The Santa Cruz Road Corridor Connector Project aims to improve transport accessibility between San Jose de Chiquitos and San Ignacio de Velasco in eastern Bolivia. It was approved in 2017 and aims to improve transportation accessibility along the road corridor between San Ignacio de Velasco and San José de Chiquitos.
The project has two components. The first covers the road upgrade, as well as the implementation and supervision of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Environmental Management Plan (EMP), Resettlement Action Plan (RAP), Resettlement Policy Framework (RPF), and the Indigenous Peoples Plan (IPP). The second component is the technical/feasibility studies for another stretch of road upgrading for the 300 km stretch between San Ignacio de Velasco and San Matias, which connects with Brazil.
According to Bank documents, the primary beneficiaries are close to 125,000 inhabitants of which 51 percent are considered poor and 62 percent are Indigenous Peoples (IP). The project will directly impact 17 Chiquitano communities in the Chiquitania region and will indirectly affect three Ayoreo communities in nearby Santa Teresita, a Native Community Land.
Environmental and social risks in this project, including child sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment issues (SEA/H), have been rated as substantial. The Project Appraisal Document (PAD) recognizes that the implementation and management capacity of the Administradora Boliviana de Carreteras (Bolivian Highway Administration or ABC), the implementing agency, has been weak in the past.
The World Bank is providing $230 million in financing for the project.
The World Bank Indigenous Peoples Policy OP/BP 4.10 requires the Borrower to develop an IPP as part of the project design. As per OP/BP 4.10, the IPP should include two action plans. A plan that includes measures to guarantee that IPs receive social and economic benefits and another that provides measures to avoid, minimize, mitigate, or compensate for adverse impacts on them.
In 2018, the IP groups impacted by the project recognized that their land and livelihoods were threatened by the road because it opens new opportunities for illegal activities and settlers to invade their territories. The IP groups raised concerns about: a) increasing rates of illegal occupation and confiscation of indigenous lands; b) an increase in illegal agribusiness activities, and illegal timber, impacting the livelihoods; and c) an increase of wildfires are also threatening their lands and livelihoods.
La Chiquitania is an area of agricultural expansion, increasing deforestation and land degradation. The land in this region is quite contested, with many sectors (agribusiness, settlers, illegal timber, etc.) seeking access or disputing access and ownership. Thus tensions in the region were high prior to the road’s construction. Moreover, the road upgrade opened new opportunities for illegal activities and settlers to invade their territories.
Despite this, no appropriate mitigation measures were included in the initial IPP to effectively address these adverse impacts and support the IP groups in protecting their territories. This is impeding the impacted IP from effectively accessing project benefits and from having the proper mitigation measures in place to avoid adverse impacts as a result of the project.
After three years of dialogue and negotiations with the Bank Team Task Leader (TTL) and ABC, IP communities were able to introduce changes and include their inputs to the IPP in order to address some of the concerns raised above. The revised IPP is much improved, yet, as of December 2022, most of the measures included in the updated IPP are intended to mitigate adverse impacts and provide social and economic benefits, but have not yet been implemented despite road construction being well underway.
Project documents include mitigation measures to protect affected communities from gender-based violence (GBV) and SEA/H, and a Bank Fact Sheet claims to apply lessons learned from the Uganda Transport Sector Development Project around labor influx and the risks of increased GBV and child SEA/H in this project.
The main measures to address and respond to SEA/H risks include: a) designating a social team with demonstrated experience on community relations issues, indigenous rights, gender, sexual and reproductive health; b) coordinate with municipal legal service providers to respond to SEA/H cases, including DNAs (Children Ombudsman); c) creating a Social Oversight Committee (SOC) to monitor the implementation of the proposed project; d) training and sensitization of workers on GBV, SEA/H and HIV/AIDS/STD prevention issues; e) information sessions and media campaigns for local residents and civil society organizations (CSOs) on the potential effects of the influx of workers; f) the Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM); g) the Code of Conduct; and h) relevant laws and regulations in order to sensitize people to reporting incidents and for officials to follow up on these reports.
Our project monitoring work revealed:
