Thanks to Bankwatch’s engagement with the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), both banks now require project promoters to ensure a free, prior and informed consent by affected people to any relocation.
Imagine you are a herdsman in central Asia, living with your family next door to a site earmarked to become a large power station. A representative from a western energy company arrives to say that you will have to up roots within the next six months, as their company plans to start site construction shortly. With the energy company representative is an official from the European Investment Bank (EIB), that has been asked and has agreed to support the power plant project in question.
That EIB official is now supposed to be obliged to take on board the views and rights of the locally affected population in a much more rigorous and responsible fashion.
Thanks to Bankwatch’s engagement with the EIB during the review in 2008 of its Statement of Environmental and Social Principles and Standards (pdf), an historic breakthrough for Indigenous Peoples affected by EIB projects was achieved. The EIB now requires project promoters to:
“prepare an acceptable Indigenous Peoples Development Plan. The plan must reflect the principles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including free, prior and informed consent to any relocation.”
The word ‘consent’ – rather than simply ‘consultation’ – is long overdue language at all of the international financial institutions, and is now part of the Environment and Social Policy of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, also finalised in 2008.
Bankwatch’s engagement with Indigenous Peoples affected by major infrastructure projects has included our campaign efforts on the Sakhalin 2 oil and gas project, as well as our close involvement in the World Bank’s Extractive Industries Review.
Getting recognition for indigenous rights into the banks’ policies was a big success, but more work is needed to make sure these rules are implemented.
