ABSTRACT
When mines, dams, highways, airports, schools, hospitals, or ecological reserves are created, or when communities rebuild to adapt to climate change, people who lived on those sites are displaced and must resettle. These people face risks of two kinds. First, they risk being disadvantaged and impoverished. Second, they risk being excluded from the decision-making that causes their displacement and determines how they can resettle. This book is about the relation between those two risks: being disadvantaged and being excluded from decision-making. The Introduction identifies five decision-making hazards that typically increase both risks: tight timeframes controlled by others, gaps in social and environmental impact assessment, project design causing unnecessary displacement, biases against displaced population groups, and insufficient resettlement financing. Policy and legal responses are reviewed, with a focus on proposals by the World Commission on Dams to open windows for greater influence by people facing displacement and resettlement. After reflection on methodologies for answering counterfactual questions – What if the displaced stakeholders did have greater influence? – we preview the ways in which the cases studies in this volume will present evidence-based answers to this question, drawing on more than 60 years of experience in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
