Accountable Aid: Local Participation in Major Projects (Oxfam Insights) - Softcover

Feeney, Patricia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0855983744 ISBN 13: 9780855983741

Verlag: OXFAM PUB, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

The Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 generated much rhetoric about the need for collaboration between local communities and multilateral funders of major development projects, in order to preserve natural resources. Since then there has been intense debate about the importance of local participation, accountability to local communities, transparent procedures and gender-sensitive planning. In this work, the author examines the case of the Rondonia Natural Resource Management Project (PLANAFLORO) in the Amazon, funded by the World Bank, and considers the frustrations created when local NGOs and communities were effectively excluded from decisions about a project that claimed to be participatory. In contrast, she considers examples of relatively good practice, most notably the Joint Forest Management project, funded by the British Overseas Development Administration, in Karnataka, India. The author also examines recent atttempts by the World Bank to involve local governments in decision making. From a focus on individual projects, the book moves to a consideration of local participation in entire projects - the World Bank's Country Assistance Strategies - and community involvement in projects funded by the private sector. It ends with a summary of the lessons to be learned by local and international NGOs and by major donors.

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Patricia Feeney is a senior policy adviser on social and economic rights for Oxfam GB.

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Accountable Aid

Local Participation in Major Projects

By Patricia Feeney

Oxfam Publishing

Copyright © 1998 Oxfam GB
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-85598-374-1

Contents

Acknowledgements, 4, 
Preface, 6, 
Chapter 1 Participatory development: an overview, 9, 
Chapter 2 The World Bank and the Brazilian Amazon: lessons in participation, 29, 
Chapter 3 Gender, equity, and exclusion in the Western Ghats, 58, 
Chapter 4 Global benefits, local costs: expulsion from the Kibale Forest, 88, 
Chapters Accountability mechanisms, 110, 
Chapter 6 Extending participation and ensuring equity, 131, 
Chapter 7 Lessons learned — and benchmarks for accountable development, 144, 
Appendix NGOs and participation — the benefits of forest protection in Orissa, 150, 
Notes, 155, 
Selected bibliography, 172, 

CHAPTER 1

Participatory development: an overview

The demise of many authoritarian regimes at the end of the 1980s coincided with a refocusing of official aid. Since the mid-1980s, donor agencies had been undergoing a series of transformations. Development ceased to be seen in terms of large-scale projects; instead, international financial institutions promoted stringent economic adjustment as the key to growth and poverty alleviation. The failure of structural adjustment programmes to produce the anticipated results led to another change in direction as donors started to call for the modernisation of government systems and structures.

Many of the planning disasters of the past are now attributed to a failure to understand the prevailing economic and political context in developing countries. Ignorance of local conditions leads to a lack of commitment on the part of the intended beneficiaries. A welcome feature of the new approach to development is the focus on the local context and the poverty profile in recipient countries. Never has so much information been collected about and from the intended beneficiaries of aid — the 1.3 billion women, men ,and children who are living below the line of absolute poverty in developing countries on $1 a day. Techniques such as rapid rural appraisal, beneficiary-impact assessments, and stakeholder analyses have generated a mass of documents and guidelines. But how are the data being used? Have they altered the development priorities of donors and governments?

'Participation' as a formula to remedy past failures has been enthusiastically endorsed by most of the world's governments, traditional international financial institutions, and bilateral donor agencies as the most effective instrument for delivering development. This enthusiasm may be related to the fact that 'participation' is a nebulous term which does not impose any specific set of obligations on donors and governments. In truth, while aid levels were high, the absence of local commitment to achieving success or support for a project's aims was frequently disregarded by planners and donor agencies. But throughout the 1980s, community leaders, in partnership with NGOs, began to protest about the damage wrought on the lives and livelihoods of local, usually poor people, by ill-conceived internationally financed infrastructure projects. Their protests, allied to environmental concerns, led to the realisation that strategies for sustainable development had to become more inclusive.

Public participation is a continually evolving concept. It may be broadly defined as an opportunity for citizens and public and private organisations to express their opinions on general policy goals or to have their priorities and needs integrated into decisions made about specific projects and programmes. It allows members of civil society — but particularly the poorest — a chance to discuss development plans with representatives of government and donor institutions. It includes the possibility of appealing against governmental decisions and proposing reasonable alternatives to those in power. It has increasingly been seen less as a particular development tool in the context of specific projects and more as an essential component of the démocratisation process, which helps to improve the competence of individual citizens to exercise their right to participate in political life, and also helps to increase the responsiveness and accountability of public administration and government to the public. Increasing public awareness and concern about development — particularly from a social and environmental perspective — has been one of the most important driving forces for increasing public participation.

International human-rights standards have long recognised the right of individuals and communities to be involved in the formulation and implementation of policies, programmes, budgets, legislation, and other activities. The right to participation is clearly connected to all human rights, but is specifically applicable to the realisation of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration, issued at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, also recognises that environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens. It is recognised that effective participation requires access to information about development and environmental initiatives held by public authorities or donors, or even by private companies.

Oxfam has supported many campaigns for fair treatment for the victims of development: from Brazilian Indian communities, decimated by disease during the road-construction programmes in the Amazon, to tribal people in India, threatened with destitution when dispossessed of their traditional lands to make way for large hydropower schemes. For Oxfam, participation is not simply a way of making aid more effective, but an essential prerequisite for recognising and safeguarding fundamental rights. It is also a means of making aid locally accountable. But if it is to be more than a token gesture, decisions on the scope, nature, and mechanisms of participation cannot simply be imposed by donors or governments; they must emerge from a process of negotiation with local people.

This chapter attempts to summarise the evolution of ideas about participation in the context of the policies of official donors and multilateral development banks. It examines some of the problems and contradictions with the prevailing trends in aid, and assesses the work of official aid institutions and non-government organisations (NGOs) to promote participation.

Trends in official aid policies

Whether development is led by support from Official Development Assistance or by means of private-sector investment, it is unlikely to succeed if it does not incorporate the lessons learned from the campaigns against bad or inappropriate development. High-profile campaigns have publicised the negative impacts of grandiose development schemes that have failed to put people first. As a result, changes in the approaches to development projects have been formally adopted by most major donors, and criteria to inform the implementation of projects have proliferated. The World Bank's Operational Directives, approved by its Board of Directors, are designed to protect the rights of people involuntarily resettled, of indigenous peoples, and of the environment. Environmental impact assessments are required for projects liable to have serious environmental or social impacts. While such standards and guidelines are never fully complied with, they are a measure by which aid interventions should be...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: OXFAM PUB
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1998
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0855983744
• ISBN 13: 9780855983741
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 176
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar