Strategic Advice/Stakeholder Assessment on Proposed Alcoa Aluminum Smelter for Trinidad and Tobago Environmental Management Agency (2006)
CONCUR was a member of a team retained to provide advice to the Trinidad and Tobago Environmental Management Authority (EMA) on the review of a major aluminum smelter proposal. Alcoa applied to the EMA for a Certificate of Environmental Clearance (CEC) to build an aluminum smelter and associated facilities. The proposed smelter would be located on the Cedros Peninsula in southwestern Trinidad and have an annual capacity of 341,000 metric tons. In July 2006, the EMA accepted Alcoa’s CEC application and determined that an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is required. CEC Rules require EIAs to be conducted in compliance with a Terms of Reference (TOR) document.
An international team headed by the Trinidad-based firm DaCosta Gwendoline, Limited (DGE) including CONCUR and the Consensus Building Institute was retained in early September 2006 to assist the EMA in the design of the social impact, public involvement and socioeconomic baseline elements of the TOR.
Central to our approach was a situation assessment, built upon over 20 interviews with a broad cross section of key stakeholders including senior officials of Alcoa, senior government officials, journalists, academicians, local residents, and representatives of the agriculture and fishing communities. The Team used the assessment to identify and clarify the diversity and complexity of stakeholder interests, the range of issues to be engaged, and areas of convergence and divergence among key stakeholders.
The assessment recommended that the TOR call for the EIA process to incorporate steps that address the complexity and high degree of public controversy and elevate the exchange of information. Our team drew on the situation assessment to propose specific language to be included in the final TOR. The EMA consulted with the Applicant, Alcoa and received comments from a broad cross-section of stakeholders and considered our team’s advice to the final TOR issued on October 4, 2006. EMA has adopted these recommendations and will proceed with the environmental review. Specifically, the TOR calls for the use of independent scientific review and neutral facilitation of public workshops in which Alcoa representatives will engage key issues about the smelter with local residents and other interested parties.
Often, public agencies such as the EMA and private parties face a potential dispute and need to size up the situation. A situation or conflict assessment can be defined as “an objective evaluation of the situation conducted by neutral experts based on confidential interviews with stakeholders to provide strategic information and define feasible options for moving the given process forward.” In natural resource management projects, situation assessments can also serve to inform the structure and content of draft resource management plans. We find that such an assessment step lays the foundation for better-informed and better-focused collaborative discussion, whether among technical experts or stakeholders.
In this case, the assessment was focused on:
- identifying and interviewing a representative sample of the most key stakeholders to interview in a very limited timeframe before the issuance of a final TOR;
- identifying issues and concerns to be addressed in the social impact assessment and civic engagement processes for the Alcoa CEC application and specifically the EIA;
- providing greater stakeholder input on the design of the TOR and accompanying public consultation process, in order to generate constructive participation; and
- beginning to re-build trust among the EMA’s staff and other stakeholders.