Stakeholder Dialogue

Infrastructure investments: Facilitating dialouge for better results

Tim Cullen Associates can be retained to facilitate a constructive dialogue between investors in potentially controversial infrastructure projects, host governments and members of civil society to ensure that such investments are environmentally and socially sustainable

Electricity, roads, and clean water can all contribute to a brighter future for many of the world’s poor; but the infrastructure investments required to provide these necessities that the industrialized world takes for granted can often be controversial. Such projects can threaten fragile natural environments and the cultures of indigenous people. They can also cause communities to be uprooted and traditional livelihoods to be abandoned. Increasingly, organizations like the World Bank, the regional development banks, and bilateral agencies, are bringing people who will be affected into the planning and design of these projects. Also, some large companies are now engaging in far wider and prolonged stakeholder dialogue than before.

However, the infrastructure investments that involve effective public participation from the early planning stage remain very much in the minority. Often, community involvement is too little too late.

Companies planning major infrastructure investments in developing countries can retain TCA to facilitate a constructive dialogue involving the investor, the government, affected people, and other groups which may have concerns about social, environmental and other aspects of the project. TCA will assemble international experts in the fields of participatory development, negotiations and mediation, as well as in the infrastructure sector concerned, who will work with local experts to facilitate a substantive dialogue.

The result of such a dialogue can be a “win-win” outcome for all concerned. The input of stakeholder perspectives can lead to a more socially and environmentally sounder project. From the investor’s point of view, addressing stakeholder concerns from the outset is more cost-effective and can lead to a more secure investment and greater return. It can also enhance the way the investing multinational corporation is perceived in its home country, with positive market effects.