Forest Peoples Programme: Extractive Industries Review Work Plan (Draft)

Objectives

a. To obtain and understand the views of stakeholders about the future role of the World Bank Group in the extractive industries in the context of sustainable development and poverty reduction.

b. To identify where possible areas of consensus on the role of the World Bank Group and the relevant issues, and to identify significant alternative or dissenting views in this respect.

c. To make recommendations on the basis of such understanding to focus, redesign or reconsider, as needed, future World Bank Group policies, programs, projects and processes in relation to its activities in the extractive industries.

It is the aim of the EIR to develop recommendations to the World Bank Group in a bottom-up approach through its various forms of consultations and its research program, which, through a combination of wide stakeholder support and relevance to World Bank Group operations, will have maximum influence on World Bank Group activities in the extractive industries.

The Extractive Industries Review aims to influence the nature of the World Bank Group’s involvement in oil, gas and mining in such a way that its future role in these sectors is compatible with its mission of sustainable development and poverty reduction. We aim to achieve this by producing the EIR Report, which the Eminent Person will communicate to the World Bank Group President and the general public in June 2003. The World Bank Group has pledged to respond to the EIR Final Report by producing a set of Management Recommendations.

The EIR team will develop the EIR report in parallel with the various consultation activities and the research program. Stakeholders will be able to follow, and give suggestions and comments, to the development of the report at all stages. As a first step, a Question Outline has been developed, which is essentially a first summary of issues and questions that the EIR will be dealing with. An independent consultant, Ms. Amy Sweeting, has developed this Questions Outline into a Conceptual Framework (annex 1), which is intended to help the EIR team frame the agenda for stakeholder consultations, to inform the research program, and to provide a basic outline for the EIR report.

This Conceptual Framework will continuously be developed as the review proceeds, and consultations are carried through in the regions. Stakeholders will be able to follow this development through the www.eireview.org web-site, where up-dated versions will be posted for comments and recommendations. These consultations will be closed temporarily at the end of October 2002 for Report writing. The EIR team will be working the report during the months of November through January 2003. At the end of January 2003, a draft report will be disseminated for comments and posted on the web-site, well in advance of our Final Consultation Workshop, scheduled in March 2003, where representatives from all the stakeholders will be able to provide their input and contribution to the Final EIR Report.

A communication strategy will be designed to ensure inclusiveness of the Extractive Industries Review process, and effectively promote the final recommendations resulting from the review.

Through-out the review process the EIR team will continue to maintain two-way communication with stakeholders through the following means:

- An EIR two-monthly update named “EIR in a Nutshell” which will be electronically mailed to stakeholders and interested parties. It will also be mailed by surface mail when stakeholders do not have access to the internet. This two-monthly update will be produced in English, Spanish, Russian, and French.

- All draft reports will be discussed with stakeholders, to omit misinterpretations.

- A select number of presentations to identified forums that could contribute positively to the EIR process.

The final EIR Report will be published and disseminated to all stakeholders and the World Bank Group President. Given the objectives outlined in the communication strategy, the Report will also be made public more broadly, including dissemination to the mass media, universities, etc. The Eminent Person will present the final EIR Report to the WBG President in June 2003. The Eminent Person will hold a Press Briefing in Washington to inform the mass media and thus the general public of the Extractive Industries Review findings and recommendations. Furthermore, 5000 copies of the EIR Report will be printed and posted to governments, NGOs, businesses, and the World Bank Group.

The Eminent Person will select a number of advisors, to sit together and provide guidance and advice throughout the EIR process. These advisors will have combined backgrounds of all different stakeholder groups (Industry, NGO, Government and the World Bank Group). They will hold face to face meetings, as well as video conferences. They will also continue to communicate throughout the process by email. Advisors will be selected based on their knowledge of, and past involvement in, specific issues that are importantly relevant to the review. Suggestions were asked for in a stakeholder letter in December 2001, and put on the web-site. Further suggestions are welcome, as the final choices have not been made yet.

The Extractive Industries Review will consist of a combination of various consultation processes involving representatives of the different stakeholders (these are business, government, and civil society, and the World Bank Group), and commissioned research. The work will consist of the following activities:

Four Regional Consultation Workshops will be held in the following regions: Latin America and Caribbean region, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia region. These workshops will be designed to bring together the different stakeholders (participants from the business, the World Bank Group, governments, civil society, and academia) for constructive dialogue to honestly review whether the World Bank Group’s involvement in these sectors has contributed to sustainable development and poverty reduction, and together provide constructive recommendations for the future.

At the EIR Planning Workshop it was decided that stakeholders would all self-select representatives for participation in the Regional Consultation Workshops. (The Eminent Person reserves the last word on the invitee list.) The composition of representation for each workshop will be: 15 representatives each for government and industry, 25 representatives from civil society, 10 representatives from the World Bank Group, and 5 representatives from academia/other.

To ensure that all stakeholders will be able to present information and experiences, express their views and make recommendations effectively, the Consultation Workshops will be facilitated by a team of professional facilitators, who will work with the secretariat to ensure an open and constructive process.

The Extractive Industries Review attempts to ensure the participation of communities through the following activities: testimonial events surrounding each Regional Consultation Workshop, community based organizations participating in each Regional Consultation Workshop, an independent review regarding Indigenous People, the World Bank Group and the extractive industries, and an in-depth community level consultation process in selected areas.

While the Regional Consultation Workshops are designed to bring together the different stakeholders for a discussion on the role of the World Bank Group in the extractive industries, this forum by itself is not sufficient in explaining the impact of the World Bank Group on communities surrounding the projects. In recognition of the reality that extractive industry projects often result in various impacts on the lives of local communities, a day of testimonials will surround the Regional Consultation Workshops. Self-selected representatives from affected communities from around the region will be able to voice the concerns and experiences.

Ten representatives of community based organizations will participate at each workshop. This will allow the communities affected by World Bank Group extractive industries projects to be involved in, and participate in the discussions at the Regional Consultation Workshops.

Participatory review of ‘Indigenous Peoples, Extractive Industries, and the World Bank Group - The EIR Team will commission a participatory thematic review on the theme of ‘Indigenous peoples, Extractive Industries and the World Bank’. This will include:

Ø The gathering of relevant indigenous experiences and recommendations through an email consultation,

Ø Sub-contracting of indigenous peoples’ organizations to write up five to seven ‘case studies’ outlining their experience with World Bank Group financed projects in the sector. These would be selected to include cases from all three industries – oil, gas and mining – and preferably would include operations of all the main parts of the World Bank Group. Case studies would be selected from the following main regions: Latin America, Africa, South Asia, South East Asia, Pacific, Russian Federation. Following the completion of these case studies, an international workshop will be held, at which they will be presented and discussed with the participation of other indigenous spokespersons, representatives of the extractive industries, the World Bank and the Eminent Person and other advisers to the EIR. A final report will be submitted to feed into the EIR final report.

At the community level, the questions to which the EIR is seeking answers are “What have been the major positive and negative contributions of the extractive industries to the community? What have been the environmental, social and economic costs and benefits?” The two questions will be developed in depth, based on the characteristic of the region, the community, and the project itself. The process is designed to allow the EIR team to listen to community experiences with the World Bank Group projects in order to find answers the above two questions.

The in-depth community level consultation will either be conducted by the EIR Team supported by an independent advisor, or be commissioned to an independent team. Community consultations may in some cases might be combined with selected Project Visits.

The trust of the participants in the EIR is indispensable for the success of the community consultations. Trust will help ensure that the information and feedback received by the EIR Team is genuine, and thus relevant to the Review. Therefore, the preparatory steps of the community consultation strategy are guided by one question “How to gain the trust of the participants?”

Ø The Community Consultation Advisor to the EIR Secretariat will be independent from all the four stakeholders. To ensure this independence he/she will be selected from the Academic community. Criteria are relevant experience with similar community consultations, knowledge of the World Bank Group and the extractive industries, and relevant language knowledge.

Ø Materials distributed to the community will be translated into the local language

Ø The feedback received by the EIR Secretariat will be synthesized and presented back to the community

The value of the community consultations to the Review will be ensured if the process is consistent and substance-oriented throughout the visits. Therefore the EIR Team will identify key questions that will be asked in each community. The EIR Team will listen to the community’s direct experience with the World Bank Group projects, and to the community’s answers to the questions presented.

Community Consultation questions (to be developed with inputs from the conceptual framework)

Ø Has there been significant improvement of standards of living/social services through community development programs?

Ø Have communities been consulted before/during/and after the projects

o Do communities have access to correct and reliable information?

Ø Have affected communities been compensated for damages? Fairly?

Ø Are there sufficiently high health standards for workers and communities, safety standards, and contingency plans for spills and accidents?

The EIR team will visit at least four extractive industry projects in which the World Bank Group (IBRD/IDA, IFC, MIGA) is involved or is planning/being approached to become involved.

These project visits will be designed and implemented to be able to offer insights in relation to the ‘three pillars’ of sustainable development. These are: (1) environment (e.g. pollution), (2) social (what are the impacts on society, e.g. local migration and indigenous population, effects on local health), and (3) economy (how are revenues from the extractive activities being shared between central and provincial/district government, between outside and on-location society.

Project Visit Guideline (draft, to be developed):

Ø Does the World Bank Group’s involvement in the project have a positive impact overall?

Ø How have anticipated environmental and social problems been mitigated? Explore if any best practice has emerged from the project.

Ø Are all World Bank Group pre-requisites for the financing of the project are in place? Are feasibility study recommendations followed?

Ø What is the experience of the local community: informal/formal dialogues with groups of the different stakeholders such as business community, local people and communities, the company, local and central governments, and NGO leaders. For these visits, the necessary questionnaires will be submitted to these various groups.

The EIR website (www.eireview.org) is used both for information dissemination and web-based consultations.

Information dissemination takes a number of different forms: regular updates on EIR activities, including the posting of Workshop Reports and EIR correspondence, information materials related to the extractive industries from the different stakeholders, as well as links to other relevant websites. Translations of all documents will be made available in Spanish, French, and Russian.

Specific web-based discussions will take place starting in February 2002. Different topics on the consultation process, as well as the continuously developed conceptual framework and recommendations will be discussed with interested stakeholders in the discussion part of the EIR website. All interested stakeholders can sign up to email groups which will receive automatic weekly updates on the latest new comments on the consultation pages. People that have greater difficulty in accessing the internet can send us comments that we will post for them. Comments can be sent to Julia Grutzner, (jgrutzner@eireview.org).

At the Final Consultation Workshop, participants from all different stakeholder and regional backgrounds will have the opportunity to discuss and help to improve the draft consultation report and its recommendations in an open forum. They will be provided with the draft EIR Report at least 6 weeks prior to the Workshop.

The main question behind the EIR initiative is: “how has World Bank Group involvement in the extractive industries sector contributed to sustainable development and thus poverty reduction?” To help provide a frame and focus for the Extractive Industries Review consultation process, the EIR team will draw from the wealth of research that has already been conducted in the field, this should help to provide stakeholders in the consultation process with qualified and concise information that will help stakeholders to find answers to the above questions.

This research should help throw light on the relationship between the extractive industries, poverty reduction and sustainable development, and furthermore explore the role the World Bank Group in these sectors. The selection of appropriate research topics will be informed by the conceptual framework.

EIR proposals for research topics
(rough ideas, to be developed)

Ø Extractive industries correlation with Poverty Reduction, role of WBG (~5 day desk top study by a leading expert in the field)

Ø World Bank Group internal incentive structure

Ø Revenue sharing/revenue management at national/regional/local level

Ø Delivery of services to communities

Ø Institutional capacity – legal/regulations… and

– implementation capacity

Ø Corruption in the extractive industries

Ø Conflict and the extractive industries

Ø Role of market-based initiatives in promoting transition to non-renewables: internalization, patenting, certification

Ø Climate change - various angles possible

Ø Internalization of social and environmental costs in business models, and consequences for World Bank Group conditionalities

Ø Industry differences: oil, gas and mining, and their different environment impacts

Ø How can developing countries move up the value chain, do more processing domestically

Ø Best-practice contracting and conditionality along the life cycle of projects,

Ø Reclamation bonds, best practice of mine closure

Ø Which monitoring mechanisms could provide local communities with accessible, understandable and trustworthy information about World Bank Group projects

Interested stakeholder representatives were also encouraged to submit proposals for research. The deadline for such ad-hoc proposals was February 10, 2002. We are currently contacting various individuals who have submitted proposals to ask whether they would agree to make their suggestions public. A list of received research proposals will then be posted on the EIR website.

To ensure that all information coming out of the consultation process about stakeholder needs, feelings and attitudes is duly documented and will in the end truly influence the Extractive Industries Review Final Report, all activities will be documented, in writing and audio visually. At all consultation workshops the EIR team will ensure good recording by hiring a number of reporters, and recording all discussions using tape recorders. The workshop facilitators will also be responsible for the production of a report of the consultation process. Stakeholder representatives will be welcome to record the discussions independently. All of this information will then be taken by the EIR team to draft a report. To ensure that no stakeholder opinions, views or needs have been misrepresented in the reports, all draft reports will be sent out to be reviewed by participants before finally published.

(a detailed budget will be available from the EIR team next week, week of February 25, 2002)