” should mean. Today, citizens have the right to ask the government for information, to pull that information out, but the process can take multiple requests and a lot of time and effort. Much less burdensome would be for the government to push information out. Since President Obama’s Open Government Executive Order, the government has been much more proactive about getting information out to people. More than 20 U.S. agencies have implemented the order, and websites like data.gov make information – about TARP, or the BP Oil Spill, or Congressional fundraising – much more accessible. This is quite new to the U.S.

What makes a good Freedom of Information Law?

The best laws cast the right to information in the widest possible terms with the fewest limits or exceptions. Good laws have enforcement mechanisms so that citizens can make requests and appeal if necessary to an independent body. This is why some FOIAs tend to fall short – in Indonesia for example, many are dissatisfied with the number of exceptions and limits to the rules, and the lack of strong enforcement.

What should be the focus of this movement in the coming year?

We need to keep the momentum going. I would like to see a big push from governments of all countries to establish transparency as the norm and bring it into the international process. President Obama’s global open government initiative announced last Thursday at the UN promises to be a good vehicle for doing exactly that. Some countries, like Sweden and Denmark, have had their FOI laws since the 1700s, but there are leaders in this area among developing countries too, like Mexico, Brazil, and India. On this issue, the division between developing and developed countries is shrinking.

This is the right moment for some cross-north/south leadership that could tip the balance towards transparency even further. That’s what we should be working for this year.

People, Power, and Pipelines: Lessons from Peru in the Governance of Gas Production Revenues

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Countering the resource curse

For poor countries with abundant natural resources, extractive industries offer the potential of generating enormous revenues. These revenues can fuel economic growth and be directed to combat poverty and improve the well-being of local communities. Experience has shown, however, that large-scale mining and oil and gas prospecting and extraction carry serious environmental and social risks for host countries, with many of the impacts borne by local communities. Host countries also face the risk of the “resource curse,” where poor management of the revenues generated from extractive industries slows economic growth, increases economic volatility and corruption, and sometimes leads to conflict, rather than creating prosperity.

Developing countries that are advancing their extractive industries sectors face the challenges of managing and mitigating the associated risks of development, while ensuring that the economic benefits are channeled to alleviate poverty. Many of these countries are taking measures to address these risks with help from public international financial institutions (IFIs), such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).1 In this context, these institutions can play an important role by offering support for public-sector reforms to improve the transparency and accountability of extractive sectors at the national level.

Where fiscal decentralization schemes are in place, subnational governments (SNGs) assume a particularly vital role in managing extractive industry revenues. IFIs can help build the capacity, transparency, and accountability of SNGs, so SNGs can manage extractive industry revenues in a manner that provides long-term benefits to local communities. In many countries, IFIs also lend money to governments and the private sector in direct support of extractive projects, which enables them to use their influence as lenders and investors to empower government agencies to promote revenue-distribution schemes that benefit local community areas affected by projects.

This report suggests ways in which IFIs can improve their role in the extractives sector by giving greater support to SNGs in managing extractive industry risks and revenues and by drawing lessons from recent experiences in Peru. For IFI-supported initiatives in the extractive industries to be successful in reducing poverty and improving well-being, the initiatives must be linked to and preceded by support for programs to increase government capacity to regulate activities with high social and environmental risks and to manage revenue flows at both the national and subnational levels. Without this support, government agencies may find themselves unable to manage a myriad of challenges at each stage in the development of large-scale projects. The 2004 Extractive Industries Review (EIR),2 an independent review of the World Bank’s extractive industry lending, concluded that for the World Bank’s interventions to lead to sustainable development, governance systems must be strengthened before investments in extractive industries sector are made. The EIR spurred a number of initiatives to strengthen the quality of governance by increasing the transparency of private and public extractive industry revenue flows at the national level (see Box 1). Nevertheless, more attention is needed— particularly from the IFIs—on building the capacity of SNGs to manage these flows and to ensure that revenues are invested in the well-being of local communities.

In context: Peru

Peru—which is highly dependent on income from extractive industries revenue—has been undergoing an aggressive process of political and fiscal decentralization and introduced policies to increase the transparency of its subnational revenue flows. As a result, SNGs3 in Peru must play a crucial role in managing the risks associated with extractive industries within their jurisdictions, while also ensuring that the revenues generated by the sector support local development that alleviates poverty and improves the well-being of local communities.

IFIs have supported the process of political and economic decentralization in Peru and have also invested in the extractive industries sector. They have provided technical and financial support to public-sector agencies, including support for public revenue management systems. IFIs also directly finance a number of extractive industries projects. The decentralization reforms and the expansion of extractive industries projects have increased the volume of funds being transferred to rural areas. However, official figures show that while national poverty rates declined steadily between 2005 and 2008 in Peru, as of 2008 close to 60 percent of the rural population remained in poverty.4 Given the important role IFIs have played in shaping this sector in Peru, they are well positioned to diagnose why poverty persists in the context of such wealth and to determine the role that IFIs, Peru’s national government, and SNGs each should play to address this challenge.

To inform such a diagnosis, this report examines Peru’s Camisea natural gas project and draws lessons from the challenges faced by SNGs in managing the revenues from that project. Between 2004 and 2009, the Camisea project generated approximately $1.13 billion5 in public revenues for SNGs, which the Peruvian national government distributed through mechanisms called “the gas Canon” and the Camisea Fund for Socioeconomic Development (FOCAM). The Peruvian national government uses gas and mining Canons (transfers of natural-resource-based revenues) to distribute half the revenue it collects from extractive industries to SNGs. The government created the FOCAM inter-governmental transfer to allow all regions impacted by the Camisea project—not just those containing physical gas reserves—to receive compensation.

The Camisea project—the largest producer of hydrocarbons in Peru— benefited from both public and private financing. The public banks that provided financing included the IDB, the Andean Development Corporation, Brazilian National Development Bank, and Peru’s Banco de Crédito. A second phase of the project, the Peru Liquefied Natural Gas Project (Peru LNG, also known as Camisea II) supports the export of natural gas from the Camisea fields through a new pipeline to a natural gas liquefaction plant on the Pacific coast. This $3.9 billion project, due for completion in 2010, received financing from a consortium of lenders, including the IDB, International Finance Corporation (IFC), Export-Import Bank of the United States, Export-Import Bank of Korea, and SACE S.p.A. of Italy.

To put the Camisea project into context, the report describes Peru’s turbulent history with extractive industries development as well as the recent decentralization process that has devolved revenue management authority to subnational governments. The report also examines the risks and governance challenges posed by the project and the mechanisms by which its revenues are distributed to subnational governments. Finally, the report analyzes SNG management of Camisea revenues generated between 2005 and 2007.

The report finds that planning failures by both the Peruvian national government and IFIs undermined governance by not building greater SNG capacity before massive extractives revenue transfers began to flow in 2006. The fragile SNG capacity places in question the long-term development impact of Camisea wealth.

IFIs have played an important role in catalyzing and providing investment in oil and mining projects, and thus they share with the Peruvian government the responsibility to ensure that the financial benefits of extractive industries projects are directed towards poverty alleviation and sustainable development. By highlighting the challenges of promoting good governance at the subnational level in the context of dramatic increases in revenue transfers in a region with limited strategic planning capacity, this report informs the design of future IFI investments in similar contexts.

In this report

Section 1 briefly examines the context of extractive industries development in Peru, including the decentralization process—which created regional governments and devolved authority and resources to local governments—and the role of public IFIs.
Section 2 provides an overview of the Camisea natural gas project, including its structure and financing and the associated risks and challenges. An overview of selected IFI programs to support SNGs revenue management capacity can be found in Annex 4.
Section 3 describes how Camisea project revenues are distributed to the regions directly and indirectly impacted by the project’s operations.
Section 4 outlines key findings from the evaluation of SNG experiences in the region of Cusco in managing revenues from the Camisea project between 2005 and 2007. The evaluation examines government performance in managing these revenues at three levels: regional, district, and project. This section also provides an overview of the Cusco case study scope, methodology, and limitations.
Section 5 outlines recommendations for specific areas where IFIs could target their efforts as they support programs to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of SNG management of public revenues.
Section 6 suggests next steps that IFIs could take to address the report findings.
Section 7 provides a summary statement.

Key findings

The report findings—which inform efforts to support subnational government capacity building by IFIs and others—address SNG capacities for strategic planning, fiscal administration, and operational management.

They also provide insights into SNG mechanisms for transparency and public accountability, as well as into local citizen awareness of Camisea revenue transfers.

The study produced a number of findings related to the management of gas production revenues from the Camisea project in Peru:

SNG expenditures have increased substantially, with the majority of investment spending in infrastructure. However, SNGs are carrying over significant surplus revenues from year to year and are missing opportunities to address risks of oil price volatility and to prepare for the eventual decrease in gas revenues.
SNGs have made progress in establishing the institutions and procedures needed for effective fiscal management.
A lack of planning documents at the municipal level suggests that SNG strategic planning capacity is weak and that investment choices have not been based on a medium-to-long-term view or on a coherent strategy.
SNGs have made progress in designing mechanisms for providing public access to information, but these mechanisms still fall short of what is required by Peruvian law and of what is necessary to enable citizens to hold SNGs accountable. Also, public knowledge of the gas Canon among urban residents of the municipalities benefiting from Camisea revenue is limited, decreasing citizens’ ability to monitor public spending and to hold local governments to account.

Recommendations

Our analysis suggests a number of actions by IFIs to address the findings documented in this report:

Withhold project support to commercial extractive industry companies until in-country governance conditions and government capacity is sufficient to manage the financial windfall associated with these projects for development and poverty-reduction purposes. This recommendation is in line with the recommendations of the World Bank’s independent EIR. Prior to investment, IFIs should determine minimum threshold governance indicators and disclose their assessment prior to project financing. When IFIs do chose to finance extractive industry projects, they should consistently include in their loans accountability performance indicators focused on local outcomes.
Provide support for programs to build SNG capacity for long-term strategic planning that are designed to address poverty alleviation while minimizing the environmental and social tradeoffs of infrastructure investments.
Provide support for programs that strengthen the transparency and accountability mechanisms that promote and facilitate public oversight at the local level in areas with extractive industries.
Provide support for initiatives that help SNGs review their progress, document lessons learned, and exchange this information with peer institutions and the public.
Evaluate and share lessons learned across IFI programs and projects aimed at building SNG capacity for extractive industry revenue management and foster multi-stakeholder dialogue to replicate successful approaches.

A Seat at the Table: Including the Poor in Decisions for Development and Environment

Maggie Barron — Tue, 04 May 2010 16:59:37 -0400

For more information, and to watch a webcast of the launch of “A Seat at the Table,” visit the Access Initiative website.

En Español

Executive Summary

Decisions that have significant environmental and social consequences are often made without the involvement of those whose interests are directly at stake. For poor people whose lives and livelihoods often depend on natural resources, and who are therefore most vulnerable to environmental risks, the consequences of exclusion can be especially severe. Weak access to decision-making may expose poor communities to high levels of pollution, remove them from productive land, and deprive them of the everyday benefits provided by natural resources.

The three pillars of sound decision-making for the environment that are key to responding to the challenge of providing “access” are: access to information, public participation, and access to justice. Many countries, regardless of their level of economic development, have promoted these pillars as policy aspirations or as enforceable legal rights. Yet even where progress has been significant, more work remains if such laws are to be implemented in a way that is meaningful to all citizens, especially the poor.

To better understand the obstacles to access facing the poor, and the efforts by governments to reach this population, the World Resources Institute (WRI) and its civil society organization (CSO) partners in The Access Initiative (TAI) closely examined access rights and practices in four countries—Cameroon, Paraguay, Philippines, and Sri Lanka.

The case studies highlighted in this report cover a range of environmental concerns including water quality, land use, data availability, and the use or absence of environmental impact assessments (EIAs). The findings and literature review show that the poor in these countries face a daunting array of barriers to access, including low literacy, high costs (including the costs of corruption), exposure to risk from participation, and lack of documentation of legal identity or rights to a resource that is necessary to influence decisions. Additionally, cultural norms that limit who may speak in public disproportionately exclude the poor.

The case studies also provide examples where civil society organizations, community groups, and - most importantly - governments have taken steps to overcome these barriers. Based on the findings and literature review, we have identified six poverty-related barriers to access to decision-making and proposed eight categories of policy responses to overcome these barriers. Importantly, a general lack of access to information for all citizens had a commensurately larger impact on access to information for the poor.

En Español

Las decisiones que tienen consecuencias medioambientales y sociales significativas suelen ser tomadas sin la participación de aquellas personas cuyos intereses están directamente en juego. Para las comunidades vulnerables cuyas vidas y medios de subsistencia suelen depender de recursos naturales, y quienes, por lo tanto, están más expuestas a los riesgos medioambientales, las consecuencias de la exclusión pueden ser particularmente severas. Un acceso precario a la toma de decisiones puede exponer a las comunidades vulnerables a altos niveles de contaminación, apartarlos de tierras productivas, y privarlos de los beneficios cotidianos que los recursos naturales les proveen.

Los tres pilares de la toma de decisiones sobre el medioambiente que resultan claves para responder adecuadamente al desafío de dar “acceso” son: el acceso a la información, la participación pública, y el acceso a la justicia. Muchos países, independientemente de su nivel de desarrollo económico, han promovido estos pilares como objetivos de sus políticas públicas o como derechos legales vinculantes. Sin embargo, aun ahí donde el progreso ha sido significativo, hay mucho por hacer si se desea que las leyes que norman los derechos de acceso sean implementadas de una manera que resulte significativa para toda la ciudadanía, y especialmente para los grupos vulnerables.

Para aportar a una mejor comprensión de los obstáculos al acceso que afectan a las comunidades vulnerables, y de los esfuerzos que los gobiernos pueden hacer por alcanzar a esa población, el Instituto de Recursos Mundiales y sus socios de la organización de la sociedad civil La Iniciativa de Acceso examinaron detenidamente los derechos y prácticas de acceso en cuatro países—Camerún, Paraguay, Filipinas y Sri Lanka.

Los estudios de caso destacados en este informe cubren una variedad de asuntos medioambientales incluyendo la calidad del agua, el uso de la tierra, la disponibilidad de datos, y el uso o ausencia de Evaluaciones de Impacto Ambiental (EIA). Los hallazgos de la investigación y la bibliografía revisada muestran que en estos países los grupos vulnerables enfrentan un abanico enorme de barreras para ejercer sus derechos de acceso, incluyendo el bajo alfabetismo,
los altos costos (incluidos los costos de la corrupción), la exposición a los riesgos de la participación, y la falta de documentos de identidad o del derecho a algún recurso necesario para participar o influir en la toma de decisiones. Adicionalmente, las normas culturales que definen quiénes pueden hablar en público excluyen a los grupos vulnerables desproporcionalmente.

Los casos de estudio también proveen ejemplos en los que organizaciones de la sociedad civil, grupos comunitarios, y –más importante– algunos gobiernos han dado pasos para superar o eliminar estas barreras. En base a los hallazgos y la revisión bibliográfica, hemos encontrado seis barreras al acceso a la toma de decisiones que se relacionan con la pobreza y propuesto ocho categorías de medidas de política pública (policy responses) que sirven para superarlas (ver Tabla 1). Es importante señalar que la falta generalizada de acceso a la información por parte de la ciudadanía tiene un impacto apreciablemente más alto en la falta de acceso a la información por parte de los grupos vulnerables.

India's Environmental Detectives

Monika Kerdeman — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:58:56 -0400

Lawyers in India advocate for environmental rights, one case at a time.

After six hours in a small basement office here in Delhi, India, I am overwhelmed by the activities of the day. From one minute to the next, it has been unpredictable and unplanned, but surprisingly productive. There is no such thing as a scheduled meeting, and adaptability is key. I’m visiting the office of the Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE), an Indian advocacy and law group that helps people who have been affected by environmentally harmful development projects. The people at LIFE are more than just lawyers to their clients. They serve as the voices of local people in an often voiceless world.

LIFE’s four full time lawyers (Ritwick Dutta, Rahul Chaudhary, Promod Kumar, and Soumyarup Sahu) try over 70 cases a year with the Indian Supreme Court, the National Environmental Appellant Authority (NEAA) and the Central Empowerment Committee (CEC). Their goal is to keep the government accountable for its environmental decisions, and make sure that existing laws are enforced. This work, and the work of so many Access Initiative partners like them, is a fundamental building block of sustainable development.

LIFE Attorneys Rahul Chaudhary, Promod Kumar, and Ritwick Dutta

LIFE attorneys serve as watchdogs when business and the government fail to follow the best practices mandated by law, such as holding public hearings, consultations and Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs). They perform quite a bit of detective work, piecing together evidence to ensure laws are being followed. They also help teach civil servants how to implement the laws, and help organizations and people connect with one another on cases taking place all over the country.

In one of their cases, runoff from a cement company had created brackish water in neighboring communities. In another, thermal power plants built without environmental testing had hurt local mango farmers. They take on these cases and others like them for only a nominal fee, if they charge at all.

In one such case I attended with Ritwick Dutta, he was appealing to the courts to enforce a law meant to protect Asiatic lions in the Girnar Sanctuary. Dutta’s client, the Gir Nature Youth Club, had used India’s Right to Information Act to obtain information about the building of an Ashram on land designated for wildlife. Through the petitions process, the club discovered that the Ashram had in fact been encroaching on protected forest lands for years, even after the courts had ordered them to stop.

The impact of the hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Ashram had taken a huge toll on the land, the wildlife in the area and the local community. Even though the courts had previously decided in favor of the Youth Club to preserve the land, local ministers had overruled them and allowed for the encroachment, undermining the purpose and intent of the protected area.

Ritwick Dutta with clients outside the courthouse

Our session in court that day, like so many others, ended without a final decision. When Ritwick and I returned to the LIFE office, I asked what motivates him to take on cases that can often drag on for years. “It’s interesting and challenging work,” he said. “I want future generations to be able to appreciate how beautiful India truly is. The environment has an inherent right to exist in the form in which it has been created. Since we are not the creator we should not be the destroyer.”

In my job with The Access Initiative (TAI), I have had the pleasure of working with some of the most amazing people around the world. Being based in DC, though, I rarely get to see them in action. Generally, I read their stories on our blog or in reports.

Sitting in LIFE’s office in Delhi, I see the ultimate value of how access laws (access to information, access to justice and public participation) are the keys to empowering people to truly have a more sustainable future.

By putting the pieces of the law puzzle together one case at a time, the lawyers at LIFE help to ensure that the courts take the environment and community rights seriously. Even though they might not win all of their cases, they have at least brought the injustices to the attention of a larger Indian population. They have also given the local people a voice to ensure better standards for the future of their country’s environmental and sustainable development. It’s a process, and a story, that continues to inspire me.

LIFE is one of hundreds of groups in the Access Initiative that are fighting for better governance and environmental protection around the world. For more information about their work and the Access Initiative network, visit http://www.accessinitiative.org.

Browse a slideshow of Monika’s trip on Flickr

View slideshow on Flickr with captions

Whose Amazon Is It?

Ruth Nogueron — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:35:04 -0400

Following the recent violence over natural resource use, Peru has an opportunity to balance economic development with human rights protections.

The tension between natural resource development and the protection of human rights reached a breaking point in Peru this month. In early April, indigenous groups initiated nearly 50 days of protests as a public outcry for laws that violated their right to decide if and how large-scale development happens on their territory. Fatal violence erupted when police and the military attempted to break a road blockade near the city of Bagua, in the northern region of Amazonas and close to the border with Ecuador. The victim count remains controversial. The official death toll is 33, with 24 policemen and 9 civilians killed. Other estimates range from 40 to 250 indigenous people dead.

The government responded to the protests with heavy-handed tactics, calling a state of emergency and calling in the military and national police. (A move denounced by human rights organizations). Also, there has been a national and international outcry at the use of violence by both sides. Public demonstrations and strikes were held in Lima and other cities in Perú, with protests in other major cities around the world. The International Human Rights Commission, leaders of the Peruvian Catholic Church, as well as Peruvian and international NGOs, all made statements calling for investigations and a stop to the violence.

The ingredients for violent conflict have been simmering for several years. The Peruvian government’s aggressive economic development strategy centers on promoting private investment in the natural resources based sectors. Between 2004 and 2009, the oil and gas concessions in the Peruvian Amazon increased their coverage from 15% to 72%. The vast majority of these concessions overlap with indigenous people’s territories, including titled and demarcated communities, communities in process of being titled, territorial reserves and proposed reserves. However, the government did not consult with these indigenous communities before it drew the concession boundaries and awarded the concessions to oil and gas companies.

Adding fuel to the fire is the 2006 US-Perú Trade Promotion Agreement, the free trade agreement (FTA) signed by President George W. Bush and Peru’s President, Alan García. The FTA included a variety of groundbreaking provisions for labor, public participation and consultation, and forest management, which were included after the agreement was re-negotiated in 2007. These provisions were meant to improve forest sector governance and promote legal trade in timber products. The FTA also included language meant to prohibit the weakening of existing environmental laws in both countries.

To make sure the agreement could be certified before President Bush left office in January 2009, the Peruvian Congress granted Peru’s executive branch special powers to enact laws and regulations needed to be in compliance with the FTA. Between February and June 2008, the executive branch used these powers to pass a series of Legislative Decrees meant to attract and facilitate large-scale private investment in the extractive industries, forestry and agriculture in the Peruvian Amazon.

Much attention has been paid to two of the more contentious decrees–Legislative Decree 1064 and Legislative Decree 1020. Decree 1064 removes previous requirements for companies to negotiate with a community prior to moving in, and it reclassifies communal land rights as subordinate to individual and private ownerships, giving favor to individuals, companies, and settlers who invade indigenous territories. Decree 1020 outlines a plan to regulate investment in the Amazon, but protesters say it frees roughly 60 percent of Peru’s forests for potential development.

As with the oil and gas concession awarding process, indigenous communities were not consulted on the content of the decrees. This is despite the fact that Peru has signed onto several international conventions and declarations that commit the government to providing specific protections to indigenous peoples, including the right to free, prior and informed consent on development activities that would threaten their territory or way of life.

Community Engagement & Natural Resource Use

WRI’s 2009 report, Breaking Ground: Engaging Communities in Extractive and Infrastructure Projects recommends 7 principles to help companies adapt to the changing rules of natural resource extraction by more effectively involving communities in project decision-making:

Prepare communities before engaging.
Determine what level of engagement is needed.
Integrate community engagement into each phase of the project cycle.
Include traditionally excluded stakeholders.
Gain free, prior and informed consent.
Resolve community grievances through dialogue.
Promote participatory monitoring by local communities.

Read the full publication here.

Last year, after public protest and indigenous peoples’ demonstrations called the decrees into question, a special investigative Commission created by the Peruvian Congress found the decrees to be unconstitutional. When debate in the Congress on the Commission’s findings was blocked and formal spaces for dialogue appeared to be ineffective, indigenous communities took to the streets to protest.

Since the events in Bagua, the Congress has repealed the controversial decrees, and President Garcia has recognized the lack of consultation and declared that it is time to start over again.

The government has set up a national working group made up by members of the executive branch, the presidents of the regional governments of the Amazonian States, and 10 indigenous representatives. The working group is tasked to prepare a sustainable development plan for the Peruvian Amazon. While the Minister of Foreign Relations has said that Peru has the support of the U.S. Government and Congress to find negotiated solutions to improve the laws, the U.S. itself has said or done very little about the situation.

An unprecedented opportunity for Peru

The “new start” offers the government an unprecedented opportunity to put effective measures in place to protect all of its citizens from the unintended negative consequences of development, and make sure that they receive its full benefits through a participatory process.

At the national level, the government needs to make sure that laws and policies:

Provide information: Give citizens adequate access to clear and accurate information about planned development, and that citizens are given an opportunity to understand the full implications of development. The government should conduct analysis and provide maps that show the location of indigenous territories and the overlaps with possible conflicting land uses for example, oil and gas concessions or forest and mining concessions.
Allow citizen participation: Give citizens formal opportunities to participate in credible decision-making processes to ensure sure that their views and opinions are reflected in final decisions.
Provide access to justice: Give citizens access to effective forms of justice so that if they have a grievance, they don’t feel they need to take the law into their own hands.

Finally, companies operating on indigenous territory should also play their part. Since the majority of oil and gas concessions in the Peruvian Amazon overlap indigenous territories, those operating in these concessions should have a policy regarding indigenous peoples, and an effective policy on community engagement and free prior and informed consent.

Tracking Environmental Impact Assessment Rollbacks

Alisa Zomer — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:45:08 -0400

Financial stimulus plans could pose a threat to Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) around the world.

The severe effects of economic recession have precipitated the need for governments to act quickly in structuring recovery plans to limit negative impacts. In several countries, the need for immediate action has led to proposed rollbacks or reductions of EIAs.

In Canada, for example, some EIA procedures have been suspended for two years in order to expedite stimulus spending. The proposed waiving of existing public participation and consultation mechanisms is significant in that it undermines efforts to integrate environmental initiatives into stimulus packages and limits transparency measures to influence and track how bailout money is spent.

EIAs were developed in the U.S. as an “action-forcing mechanism” to assess and mitigate the environmental and human impacts of government funded projects. Now adopted by over 100 countries worldwide, EIAs are considered an important tool for the inclusion of environmental decision-making and public participation in infrastructure development projects.

Recent U.S. experience stands in contrast with that of Canada. Following the passing of the second U.S. stimulus bill in February, Senator Barbara Boxer (D–CA) successfully halted Senator John Barrasso’s (R-WY) efforts to suspend the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The Boxer amendment was passed and served to strengthen NEPA procedures and protect EIA procedures.

At the G-20 summit in London last April, global economic leaders pledged $1.1 trillion to address the global financial crisis. This infusion of capital into the International Monetary Fund (IMF) came at critical time when the financial institution is preparing to revise lending conditions in order to enhance transactional transparency.

EIAs vary widely in scope and depth from country to country, and the new lending terms of IMF stimulus loans have great power to strengthen or diminish existing procedures. Preliminary findings from The Access Initiative partners in nearly 20 countries, suggest that there is a need to champion EIAs as a mechanism to increase public participation and improve transparency (see Table).

In countries like Hungary, India, and Sri Lanka, recent attempts to rollback EIAs have resulted in the removal of public participation requirements in environmental decision-making. Additional campaigns in Mexico and Nigeria could result in similar rollbacks.

As international fiscal stimulus measures take form, the IMF and other international financial institutions ideally should adopt lending conditions that strengthen public participation and external consultation in environmental decision-making. Meanwhile, it is increasingly important to monitor and report on simultaneous actions to rollback back EIAs, so that proposed green stimulus initiatives are realized in the structuring as well as the implementation of fiscal stimulus plans.

NOTE: The table below presents the results of an informal survey by members of The Access Initiative Network. WRI serves as the secretariat of the Access Initiative.

Country	Fiscal Stimulus (B$US)	IMF Loan	EA rolled back	Proposed rollback of EA and/or public participation in active legislation or regulation	No reported rollbacks	EA safeguarded as part of stimulus
Argentina	13			X
Canada	7		X	X
Chile	4				X
China		X
Colombia					X
Costa Rica					X
Dominican Republic					X
Hungary	7			X
India	4			X
Indonesia	5				X
Mexico	54			X
Nepal					X
Nigeria				X
Paraguay					X
Peru			X
Phillippines	6				X
Sri Lanka		2.9 (requested)		X
Uganda					X
U.S.	787					X
Venezuela					X
Zimbabwe					X

WRI Releases Guide to Help Extractive Companies Work with Local Communities

Paul Mackie — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:52:07 -0500

Natural-resources extractive companies are profiting financially and socially when they consult with affected communities before and during the construction of projects.

“Rio Tinto and De Beers, for example, have negotiated agreements with communities to avoid harm and provide benefits. In so doing, they have gained local support for projects, and communities have seized opportunities for development,” said Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute (WRI). “But more work needs to be done. Too often, the rhetoric in support of community engagement does not match the practice.”

The report, Breaking Ground: Engaging Communities in Extractive and Infrastructure Projects, takes an in-depth look at international community engagement standards and how they often fall short of providing guidance to companies and communities. The work follows WRI’s 2007 report, Development Without Conflict, and is designed as a user’s guide to help companies and local community liaisons implement successful standards on-the-ground.

“Many national laws and financial institutions’ policies require companies to implement some type of community engagement in extractive and infrastructure projects, but do not necessarily provide guidance on how to do so,” said Kirk Herbertson of WRI, lead author of the report. “When local communities participate in the design and implementation of a project, they are more likely to understand and support the changes brought about by the project.”

In one of the examples from the report, community engagement during the construction of a natural gas project in the Philippines saved a U.S. company millions by allowing the company to complete construction ahead of schedule. In another example, from Guatemala, a mining company helped rebuild its damaged reputation by inviting local communities to test and monitor water quality, as a way to provide credible assurances that a mine was not polluting their water source.

WRI’s accompanying video documentary on Thailand’s Mae Moh coal power project shows what happens when companies and governments refuse to engage the communities they develop. Hundreds of people filed a lawsuit against the government-controlled Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT), alleging the coal mine and power plant poisoned them with toxic sulfur dioxide emissions and mine dust, and damaged their crops. On Tuesday of this week, which is officially the World Bank’s Extractive Industries Week, a Thai court ruled that EGAT must compensate each of the victims and restore the environmental damage of the coal mine.

Extractive industry experts said at the World Bank conference that they continue to recognize the importance of engaging communities in mining projects, despite the ongoing economic crisis.

How the World Bank Group Gauges "Broad Community Support"

Isabel Munilla — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:01:37 -0500

On October 9th, the World Resources Institute’s International Financial Flows and Environment (IFFE) team co-sponsored a panel discussion with Oxfam America and Center for International Environmental Law on How the World Bank Group Gauges ‘Broad Community Support’ for Projects. The discussion came during the Civil Society Policy Forum of the 2008 Fall Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, D.C. Read the summary report (PDF, 416 Kb).

The World Bank and International Financial Corporation (IFC) require clients to obtain “broad community support” before beginning high impact projects. WRI believes that the broad community support standard is increasingly relevant, given the significant growth of World Bank investments in sectors—especially in extractive industries—that can have significant impacts on local communities. In 2004, IFC’s Extractive Industries Review recommended that “broad community support” be included in the Bank’s suite of standards. Since then, it has been incorporated into the WBG’s Operational Policy on Indigenous People’s, as well as IFC’s policy on Social and Environmental Sustainability. As of August 2008, IFC has applied free, prior and informed consultation and broad community support to 18 projects.

However, increased instances of conflict around natural resources, and/or fundamental weaknesses in sector governance in areas where extractive projects are underway or envisioned highlight need for closer examination of the BCS standard and its application.

The panel examined and discussed practical experiences and challenges of implementing the broad community support standard in a selection of World Bank Group projects. Based on experiences to date, the session participants identified several key challenges and concerns related to BCS standard implementation.

This conference report (PDF, 416 Kb) provides a summary of the panel presentation, the challenges and concerns identified by the panel participants, and proposes next steps to continue this important discussion.

Building Local Democracy through Natural Resource Interventions: An Environmentalist’s Responsibility

Payson Schwin — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 09:52:22 -0500

In practice, everything but democratic decentralization has taken place in the name of ‘democratic decentralization’ reforms: privatization, administrative deconcentration, NGOization, selective civil society inclusion, participatory processes, co-management, and committee-based project implementation.

The interventions being chosen by environmental policy makers or projects in the local arena are not empowering ‘democratic’ local partners. They do not support local democracy because they usually lack the two key elements of effective democratic decentralization: downward accountability and significant discretionary power.

While many interventions increase local participation in natural resource decisions, they may do so in non-sustainable ways or in ways that hinder the institutionalization of local democracy within local government. We still have a lot to learn about the best ways for governments, donors, and large NGOs to support local institutions to foster the emergence and consolidation of local democracy, and the research for this brief yields a number of important initial recommendations.

The brief includes detailed case studies of Benin, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malawi and Senegal.