We thank all the GIA partners who participated in the rich discussions over the past weeks. Brief reports and copies of Zoom videos will be available on the GIA web site shortly.
A final reminder about the workshop next week. The overall agenda with links to more detailed daily agendas is available here.
In preparation for the meeting, we want to share 3 figures that give an overview of how we are thinking about infrastructure governance. These are "works in progress" meant as a starting point for the workshop discussions.
Business as Usual for Infrastructure Governance
Based on our case studies, we have documented that powerful groups of infrastructure proponents use communication, information and negotiation strategies to engage various constituencies (such as voters, other influencers and government agencies). They seek to control decision-making processes in ways favorable to their economic and political agendas. Proponents often are at a high scale such as national or international, whereas infrastructure impacts affect local social, economic and environmental conditions.
Strategies and Actors representing Socioenvironmental interests
A set of actors including many of those in the GIA network uses their own strategies to intervene in the Business as Usual governance. The actors and their strategies work towards political mobilization and negotiation to influence the planning and implementation of infrastructure projects. Three key strategies that were identified in GIA’s preliminary assessment of effective cases were knowledge management, communications and legal strategies. GIA working groups have been exploring these strategies and the workshop will have one panel for each strategy, plus a fourth panel that looks at the collaborations among different types of actors for implementing those strategies.
Overall GIA Framework
The strategies and actors (from figure 2) aim to influence the infrastructure governance arena by interacting with the drivers and other actors in governance processes. We are challenged to assess how and to what extent the strategies and actors can effectively influence the Business as Usual approach depicted in figure 1. A key question is how exogenous and endogenous limiting and enabling factors influence the effectiveness of socioenvironmental advocates. The 2 blue arrows at the bottom of this figure represent our Community of Practice and Learning as a space to reflect, analyze and learn about governance processes and hopefully contribute to more effective practice in the future.
Register for final GIA workshop here (Password: GIA21)
