This chapter explores the attitudes and perceptions of fifty-five practitioners engaged in infrastructure-related dispute prevention and resolution in the Asia Pacific region. The aim of the survey and follow-up interview conversations is to provide insights into the dynamics, challenges and lessons learned in engaging with communities to prevent and resolve disputes in the context of infrastructure projects. The principal finding of this chapter, based on survey data and follow-up questions, is that from the perspective of regional practitioners, prior community consultation is considered the most effective approach to preventing infrastructure disputes. This finding is consistent with the results of the data analysis in the prior chapter correlating heightened consultation standards with a reduction in the proportion of project disputes. A number of challenges continue to exist in mitigation efforts with the most challenging being the ‘lack of agreement on shared economic benefits’ and ‘limited communication’. Overall, practitioners advised that most disputes arise because ‘there was no consultation or inadequate consultation with a marginalised part of the community’. The chapter also includes practitioner suggestions on areas for improvement. The findings of this chapter demonstrate the significance of effective prior community consultation and grievance mechanisms for preventing disputes.

This chapter explores developments after standards for pre-project consultation were raised in 2013. The six cases examined in this chapter, funded by multilateral and national development banks operating in the Asia Pacific region after heightened community engagement policies, were introduced underscore a number of key insights. The post-2013 cases broadly demonstrate a number of key improvements including greater rigour in consultation and diligence mechanisms, heightened precision in identifying issues of community concern, higher pre-project diligence and screening standards, ongoing environmental and technical monitoring, the presence of locally trained mediators, skill development for consultation participants, and a longer-term view of community welfare and responsive grievance remedies. Shortcomings persisted in some cases, including instances of duress, lack of information disclosure, fraud, limited access to consultation mechanisms and environmental harm leading to project cessation in two cases when the adverse social impacts were seen to outweigh potential benefits. On the whole, corresponding with more rigorous community consultation and diligence standards, during this phase, the number of stalled/cancelled and litigated case declined by 33%, the percentages of cases brought to court declined by 16%, and the number of cases pursuing party agreement through mediation or negotiation increased by 50% compared with ad-hoc discretionary consultation practices prior to 2013.

This chapter examines the question of when expanded channels of community consultation and redress are made available in infrastructure project-affected communities, are grievances aggregated or reduced? To provide context for the nature and functioning of redress mechanisms and requirements for community consultation alongside other safeguard policies including information disclosure, this chapter examines the increasingly stringent application of such principles in the practices of a select number of global multilateral development banks (MDBs) supported by the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment and Belt and Road Initiative. This includes the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Asian infrastructure Investment Bank to explore how their Environmental and Social Frameworks are designed to mitigate negative social and environmental impacts of project investments beginning in the early 2000s. This is followed by a statistical comparison of the proportion of grievances per project raised prior to and after bank policy amendments between 2010 and 2020 expanding access to pre-project consultation, informed consent and formalised grievance mechanisms amongst 10 of the world’s MDBs in order to determine whether increasing channels of consultation and accountability lead to an increase or reduction in the number of project disputes. The findings indicate that the percentage of grievances per project peaks at 15.4% in 2019 then drops significantly in 2021 to 7.1%.

This chapter presents a series of six investor–community case studies in the Asia Pacific region during the pre-2013 period, during which pre-project community engagement and accountability on the part of infrastructure investment banks were relatively less stringent, in order to understand the impact of relatively relaxed community engagement standards on subsequent grievance claims. This set of six cases will be compared with a set of six cases presented in Chapter 6 after heightened diligence standards were introduced after 2013. The cases reviewed in this chapter were either sole financed projects by the World Bank/International Finance Corporation or collaborative projects with the Asian Development Bank and European Investment Bank in the Asia Pacific region. The sectors include investment in transport, the extractive industry and special economic zone development. The key finding of this chapter is that during this pre-2013 discretionary community consultation phase, most cases resulted in either full or partial project cancellation, delay, suspension, compensation for harms or transfer to local courts for resolution. A small portion were dismissed due to insufficient information. In total, of the six cases examined, four were cancelled or stalled, one proceeded to court litigation and one was closed. The cases highlight the risks of insufficient attention to community consultation.

This chapter provides an overview of the aims and structure of the book, which explores the emergent development and challenges in implementing community–investor consultation, dispute prevention and facilitation mechanisms amongst multilateral and national development banks operating in the Asia Pacific region. In the several decades since the development of the first multilateral community–investor dispute resolution and accountability mechanisms, much has been learned about public facilitation, community engagement and dispute prevention during the early stages of major infrastructure development programmes. Drawing on a qualitative triangulating approach that compares public facilitation policy design with case-based practice, the remaining chapters of the book will examine community–investor dispute resolution policy design, supplemented by case studies, surveys and interviews of select private non-state actors in the Asia Pacific region to address the question of whether, and if so how, multi-stakeholder community–investor public facilitation methods contribute to the prevention and early resolution of infrastructure disputes and advance sustainable development objectives.

The BRI, formally known as the One Belt, One Road Initiative, is a global development initiative initiated by the Chinese government arousing significant academic and policy interest. Since 2005, China has completed close to USD2.3 trillion in foreign projects since with 41% (USD966 billion) financing infrastructure projects and an even larger amount (USD1.4 trillion) towards investment in foreign assets – port facilities, mining and energy assets, and acquisitions of foreign firms. This chapter reviews the role of the BRI in infrastructure development including its contributions and challenges in advancing sustainable development alongside efforts at engagement with local communities. A number of approaches to addressing BRI disputes have emerged at the pre- and post-dispute stage. These include both formal and informal dispute mitigation and resolution mechanisms. Conversations with project coordinators highlight the importance of neutrality and relationship preservation. Systems are emerging to increase community access to grievance mechanisms including China’s mediation and consultation mechanism for the mining industry.

This chapter presents conclusions and relevant recommendations. Project data, survey findings and comparative case studies suggested that the introduction of heightened pre-project community consultation and grievance mechanisms within global multilateral development banks in the mid 2010–2020s have corresponded with a drop in the percentage of grievances per project from 15.4% in 2019 to 7.1% in 2021. Survey findings of fifty-five practitioners engaged in infrastructure-related dispute prevention in the Asia Pacific region likewise found that prior community consultation was considered the most effective approach to preventing infrastructure disputes. Overall, most disputes arose because of lack of adequate consultation with members of the community. Similarly, the twelve community–investor dispute case studies showed that in circumstances of increasingly heightened standards for pre-project community consultation compared with ad-hoc discretionary consultation practices, the number of stalled/cancelled and litigated case declined by 33%, the percentages of cases referred to local courts declined by 16%, and the number of cases pursuing party agreement through mediation or negotiation increased by 50%. These findings support the development of increasingly robust community consultative engagement channels, particularly for multilateral and national banks that have not yet implemented such policies. Such engagement channels, far from aggregating complaints, conversely correlate with a reduction in the overall proportion of project disputes.

Global community-infrastructure engagement and accountability norms have emerged out of crises, decentralised shared knowledge generation amongst national and multilateral banking institutions, resulting in legal innovations. This process has accelerated in the context of cross-border infrastructure development projects, which often involve coordination between national and multilateral standards. A learning orientation, accompanied by the creation of shared learning spaces such as the International Financial Institution Meetings, which are hosted by the world’s multilateral development banks on a rotating basis on themes such as information disclosure and stakeholder engagement, have resulted in growing agreement on relevant underlying principles and good practices in community engagement in the context of infrastructure planning.