ID: 1596
Presenting Author: Tracy Hart
Session: 626 - Disasters, Conflict and Impact Assessment: What is up, what is down, what is coming around?
Status: pending
Public perceptions of new projects often include unrealistic expectations of job and wealth creation. Anticipating and managing these as part of an ESIA may help temper potential conflict.
A massive number of young people in developing countries are entering the workforce, however the number of jobs being created is not keeping pace. In the most fragile and conflict countries, growth is often heavily reliant on sectors like commodities or hydrocarbons, which are capital- rather than labor-intensive. To compound this, AI-driven automation is expected to lead to less demand for labor, more so in some sectors than others. Although proponents of investment projects may anticipate indirect, multiplier effects of job and wealth creation, the potentially affected populations may expect direct, immediate job creation which can employ local residents.
This presentation will explore what the historical “job (and wealth) multipliers” are for a range of sectors, and then temper these historical multipliers by recent literature on how AI innovations are changing these multipliers. The presentation will set out a range of examples of how the ESIA process can anticipate, reveal, and mitigate potential conflict stemming from unrealistic expectations around local job and wealth creation.
The presentation, and the discussion period to follow, should help to start to address these queries: To what extent should impact assessment professionals step in to manage public perspectives when they are based on unrealistic expectations? What tools do we have to help evince more realistic expectations? Should we, and, if so, how do we, help build more and/or better jobs for local communities? What are the limitations of ESIAs in managing public perceptions of job and wealth creation?
Tracy leads a consultancy firm, Defueling Conflict Collective, working on the intersection of natural resource management, fragility and conflict. Tracy recently retired from the World Bank.