ABSTRACT
Resettlement begins with a disempowering act with potentially terrible consequences, including escalating inequality. Resettlers are doubly disadvantaged because, being displaced, they may also lose opportunities that benefit their non-resettled peers. They face asymmetric negotiations with powerful project interests. The case for greater accountability to resettlers is, therefore, compelling. Yet all chapters demonstrated that resettlement hazards, arising during the process of resettlement, undermined efforts towards greater accountability to resettlers. By thinking counterfactually, the contributors to this volume generated new ideas to address the problems. Governments and project sponsors can do much more proactively to share their own powers with, or confer them upon, those people they displace. They can implement new laws. They can recognise the affected people’s unique locational knowledge in project option selection. They can offer joint or devolved decision-making mechanisms, and more empowering project strategies, for example, longer project scheduless, independent advisers, and benefit-sharing mechanisms. Project management may offer such powers voluntarily, offering resettlers an act of consent to the project, recognising their own longer term best interests. Or, the affected communities, empowered by a contractual right to enforce their entitlements through arbitration and access to a remedy fund, could hold corporations accountable and so secure their own human rights.
