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Accepted Paper:
Innovative approaches to financing local development for communities affected by hydropower reservoirs in Guinea.
Jamie Skinner
(International Institute for Environment and Development)
Bruno Trouille
(Mott MacDonals)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores opportunities for internalizing financing streams for local development within hydropower project design and national energy policy in Guinea. It balances mobilizing sufficient finance to meet local development needs with the ability of hydropower developers/consumers to pay.
Paper long abstract:
Budgets are typically provided for in Environmental and Social Management Plans (ESMPs) and Resettlement Action Plans (RAPs) to mitigate the short term impacts of hydroelectric projects on the biophysical and human environments. However, the success of these ad hoc actions is often compromised by a lack of sustainable medium and long financing to reestablish local livelihoods. At the global level, sharing of the benefits from hydroelectric generation is becoming part of good practice, advocated for example by the International Hydropower Association (IHA) and the ECOWAS Directive on Large Water Infrastructure.
The paper presents results from field surveys and interviews with stakeholders upstream and downstream of hydro projects in Guinea. Various financing scenarios are analyzed, showing the long-term amounts that can be mobilized and their impact on tariffs and future hydroelectric development. Institutional and legal management mechanisms to deliver this financing to local communities are discussed.
For the approach in Guinea to be politically viable it had to :
1. Provide regular and sufficient annual funding to support local development over a 20-30 year period to be determined for each dam according to need;
2. Be acceptable to the electricity consumer; and
3. Avoid compromising the national investment programme of hydropower development
The paper focuses on how to internalize a viable finance stream within hydropower projects that can meet the long-term requirements of local communities, beyond what is done for them during the resettlement action plan, thereby ensuring that they become direct beneficiaries of the project that has affected them.
Improving benefit-sharing for large hydropower dam projects: insights from academia and practice (Policy and Practice)
Session 1