Articles, tools, field-tested takes and a forum: the place for the pros who shape the environmental and social performance of infrastructure projects.
Long-form articles, all sections combined
Labour influx: anticipating impacts on host communities
A large construction site attracts workers, but also vendors, transporters and families. Within a few months, a rural locality sees its population swell, its rents rise and its health centre become saturated. These effects are not random. They can be anticipated, assessed and managed.
Water Quality During Construction: Parameters, Frequencies and Thresholds
An infrastructure construction site does not pollute water through spectacular major accidents. It degrades it continuously, through diffuse discharges that no one measures. A plume of turbidity downstream of earthworks, an abnormal pH beneath a concreting area, a trace of hydrocarbons after rain. Water quality monitoring serves to see what the construction site prefers not to see.
Green bonds and African infrastructure: hydro eligibility criteria
A green bond is not a label one affixes to a power plant. It is a quantified promise made to investors. For hydroelectricity, this promise runs up against a threshold, a calculation method and a controversy over large hydro. Eligibility is demonstrated, category by category, with supporting documents.
E&S categorisation of projects: A, B or C, who decides and on what criteria
An infrastructure project often mobilises several financiers. Each applies its own E&S risk categorisation grid. On a single project, labels may diverge. Understanding who decides and on what criteria avoids unpleasant surprises in due diligence.
GHG emissions from tropical reservoirs: state of the science and G-res tool
A water reservoir is not climate-neutral. In tropical zones, submerged organic matter decomposes and releases methane. The question is no longer whether a reservoir emits, but how much, and how to demonstrate it to lenders increasingly attentive to the carbon footprint of hydroelectric projects.
Consultation and participation: conducting successful focus groups in rural areas
A failed consultation is not visible on the day itself. Everyone has spoken, the photos are taken, the minutes are signed. The defect appears during due diligence, when the lender asks who was in the room, who was not, and what the absent would have said. The focus group is the tool that determines this answer.
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