Date: 6/19/2006
Duration: 118 minutes
Language: English
Country/Region: World
Keywords: Energy, Mining, Community Driven Development
Presenters:
Ipadeola Jacob Adeniji
Javier Aguilar
Alit Merthayasa
Jane Nelson
Chief Emeka Okengwu
Djordjija Petkoski
DESCRIPTION
On June 19, 2006, the Sustainable Community Development Fund (CommDev) hosted a day-long conference at the IFC Building on Washington, D.C., to discuss “Sharing Experience: Enhancing the Benefits to Communities from Extractive Industry Projects.” The conference aimed at sharing experiences, conducting training, and raising awareness of the community development work being implemented in communities impacted by extractive industries. In the keynote address, delivered by Jane Nelson, Senior Fellow and Director of the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative at Harvard University, Nelson noted the challenges facing the extractive sector with real and emerging threats to licenses to operate, despite record high energy prices and increased consumption of resources.
Following the keynote and a lunch break, event participants began the afternoon breakout sessions. One session, chaired by Djordjija Petkoski, Head of the Business, Competitiveness and Development Program at the World Bank Institute, discussed effective capacity-building programs and studied approaches for strengthening and supporting this important pillar of the trilateral approach to enhancing community benefits for extractive industry projects. Alit Merthayasa, Executive Director of the Center for Local Government Innovation, offered some of his NGO’s experiences from the field and described the difficulties faced by Indonesian communities in dealing with the private sector. Javier Aguilar, Program Manager for Enhancing Local Benefits in the IFC, focused on the IFC’s experiences with a pilot project that has been implemented over the past year and a half – a Latin American and Caribbean facility in Peru. Chief Emeka Okengwu, a miner of tantalite and industrial minerals in Central Nigeria, explained two inhibitors for his industry and defined the problems present in Nigerian corporate culture. Lastly, a presentation prepared by Hon. Ipadeola Jacob Adeniji, former Chairman of a Local Government, was delivered by a colleague. The presentation addressed the communistic benefits from extractive industrial projects, focusing on the experiences of one rural Nigerian town.
During question-and-answer periods, audience members brought up the quality of local investment management, competition for personnel resources between public and private sectors, and issues with corruption in government.
