On Nov. 18, people gathered into a conference room at the Dodds Center for Human Rights to answer one question: Why should we care about sustainability and human rights in infrastructure projects?
As a part of the “Why Human Rights Matter” seminar series, speaker Motoko Aizawa, an author and researcher in the sustainability challenges of mega-infrastructure projects, discussed her research on the matter.
Before Aizawa began speaking, Anthony Cotton, who works at the Office for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, gave a brief introduction to the seminar.
He shared three realities that face infrastructure projects today: The proliferation of massive regional and national infrastructure projects, the turn towards private finance for funding projects and the absence of a framework to evaluate the human rights impact of infrastructure projects.
Once Aizawa began her presentation, she introduced her idea for a human rights framework, arguing that such a framework can help decide the impacts of an infrastructure project to people, find benefits and mitigate harmful impacts.
If decision makers take these factors into account, it will keep infrastructure projects affordable and meet sustainability goals, according to Aizawa. She added that 80% of sustainability goals could be met by following these guidelines.
Next, Aizawa shared her analytical framework and an infrastructure project’s micro, meso and macro human rights impacts.
The micro level concerns the project’s impact on the people and the surrounding environment. Aizawa says it’s important to implement safeguard policies that would address the loss of biodiversity a project brings, along with protecting the rights of the workers and the community immediately affected by the project.
The meso level, a level between the micro and macro levels, addresses a project’s affordability, accessibility and quality.
The macro level concerns the larger societal impact of a project. Policies at this level should make sure not to reinforce inequality when building new infrastructure, ensure construction companies aren’t prohibiting free speech on their projects and that corners aren’t being cut during the process. There are human rights and sustainability impacts throughout an infrastructure project, from project selection to decommission, that one can’t ignore, according to Aizawa.
There was also an explosion of infrastructure projects that need funding. From plans in Africa and Latin America, to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), there is a wealth of projects that need funding that the public sector can’t meet. Which is where public-private partnerships come into play.
Aizawa also discussed the pros and cons of creating public-private partnerships to build projects. While the private sector has the capital to fund infrastructure projects, Aizawa said a government “can’t overlook their responsibility to the people,” and instead they need to balance the risk tied to a project between both the private and public sectors so that the people aren’t left with a huge bill to pay if things go awry.
To conclude her presentation, Aizawa summarized her main points as recommendations to consider when starting a new project. Decision-makers should use human rights frameworks to enhance positive impacts and reduce the negative; they should be mindful of past patterns of discrimination and help contractors use existing tools to measure human rights impacts.
Paul Rissman, co-founder of Rights CoLab, a global network of human rights advocates and experts, provided a response after Aizawa’s presentation, where he went more in-depth on this topic.
In contrast to Aizawa and her talk about PPP’s, Rissman argued that pension funds are future vehicles to fund infrastructure projects. According to Congress.gov, there is a total of $37.2 trillion held in retirement assets as of 2022.
Although pension fiduciaries are some of the least risk-averse people – according to Rissman – they can’t ignore the fact that economic output will decline by 25% in the next two decades due to climate change. If a fiduciary wants to curb this decline and provide a good return for their pensioners, it would be in their best interest to fund infrastructure projects that take care of its human rights impact since human rights and climate change are inextricably linked to each other.
Rissman signed off his response by acknowledging that creating infrastructure that addresses climate change and human rights would be a monumental challenge. “It’s not going to be easy — no one’s said it was easy — but sort of the fate of the world hangs in the balance. So, we better do it, even though it’s difficult,” he said.
Third-semester computer science and molecular and cell biology major Charli Hughes liked some of the points Aizawa and Rissman brought up. “I was really interested in how human rights applications can be good for business. … [and] in learning more about how maybe that’s not a trade-off and the two coexist and, like, it’s beneficial financially to respect people’s rights,” said Hughes.
“One major point I thought was interesting [was] talking about the financial crisis in 2008 and how that was born from inequality and just living in world with such a stark wealth gap,” Hughes said. “I took away that by reducing that wealth gap, we can all benefit as a society.”