Working with Stakeholders
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consultation process. A basic socioeconomic baseline was developed in 1996. IUCN experts held numerous meetings in various villages, but the focus was largely on conservation research, with some complementary sociocultural information gathering. The early consultations were characterized by a narrow technical focus. The initial idea of consultations was to transmit information rather than to engage in dialogue. The “consultations” were actually intended to convey to the population the developer’s and government’s story regarding the benefits of the project. They did not solicit or facilitate the surfacing of uncomfortable questions or opinions on the part of villagers. (It is interesting to note that the Lao term for consultations translates as “public relations,” not “public consultations.”) Concerns about how consultations had been conducted and the extent to which they had effectively gathered and synthesized concerns and options became salient in 2002–03. During visits to the plateau, World Bank staff became convinced that the local population had been told about the benefits but not the costs of the project. To gain support from the World Bank, the project needed legitimacy, which could be attained only by forthrightly sharing and discussing the pros and cons of the project with the local population and seeking their input on appropriate design and mitigation approaches. Country team management signaled that the quality of local consultations would be an important determinant of support from the Board and other influential stakeholders. Although Lao PDR was perceived as a closed political system, the World Bank’s experience with the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) consultations in Lao PDR and neighboring Vietnam suggested that if skillfully facilitated, consultations in a “closed” system could yield surprising and substantial feedback on a proposed project. The Report of the World Commission on Dams, as well as the World Bank’s own policies, emphasized the critical role of local consultations during the design phase. Several skeptical NGOs accused the World Bank and the project developer of neglecting to listen to the voices or consider the interests of the affected populations. The inadequacies of resettlement practices in other hydropower projects in Southeast Asia also loomed large in the background. World Bank staff themselves returned from site visits concerned that lowquality and insufficient input from the affected populations would result in poor design of resettlement and compensation programs.