The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has committed to a concrete set of steps to include civil society, Indigenous Peoples, and Afrodescendant communities in the design of its newest regional infrastructure initiative, the South Connection Program (SCP). Following a workshop convened in Brasília last month by Bank Information Center (BIC), Conectas Direitos Humanos, and the Working Group on Infrastructure and Socio-environmental Justice (GT Infra), the IDB agreed to: circulate its Stakeholder Engagement Plan for a 30-day public comment period; advance an expanded Advisory Panel that includes civil society, Indigenous Peoples, and Afrodescendant communities alongside the private sector and academia; and develop transparent criteria for selecting and prioritizing SCP projects amongst other items.
South Connection is the IDB’s third major regional connectivity initiative, following the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA, 2000–2008) and the South American Council for Infrastructure and Planning (COSIPLAN, 2011–2018). Launched in September 2025 at the request of eleven South American governments, SCP is structured around three pillars: physical and digital connectivity, logistics and trade facilitation, and regulatory and institutional strengthening. The IDB’s own evaluation of IIRSA found that the program fell short on infrastructure quality, availability, and regional competitiveness: many projects reflected national rather than regional interests, lacked clear prioritization criteria, left regulatory and governance barriers unaddressed, and showed weak participation, territorial analysis, and risk identification. These new commitments are the IDB’s clearest signal yet that it intends to do things differently this time.
Building on Two Years of Dialogue
These commitments follow two years of engagement between the IDB Working Group, of which BIC is a member, and South Connection’s leadership, including a September 2025 letter to the IDB Board of Executive Directors, a program analysis sent in February 2026, and a conversation at the 2026 IDB Annual Meetings in Paraguay. They took concrete shape at a workshop last month in Brasília, where IDB staff, Indigenous Peoples and Afrodescendant representatives, civil society groups, government officials, and academic and research institutions from across South America converged on a shared set of findings. IDB representatives, including staff from South Connection Program, ESG, and the transport sector, acknowledged the program’s past limitations and committed to engage civil society differently from the outset.
Concerns Raised by Participants
Meaningful participation remains a central test for South Connection. Communities are typically engaged to discuss a project’s impacts rather than to shape its planning, and consultation has often focused on anticipated benefits before receding once construction begins. Genuine participation requires engagement before designs are finalized, full disclosure of risks alongside benefits, adequate time for communities to respond, and corresponding protection protocols for environmental and climate defenders. Territorial insecurity compounds these gaps: 90 percent of quilombola settlements in Brazil remain untitled, and Indigenous Peoples in several countries reported land titling processes unresolved for more than 40 years, leaving communities with limited standing in negotiations over infrastructure affecting their territories.
Environmental and social assessments must also account for the cumulative and indirect impacts of regional infrastructure. Under IIRSA, assessment tools did not adequately capture impacts such as land speculation triggered by project announcements. Participants called on the IDB to incorporate standards from the Minamata and Palermo conventions, given the illegal logging, mining, and land trafficking risks that have historically accompanied large infrastructure works in the region.
A further set of proposals addressed the model of infrastructure itself. Several favored transportation modes that prioritize air and river transport over roads, given the latter’s greater territorial impact, arguing that a corridor need not only mean a road. Others called for community-based infrastructure, including health and sanitation, and socio-biodiversity value chains such as Brazil nuts, pirarucu, and açaí, to be recognized as infrastructure in its own right.
IDB’s Commitments and Next Steps
IDB representatives committed to:
- Circulating the Stakeholder Engagement Plan directly to participants for a 30-day comment period and incorporating the feedback gathered in Brasília;
- Advancing an expanded Advisory Panel to include civil society, Indigenous Peoples, Afrodescendant communities, the private sector, and academia;
- Developing transparent criteria for selecting and prioritizing South Connection projects;
- Opening concrete spaces for engagement during the development of the Strategic Environmental, Social, and Climate Assessment for the Capricorn Bioceanic Corridor and;
- Sharing the final products of Technical Cooperation projects financed under the program, a longstanding civil society request.
Several recommendations shared by participants remain outstanding. On governance, these include an Advisory Panel with real authority and project selection criteria that are published and applied before political decisions are finalized, rather than after. They also called for a funded, accessible mechanism for direct community-level financing, noting that Amazon Forever’s community grants currently reach only a fraction of the need, and for closer coordination between South Connection and the IDB’s private-sector arm, IDB Invest, so that commitments made in Brasília extend to projects financed through that window as well.
South Connection now represents a test for an institution carrying 40 years of documented mistrust from IIRSA and COSIPLAN. In Brasília, IDB staff engaged directly with the communities whose territories will be most affected by the program’s projects. As one Indigenous leader summarized, the question is no longer how to bring infrastructure to Amazonian territories, but how infrastructure can strengthen the life plans and the economies of the communities already there. This reframing reflects what BIC and partners have been pushing the IDB toward since our initial letter. None of the identified issues are settled, but the commitments made in Brasília are a first, concrete test of whether the IDB and affected communities can turn a shared diagnosis into shared solutions.
Our Continued Engagement
BIC and partners will continue to monitor the implementation of these commitments, including the 30-day comment period on the Stakeholder Engagement Plan and the expansion of the Advisory Panel. Organizations working on infrastructure, land rights, and/or environmental protection in a South Connection country are encouraged to reach out to BIC to join the Working Group’s ongoing engagement with the IDB.
See additional media coverage by Conectas and GT Infra.
The full workshop summary, including additional details on each session and the complete table of commitments, is available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
