Sectoral Practices and Experiences in Coordination (SPEC)

Sectoral Practices and Experiences in Coordination (SPEC)

Infrastructure

What are Sectoral Practices and Experiences in Coordination (SPEC)?

An important part of the S/CRS mandate is to ensure that best practices and lessons learned from past USG stabilization and reconstruction operations fully inform policymaking, planning and operations. As part of this mandate, S/CRS issues a series of reports on best practices and experiences across the S&R sectors—security, governance and participation humanitarian assistance and social well-being, economic stabilization, infrastructure, and justice and reconciliation. These reports aim to promote awareness of sectoral lessons learned among USG civilian and military policymakers, planners, and deploying field personnel, and are used in training and outreach efforts.

What is Infrastructure?

Infrastructure pertains to the physical, man-made facilities to support human welfare and activities. In a post-conflict environment, infrastructure projects support all sectors’ objectives, and are particularly instrumental to economic recovery, reconstruction and growth.

Post-conflict reconstruction places greater stress on infrastructure aspects typically taken for granted in stable periods. There is even greater need but less time and fewer resources for comprehensive planning, and determination of what infrastructure development is sustainable to recover from and reduce the sources of conflict, to improve the quality of life and to reduce poverty. This includes meeting immediate essential needs to provide for a population’s basic “survival needs.”

Beyond meeting essential needs, ideally, infrastructure facilities are built according to a comprehensive plan based on an assessment of conflict potential and of all sector needs. Additionally, the post-conflict environment typically will have damaged and/or destroyed much of the man-made and natural environment degrading a population’s ability to provide for its own subsistence. The infrastructure solutions should either improve or do as little damage as possible to fragile natural environments where indigenous populations lack economic opportunity and/or live in poverty. In addition to being sustainable by the indigenous population, infrastructure solutions must provide economic opportunities to as many people as possible with a particular focus on the poorest and most vulnerable, must be useable and must be sustainable by the indigenous population, with as little outside dependency as possible.

Typically, infrastructure addresses a country’s or region’s needs toward meeting essential and evolving human needs in:

· Potable water supply

· Sanitation and waste management

· Housing, shelter

· Food marketing, distribution and production

· Commercial and service enterprises

· Public use facilities

· Energy development and distribution

· Transportation

· Communication

· Natural resource planning and development

· Industrial processing

Lessons Learned in Infrastructure:

Establish access to basic services first. Access to and availability of potable water, sanitation, power, transportation, and communication is fundamental for people to be able to participate in any other form of communal activity like town forums, elections and jobs. Rebuilding unserviceable or nonexistent basic infrastructure facilities reduces the demand for humanitarian aid and emergency medical services, and if scaled appropriately enables a population to participate in its own recovery, thereby increasing the chances for increased economic opportunity and regional stability.

Plan infrastructure reconstruction around a post-conflict needs assessment. The post-conflict needs assessment is both a methodology and a process. The methodology involves the technical assessment of recovery needs and the development of a post-conflict transition strategy. This encompasses a thorough conflict assessment to identify the sources of instability and violent conflict, the local capacity to resist these sources, and the role infrastructure might play in helping to mitigate or eliminate these sources of violence. The process involves multiple stakeholder—including host nation—consultation, negotiation, and analysis to assist stakeholders to agree on priorities, commitments, and activities. Infrastructure solutions must address short and mid-term needs (e.g., essential services) that must achieve long-term sustainability (e.g., economic growth, rule of law, poverty reduction, and environmental protection). The needs assessment helps shape an effective, integrated, and sustainable infrastructure plan that addresses emerging priorities at the local, community-based level that will ultimately support national level stability.

Infrastructure plans should support and complement the objectives of other sectors. Embedded in this lesson is the idea of coordination and timing. Many infrastructure projects take lots of time and resources to build. If the local conditions and security environment are not conducive to long-term construction, the country plan must accommodate ways to properly scale the project and the best time to start the project—when the likelihood of success is greatest, as well as ways to allocate the funding and human capital to what local people concur are the most pressing and timely sector objectives (such as providing the kinds of basic services listed above).

In spite of violence, seek a level of security and stability for infrastructure reconstruction to occur. It is physically very difficult, and certainly very costly, to build under fire. Infrastructure work is particularly vulnerable to poor security and renewed conflict because of the predictable nature of construction projects. Focus first on establishing environment that is as secure and stable as possible, but do not assume that progress cannot be made under fire. This makes it especially important to use the locally-developed needs assessment to help determine those infrastructure projects that will best mitigate drivers of conflict (e.g., building or upgrading roads to markets; access to potable well water or irrigation).

Strive for environmentally and socially sustainable infrastructure. Ultimately, indigenous people must inform, accept, use, and sustain their own infrastructure facilities. The design of infrastructure facilities needs to take into account technical capabilities of the local population as well as the existing environmental conditions so that the host nation is not dependent on outside expertise and resources. Infrastructure should be scaled to provide sustained entrepreneurial opportunities for stakeholders, not just for the few and fleeting construction jobs and the fewer and highly skilled operational jobs.

Seek to build indigenous capacity. Historically, this has been the most difficult area for progress. Building indigenous capacity requires balancing the need to engage indigenous population with their capabilities to build, operate and service infrastructure of the quality and scale that makes the greatest practical sense to them. Success in implementing sustainable infrastructure, as well as in other areas across all sectors, depends on building capacity in three areas: the operating environment or business climate; institutions and organizations (e.g., a capable and transparent civil service able to make and effectively carry-out policy decisions under a rule of law); and individuals (e.g., technical expertise and personal responsibility for delivering results). Identify and make use of applicable, skilled, local talent.

Guard against infrastructure projects facilitating forces of violence and instability. New roads, for example, can foster economic development and security, but can also enable movement of terrorists/insurgents unless adequately secured. Similarly, newly established potable water supplies can be seized by local actors, such as persons who may deny access to or extort support for the insurgency for its use.

Design infrastructure projects to negate or minimize environmental problems. Environmental problems can be a source of poverty and conflict. Design infrastructure projects to mitigate the impact or to even solve environmental problems. Infrastructure projects can improve industrial processes to eliminate waste, reduce consumption, and recycle resources. They can also clean up polluted sites and restore natural environments and ecosystems to the support and benefit of the indigenous people recovering from post-conflict.

No long-term infrastructure development without sustaining economic policies. Create an environment for investing in infrastructure for economic growth. Historically, no country has been able to achieve sustained economic growth without investing in its infrastructure, and no country has been able to afford infrastructure without the economic growth necessary to pay for the infrastructure. As a consequence, long-term infrastructure development is not effective or sustainable without sound, host nation economic policies. In the post-conflict environment, foreign investment in host nation infrastructure is needed but requires economic assurances to protect their investments (e.g., enforced property and contract laws and regulations, financial institutions to manage payments and cash flows, credible legal procedures to address and manage disputes, system of fair and transparent competition).

Fight corruption that is characteristically associated with infrastructure projects. Enhance transparency of stakeholders, of project information, of the project development stages, and of accountability throughout the project cycle. Historically, corruption associated with infrastructure projects has been evident among all participants and at all stages of infrastructure development. Corruption is one of the greatest inhibitors worldwide of cost-effective, appropriate infrastructure development resulting in unnecessary, unsuitable, defective or dangerous projects. This includes: excessive gifts and gratuities; political contributions; excessive entertainment; kickbacks; bribery; extortion; black mail; theft; and, fraud.

Want to Know More?

What is S/CRS? The office will lead, coordinate, and institutionalize U.S. Government civilian capacity to prevent or prepare for post-conflict situations, and to help stabilize and reconstruct societies in transition from conflict or civil strife so they can reach a sustainable path toward peace, democracy and a market economy.

Who does S/CRS work with? In addition to USG agencies, S/CRS works with key partners, including research institutes, lessons-learned units, and others, to avoid needless duplication and promote partnership and collaboration on lessons learned tasks.

S/CRS includes sectoral leads (Transitional Security, Rule of Law, Governance, Economics, and Infrastructure) which support the office's planning and conflict prevention efforts, and maintain strong relationships with the interagency community, academia, think tanks, Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) and private sector. Technical expertise is drawn upon to lead the lessons learned, monitoring and evaluation work in S/CRS, embodied in the publication of thematic guides, hosting of lessons learned roundtables, and development of monitoring and evaluation systems to better gauge the effectiveness of USG efforts in conflict countries.