Comprehensive Option Assesment - UNEP

Module 1: Basic Introduction
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries and the major international financing agencies have recognized
the pervasive extent of corrupt practice and its negative consequences. Through the 1990s they have moved to assist countries in tackling corruption
by making bribery payments illegal in their country of origin, barring contractors convicted of bribery from future contracts and tightening up due
diligence on bribery opportunities. As of August 2010, the 33 OECD member countries and 5 non-member countries – Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria,
Estonia, and South Africa – have adopted the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business
Transactions (1997). Its principal objective is to eliminate bribes to foreign officials, with each country taking responsibility for the activities of its
companies and what happens in its own territories.
The international NGO Transparency International has also been active in promoting workable and transparent 'integrity pacts' for large
infrastructure tenders. These have met with growing acceptance and success in Latin America.
Multilateral and bilateral financing agencies
Overseas development financing agencies have played an important role in funding and securing large infrastructure projects. They have adopted a
broad set of policies, criteria and guidelines since the 1980s in responses to lessons from experience and public criticism. For example, the World
Bank has adopted ten Environmental and Social Safeguard Policies relating to environmental issues such as forestry, pest control and environmental
assessments and social issues such as indigenous peoples, cultural property and resettlement. The result of these developments is that on paper the
World Bank has a comprehensive set of policies dealing with large infrastructure projects. More recently the International Finance Corporation (IFC)
and the Inter-American, Asian and African Development Banks have adopted similar guidelines.
Despite these changes, these policies are more concerned with project planning, design and financial management than with options assessment or
with the operational phase of a large project, which is often left to national governments.
Even then, the main focus has been on comparing the project proposals with the project outcome. Weak treatment of social and environmental
impacts at the appraisal stage leads to weak assessments of outcomes at the evaluation stage.
Focusing on the planning cycle for large infrastructure reveals a series of limitations, risks and failures in the manner in which these facilities have
been planned:
Box 3
Limitations of
historical
approaches to
options
assessment
Planning processes for large dams were historically neither inclusive nor open. While actual change in practice
remains slow, there is increasing recognition of the importance of inclusive processes.
While the number of options has increased over time, options assessment was typically limited in scope due to
political and economic interests driving large infrastructure projects, lack of familiarity with other options, the
perceived need to quickly proceed with large-scale projects to meet large projections in demand and the
relative ease of developing new supply relative to undertaking policy or institutional reform.
Project planning and evaluation for large scale projects was confined primarily to technical parameters and
the narrow application of economic cost–benefit analyses. Many sectoral studies aimed at finding least-cost
supply solutions for providing a single service.
Even where opportunities for the participation of affected people and environmental and social impact
assessments have been provided, they often occur late in the process, are limited in scope, and even in the
2000s their influence in project selection remains marginal.
Comprehensive Options Assessment for sustainable development of infrastructure
Training Manual
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