Community-Led Development for Sustainable Futures

All too often, community voices are ignored in decisions about projects affecting their land, livelihoods, and environment, thus failing to prevent foreseeable harm. When harm occurs, barriers prevent communities from speaking directly to decision makers with the power to stop abuses, and also prevent investors from hearing from the people affected by their activities to know that problems are occurring. Without consultation, investors fail to take advantage of local knowledge and experience critical to understanding development needs. Our approach focused on the accountability offices tied to international investments bypasses these barriers, ensuring that local communities have a voice in decisions that affect them.

With our support, communities in Mongolia, Haiti, and Mexico have successfully used accountability office strategies to achieve transformative, community-led solutions to remedy social and environmental harm from internationally financed projects. In each of these cases, we assisted communities through a dialogue with key project actors where they negotiated in their own voice, on their own behalf. The agreements reached in each of these dialogues have multi-generational impact, providing the communities with healthy environments and sustainable livelihood options to pass on to their children.

Relevant Cases Include: Caracol Industrial Park, Haiti | Mining in the South Gobi, Mongolia | Oro Province Palm Oil, PNG | Hydroelectric Power in Oaxaca, Mexico

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