Allain Duhangan Hydropower Project: Addressing Corporate and Community Conflict in India
Delicious
StumbleUpon
Google
YahooKeywords:
Case Background
In mid-2006, CBI began assisting the World Bank Compliance Advisor Ombudsman team to address concerns raised regarding social and environmental impacts of the Allain-Duhangan project in India — a planned 192 MW run-of-river hydroelectric power plant being built on the Allain and Duhangan tributaries of the Beas River in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, India. The project is financed in part by the International Finance Corporation, the private arm of the World Bank Group.
The CAO – an independent office of the Bank — is charged with responding to complaints raised by people who believe they may be negatively affected by Bank-supported projects, and operates under strict guidelines and principles of dispute resolution. CAO sought CBI’s expertise in helping to map key stakeholders relationships and issues as a means of resolving conflicts exacerbated during the project’s construction stage.
CBI Approach
The CAO-CBI team visited the Allain-Duhangan Project site twice in 2006 to help build the capacity of the company, community leaders, and local government Panchayat to address and resolve outstanding issues and concerns including: quality and quantity of village drinking and irrigation water; worker safety near the construction site; assurance of women’s and children’ safety; excessive dust from project activity and trucks; and introduction of HIV/AIDS induced by migrant laborers; among others.
The team held in-person meetings with a wide range of stakeholders to understand the current situation; to ensure that all community members have a shared understanding of why the CAO was visiting the project; and to clarify how the team could assist the community and corporation with building dispute resolution capacity.
Broadly the team found that community and company relations had improved due to an recent increase in jobs, but community frustrations persisted regarding lack of knowledge about project operations and company reliance on informal communications and dispute resolution to address community concerns. Others claimed the situation had allowed community leadership to obtain project contracts for families and friends, while ignoring the interests of minority groups, such as lower castes and women.
The CAO-CBI team recommended tailored training workshops to interested community members, the company and Panchayat leadership in order to help structure fair, transparent, representative and durable mechanisms to resolve these conflicts, with the goal of forming clear agreements between all parties regarding how they could work together constructively. The team also saw opportunity to move towards a more systematic and effective means of joint-problem solving and dispute resolution characterized by shared prioritization of both community and company concerns; regular, structured dialogue and communication reflecting the interests and responsibilities of both community; and improved representation and accountability in decision-making. This work is ongoing.
Outcomes
The Allain-Duhangan case demonstrates how reliance on informal mechanisms of communication and dispute resolution can fuel suspicion about equitable distribution of project benefits. While informal and rapid consultation between company staff and individual villagers is often an effective and convenient means of dispute resolution in the short-term, it can lead to increased community distrust and uncertainty about project relations. Conversely, when a community is able to speak with collective voice about its interests, companies are more likely to engage in dialogue and consultation with representative leadership of the community as a whole. Best practice steps include:
Making mutual expectations explicit. Both companies and communities have implicit expectations of each other. Making those expectations explicit allows the stakeholders to discuss and negotiate mutually acceptable expectations, and to hold each other accountable.
Ensuring transparency about policies, progress, and the future.
The more information a community has about how company operations are designed and implemented, the more they can participate in the process of determining their own future. Transparency about company policies, decisions and schedules relevant to the community shows a willingness to collaborate and work together, which in turn can dispel public misperception.
Following-through on commitments.
Predictability on the part of all stakeholders can enhance the sense of trust among all. In particular, commitment to address and document the management of issues and concerns by companies is key.
Establishing mechanisms for both formal and informal interaction. Formal and informal mechanisms for representation and documentation of community concerns and grievances are the foundation of social performance. Company stakeholder engagement should be handled with a clear understanding of why it is being done, who is represented, and how it will affect the community and the project.
For more information on this case and lessons learned, contact CBI-Washington DC Regional Office Director, Merrick Hoben.
This figure below compares benefits and costs of an informal communication approach to addressing community concerns (left) with a potentially more structured dialogue space (right).
