Environmental and Social Capacity Building for the Energy Sector

The development objective of the project would be to: Improve the management of and the accountability for environmental and social issues related to large infrastructure investments, with an initial focus on the energy sector. The Project would initially focus capacity building efforts towards the energy sector, in support of the Energy Sector Development Project. The mobilization of supplemental resources to more explicitly address issues in the mining and transport sectors would be explored during the project's mid-term review. The expected long-term benefits of the project are to: (i) reduce the negative externalities of large infrastructure projects, and (ii) develop a transparent, stable and fair framework for managing environmental and social risks that should comfort large infrastructure investments, and (iii) institutionalizes information flows between the populations affected by large infrastructure projects and other stakeholders, and political decision-makers.