5.2 Guiding Principles for Sustainability Assessment
5.2.2 Guiding principles for sustainable infrastructure development
Environmental protection, Polluters pay; Precaution and adaption: Adaptability and resiliency, Precautionary, Risk management; Livelihood sufficiency and opportunity:
Quality of life, Creativity, Up-gradation; Intra-generational equity: Affordability, Social justice and poverty alleviation; Intergenerational equity: Equitable distribution of resources, Long-term strategic planning; Resource maintenance and efficiency:
Maintenance of natural resources, Value for money, Efficient project delivery; Socio- economic civility and democratic governance: Public participation, Institutional capacity, Accountability; Immediate and long-term integration: Multidimensional, Continuum.
incorporated as one of the bid parameters on measures that will be included in project to improve the quality and reduces the cost of infrastructure facility.
• Creativity and promote innovation – The main objective of this principle is to encourage public sector officials to devise innovative solutions and implement practices for sharing important information and knowledge with subordinates. The sharing of relevant information on a timely basis with employees, interested people and governments will help in promoting a greater understanding of current situation and help to plan business activities and identify mitigating measures for the impacts associated with the project.
• Up-gradation of knowledge – One of the key principles is creating awareness about the new techniques and technologies relating to promoting of sustainable development through education, training, participation and awareness programs. In the context of PPPs, along with the up-gradation of public sector officials’ knowledge, the public sectors officials should conduct awareness program to inform infrastructure users and local communities about environment, social and economic impacts of the project.
Intragenerational equity
• Affordable user charges – Promotion of intra-generational equity in the context of infrastructure projects will require making the services affordable and accessible to all sections of the society. The service providers should pay special attention to providing infrastructure services to those segments of the society that are normally excluded, such as the poor, migrants, lower castes, or tribal people, because they systematically have greater difficulty in accessing regular services.
• Social justice and poverty alleviation – The main aim, as per this principle, for infrastructure development should be to improve the well-being of all the residents of the community, i.e. both the advantaged and disadvantaged groups. This objective should be the driving force while designing infrastructure development program through PPP also. The focus of the government should be to ensure that inequitable burdens are not placed on any one geographical location or socio-economic sector of the population and that the benefits of a sustainable community are accessible to all members of the community.
Intergenerational equity
• Equitable distribution of resources – One of the main objectives of sustainable development is to ensure that current and future generations enjoy an acceptable quality of life. There should also be an equitable distribution of resources between and among communities and future generations.
• Long term strategic planning – The aim of this principle is to ensure the long-term integrity and productivity of our economy, our environment, our natural resources and safeguards our human health. The long-term impacts of policy choices should be considered to ensure a sustainable legacy.
Resource maintenance and efficiency
• Maintenance of natural resources – Maintenance of natural resources will require promoting maximum utilization of renewable resources and conserve non-renewable natural resources through efficient use and careful planning. It is suggested that the services provision should not only contribute to public health, but also improve the environment and preserve natural resources, which include protecting wildlife habitats, open spaces, and wilderness while preserving biodiversity.
• Value for money – Value for money principle aims to improve quality, cost and access to infrastructure services, and ensure the financial viability of infrastructure at minimum cost to the government. The current PPP procurement process adopts a quantitative VfM analysis test conducted with the objective to determine whether the value of risks transferred to private sector under a PPP arrangement is justified considering the cost that private sector will charge for assuming those risks.
• Efficient project delivery – The generic definition of efficient project delivery is developing and adopting proven best practices in budgeting, scheduling, bid/contract management, and asset management so that returns from the projects can be improved substantively. From the perspective of PPP procurement, the focus should be on development and abiding by environmentally and socially responsible procurement policy that emphasizes long-term values and will become a model for other public as well as private organizations.
Socio-ecological civility and democratic governance
• Public participation – Public participation involves engagement of stakeholders to take into account their views, perceptions, knowledge and skills while developing the projects. The effective public participation could be in the form of users and local community participation during the development phase. This will provide a platform amongst the stakeholders to interact amongst them and resolve issues that could be a cause of conflict of interests amongst the various project stakeholders in operation stage.
• Strong organization and leadership quality – The organizations must establish clear plans and rules for service provision, regulate and monitor service quality, co-ordinate infrastructure project development, and deliver services efficiently and equitably. It is suggested that the public sector should assume ethical responsibility for leadership over the vision and values for PPP project and adhere to the decision model that maximizes economic results, minimizes environmental impact and restores degraded ecosystems.
• Transparency and accountability – The administrative framework should be strengthened to make authorities accountable for decisions made relating to design and engineering aspects of the project and should set examples of upholding the beliefs held by them. In order to improve transparency and accountability in PPP process, the public sector should set clear standards, conduct consistent monitoring, and ensure fairness and transparency while making decisions.
Precaution and adoption
• Balance risk allocation – A successful PPP contract will balance the risks between government and the private partner in an equitable manner. The objective of the risk allocation should be to optimally allocate the project risks rather than maximizing risk transfer to the private sector. In addition to this, the legitimate concerns of the stakeholders should be taken into consideration during risk allocation.
• Adaptability and resilience – Projects design should have the flexibility to adapt to the changing needs of society and generations over time. The risk allocation framework, which is one of the key components of project design, should have adequate provisions to tackle both present and future problems, issues and challenges. Maintaining and
enhancing the adaptive capacity of the ecological systems and human social systems associated with infrastructure facilities will help in fulfillment of the goal of adaptability and resilience’ principle of sustainable development.
• Precautionary – The aim of this principle is to adopt a precautionary approach in case of existence of objective scientific uncertainty so as to avoid potential damage to people’s health or to the environment. And, the preferred approach should be to deal cautiously with risk and uncertainty through precautionary measures in situations where there is a lack of clarity on the environmental impacts of the project activities.
Immediate and long-term integration
• Multidimensional – The main aim of this principle is to inter-relate the three dimensions of sustainable development, i.e. social equity; economic development; and environmental stewardship. And, these must be simultaneously addressed to meet the needs of current and future generations. Promotion to integrate these three dimensions of sustainability would help in achievement of the goal of ‘multidimensional’ principle of sustainability.
• Continuum – Sustainability is not represented by discrete indications of sustainability or non-sustainability but as a continuum representing various degrees of sustainability.
To accomplish the objective of this principle through promoting coherence between all government policies and coherence between local, regional, national and global actions in order to increase their contribution to sustainable development. In addition to this, identify the potential positive and negative impacts of our proposed actions on infrastructure development, not only locally and soon but also outside our immediate local environment, organization and context, and into the future.