15.1 Different stages in community engagement

FIGURE 15.1

Different stages in community engagement

Conceptualization and planning

Design and preparation

Maintenance and constant care Community engagement

Construction of road and water measures

Source: MetaMeta (www.roadsforwater.com).

should not be limited to the finalization of road infrastructure but should also look toward enhanced connectivity and road use, the economic development roads can trigger, and the beneficial use of roads for water and other environmental functions (box 15.2). If performed well, community engagement will also enhance local ownership and create an interface between the road-implementing organizations and the people living in the area where the work takes place, including through their representative organizations. at present, such positive partnerships do not occur in many instances, leading to discontent; disputes and litigation over land, labor, and compensation; and frustration about the collateral damage caused by road development. This conflict slows down work and adds to costs, and opportunities to align with local knowledge and priorities are missed.

General guidance

Community engagement should be approached thoughtfully and cautiously, avoiding a number of misconceptions. The first misconception is that community engagement is a “good” without clarity about the objectives, mechanisms, and rules of engagement. Community engagement should be well thought through and planned—similar to how engineering works are planned. Engagement should include clear programs for facilitators and experts. Without specific objectives, there is a significant risk that the conversation will shift to unrelated topics or expectations will be raised that the road agency might undertake actions that it could not realistically carry out. When the conversation

BOX 15.2

Roads and green development corridors

Community engagement is essential to making full use of the opportunities of road development for beneficial road-water management and for optimizing the impact of roads on the access to services, creation of labor opportunities, development of local skills, and boosting of local economies.

One goal of community engagement is to optimize the scope for local initiative and entrepreneurship around the development of Green Roads. Thoughtful community involvement should be undertaken throughout the different stages of road development and maintenance, and stereotype assumptions based on the composition of communities should be avoided.

meanders too much, community members may feel the process is not effective or may not understand its goals.

The second misconception is that local contributions in labor, land, or in kind automatically create “ownership” that ensures sustainability of the infrastructure. Merely participating in a program designed and directed by others does not create local ownership. Rather, ownership is better generated by actions that shift some organizing power to the communities or make resources available to support local initiatives. for instance, road agencies can work directly with communities to codevelop opportunities in local employment, economic development, climate resilience, and water management. Opportunities to engage communities and develop joint programs around roads are plentiful, and community engagement should not be limited to physical contributions. a third pitfall is to assume “the community” exists. It is important to be aware of the diversity among the people concerned, their cultural practices and inhibitions, the imbalances in power and access between them, and their diverse interests and needs. such an awareness can help avoid “engaging with the wrong people” in a manner that overlooks the needs of others or, at worst, unwittingly becoming a force for exclusion or repression. special consideration must be given to the engagement of women and vulnerable groups, not least because cultural, economic, and other barriers often bar them from full and equal participation in community discussions and in the implementation of community programs. It is sometimes safe to assume that women or members of vulnerable groups are unlikely to share all their concerns and experiences in the presence of the whole community. for example, even when a road agency deliberately invites women to participate in public forums, men in their families may discourage them from attending or participating as equals; if women do attend, it is not safe to assume their presence in a meeting is sufficient. an understanding of these community dynamics is essential to ensuring that community engagement is effective. It may be necessary to engage women as facilitators and to host women-only discussions (or discussions exclusively with members of vulnerable groups). This process will enable a broader range of perspectives to be expressed, open new opportunities for understanding the community’s needs, and establish female role models in their own right— women who move about freely, exert influence over decisions, have much to offer in skills and knowledge, and who are unafraid to do so. some of the same concerns about women’s participation could also apply to other vulnerable groups.

Community engagement methods

several different methods can be used to improve understanding of the social relations in the community and people’s perceptions. Box 15.3 describes the well-being method. This method focuses on understanding the opportunities and issues from the life priorities of the persons directly concerned. a related technique is participatory rural appraisal, which engages group discussion

BOX 15.3

Well-being method: How to develop a connection between the interviewed person and the interviewer

step 1: Common human interest

The first stage concerns the establishment of common human interest. as humans, a few areas touch us all deeply, whatever our background: our health, our autonomy and security, and the future of our children. sharing and discussing our experiences in relation to these issues is one way to establish a personal connection. some questions that can be asked at this stage include the following:

• How is your health, and what are your concerns? • How do you see the life and future of your children? • do you feel safe and secure? • Can you manage with your income? • How do you feel from day to day? • What risks do you see for your family?

not all questions need to be asked; what is important is the natural flow of the conversation and the understanding that is jointly developing. It is good to have this conversation as equals and to exchange experiences, with the interviewer or visitor’s comparing his or her own life with that of the interviewee and also encouraging mutual questions. This step establishes a human connection and triggers thinking about what is important for one’s self and the choices one is making.

step 2: Reflections

following the common human interest stage, more reflective questions can be asked. These questions encourage light analysis of the interviewee’s situation and that of others and provide mutual and often unexpected holistic insight. Examples of such reflective questions include the following: • How are things done? • How do people help each other? • How is your relationship with members of your family? • How is your relationship with your neighbors? • How do you look at things in your life; how do you look at others; how do you look at yourself? • What are your roles, and are you content with them? • Would you say that people help each other? • do you think things will be different in the future?

The interviewer can also ask for examples and relate to what is in the house or immediate environment to illustrate the points. What is important is to listen empathetically to what is being said, which will often generate new perspectives and understandings of priorities. It will help the interviewer understand what is driving the interviewee, how decisions are made, and what boundary constraints exist.

step 3: Thematic discussions

from these two stages, the interviewer can move to topics that originally triggered the learning visit (for example, a road construction program, mobility and access, and environmental concerns) and that the interviewer wants to understand better. These topics can be raised in a conversational way to see how they relate to the person’s well-being. By this time there should be a good, deep understanding of each other’s lives, and the thematic questions can relate to these interests. It is best to use a checklist that the interviewer has memorized or can quickly glance at.

around mapping, preparation of timelines, transect walks, and priority setting. appendix a describes the participatory rural appraisal technique.

Community engagement process

Community engagement should ideally take place in the various stages of road development and should cover its wider ramifications: the development of infrastructure, its usage and transport functions, promotion of related economic opportunities and services, and development of Green Roads for Water.

The type of engagement changes with the different stages of road development. The decisions made in the early stage of conceptualizing and planning concern where to build the road, the specifications, and the contractual arrangements. at this stage, the road agency must interact with the local government and representative interest groups, such as associations of traders, transporters, or farmers. decisions will focus on the impact of the road alignment and the main specifications of these groups’ needs. for instance, in a lowland area, the community may have particular interests that could help the road agency decide between construction of a low embankment road with a designated spillover versus a high embankment road. Or stakeholders may be concerned about optimizing water management in extremely flat terrain (see box 15.4). The conceptualization stage is also the time to discuss the interconnections with transport and the development of economic opportunities, such as measures to stimulate local business as part of road development or the designation of road reserves and land for economic activities along the road. agroprocessing and aggregating centers are one such example. The increased value of such designated lands can make an important contribution to the economic viability of the road.

BOX 15.4

Using modeling to plan the road network in coastal areas in Bangladesh

The road agency, local government, and key stakeholders worked together to plan the future of a polder. The first step in this exercise was to map the polder’s current road network and the likely future road network. The mapping exercise and community discussions identified a large number of bottlenecks where existing roads impeded drainage, substantially harming farm production and contributing to the spread of vector-borne diseases. The drainage patterns could be traced with the help of a detailed digital elevation model. The juxtaposition of drainage and the current and future road network helped to (a) locate the most important cross-drainage works (bridges and culverts) and define the required bed sills; (b) calculate the amount of water that could be stored in the lower part of the polder with the help of road embankments; (c) identify the higher- and lower-lying areas of the polder, and explore the possibility of placing the road on the boundary lines so as to compartmentalize the areas and improve dry-season water control using gated culverts and pipes; and (d) identify the more flood-prone areas that could experience flood relief from development of roads at higher elevations. These models were constructed with inputs from various local stakeholders and then were discussed so as to become part of district infrastructure plans.

Source: MetaMeta (www.roadsforwater.com) and Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (https://roadsforwater.org/ wp-content /uploads/2018/09/FInal-Draft-poster-Nepal-workshop.pdf).

after the planning stage, more specific details about the design of the road will be put in place (airey and Wattam 1998). at this stage, representative groups and local government may still play a role, but structured discussions with roadside communities will be important, too. such discussions need to have an official character, with the persons speaking mandated to do so and the results of the discussion recorded. The nature of the consultation should be clarified, specifically, whether it is informational, binding, or something in between. Community expectations regarding what suggestions are practical to follow up on and what recommendations cannot be accommodated must be managed.

Engaging local communities in these early stages of road development will add considerable value to the later stages. The road agency will gain a detailed understanding of the geographic terrain and local priorities. This information will set the stage for implementation through land release, work arrangements, and sourcing of building materials, such as planning the location of borrow pits with an eye to their later reuse as water storage (chapter 8). This is also the time to discuss and agree on roadside tree planting, including the location, species, and modalities. as much as possible, planning of complementary social, economic, and road-water management measures should be placed in the hands of those who will remain in charge of those activities after the road is developed, not just the road agency. This process requires cooperation with agricultural and water management bureaus, business promotion organizations, educational and health service providers, and transport agencies. If key players are absent, it may be possible to engage the right institutions in discussions about whether they could step up their engagement. for road-water management measures, this is also the stage at which to discuss operation and ownership of the additional water resources, for example, determining to whom the water will be distributed and how facilities such as gated culverts, roadside dams, or overflow structures will be operated and maintained. discussion with agricultural cooperatives and agricultural bureaus may help ensure the roads program and other programs complement each other productively.

The next stage is implementation. This stage offers considerable opportunities for local employment, skills development, and business development. Paved roads may be constructed by young contractors, as was done in Ethiopia. Groups of university graduates were supported with training, credit, and access to heavy equipment, and took on local road-building contracts. This activity helped build capacity in the construction industry locally and nationally. for unpaved roads, the work can be allocated to local contracting groups, as was done with the Labor Contracting societies in Bangladesh (see the section titled “Examples of Community Engagement at scale”). The quality of work and entrepreneurship of these groups has often been remarkable, particularly because they were formed mainly of landless and marginal labor living below the poverty line. The engagement of such groups in basic road building has had an enormous impact on poverty alleviation, encouraging group members to use their earnings to acquire productive assets. Road construction also provides other economic opportunities, such as operation of community borrow pits and quarries and development of support services to the road construction companies and workers (shops, restaurants, and so on). The money spent in the local economy can boost further economic activity. at this stage, additional road-water management measures can be implemented, either individually or as part of community efforts, such as the mass mobilization campaigns in Ethiopia.