2 September 2008
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) dismisses a proposal for a joint seminar on Amazon infrastructure and sustainability planning mechanisms at upcoming civil society meeting in Montevideo.
By many accounts, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) rapport with civil society has fallen to its lowest level. One is pressed to imagine how things could get worse. Yet they have.
Organizations from seven South American countries and the U.S. invited the IDB to break with a deteriorating tradition of annual meetings with civil society, to jointly plan a day-long seminar on the Initiative for Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) and Strategic Environmental Assessments. The groups asked that the Bank rethink an event that was drawing fewer and fewer interested civil society participants every year. At the last Bank-CSO meeting in Costa Rica, only about 60 people participated – many of whom had never attended a prior Bank meeting. Interest has dropped precipitously among civil society for recent IDB Annual Meetings (see recent BIC updates on IDB-civil society engagement and past IDB Civil Society meetings).
In a proposal dated July 1st, the 17 signatory organizations – all with considerable experience with the IDB as well as the topic of infrastructure and environmental assessment – invited the Bank to devote a day to discussing these issues. Targeting what was viewed as a key factor in the declining popular interest in past encounters with civil society, the groups offered to help the Bank organize, fund and facilitate the IIRSA – SEA seminar. Moreover, the proposal laid out six points around which the Bank might effectively revive the interest of experienced civil society organizations that tired of the IDB’s incapacity to facilitate real participation.
The event was proposed as a day-long seminar, to involve joint planning by the Bank and civil society and to feature equal participation by presenters of both. Participation would include government representatives (IIRSA coordinators) – the very persons that the Bank has claimed for the past eight years would inform and invite the participation of civil society in decision making about IIRSA but have failed to do so. The groups also recommended that general participation be limited to ensure a rich and sustained discussion on the proposed topics – a challenge made difficult in past Bank hosted gatherings by the variation in participant knowledge on certain topics. Finally, the proposal laid out several forward looking, concrete goals of the seminar that would avoid an error of past dialogues with little commitment to follow-through on participant comments much less a feedback loop to such how past inputs were used.
The IDB response came nearly eight weeks later, less than two months prior to the planned civil society meeting in Montevideo, Uruguay (Oct. 16-17, 2008). The Bank response was a flat rejection of the civil society proposal. The IDB ignored the civil society invitation to jointly organize a seminar on IIRSA and SEAs and instead invited the signatory organizations to attend the Bank’s event. The door to participate in the planning of the event was unceremoniously closed. Several half-hearted gestures were extended to the arguments in the civil society proposal, yet the overarching reaction demonstrates a perpetuated state of denial within the IDB that modernity has eclipsed the obsolete concept of civil society to which some still cling.
As an alternative, the IDB returned to a conservative and risk free approach of sending a pre-determined list of five topics to some 450 recipients to offer the illusion of choice regarding the top two issues that would be featured at the upcoming two-day gathering. The agenda setting power of the event format, speakers list, facilitation, and participant selection remains firmly ensconced in the Bank’s clenched fists.
The signatory organizations offered their own response to the IDB on August 29, stating that despite a shared interest in dialogue and the proposed topics of IIRSA and SEAs, they had little interest in continuing a failed trend of unilaterally planned encounters. The groups extended again an invitation for the Bank to enter into a jointly planned process to dialogue on these issues in the future.
Read the correspondence between civil society and the IDB:
All documents are in Spanish:
Civil society proposal to IDB - July 2, 2008 (Acrobat pdf, 49 KB) - en español
IDB's response to civil society - August 19, 2008 (Acrobat pdf, 60 KB) - en español
Civil society response to IDB - August 29, 2008 (Acrobat pdf, 15 KB) - en español
IDB response to civil society - September 8, 2008 (Acrobat pdf, 48 KB) - en español