FutureDAMS Partner: IIED

The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) has a threefold role in FutureDAMS :

Jamie Skinner is the capacity building director and sits on the strategic management team, while contributing to outreach and engagement with practitioners both in case study countries/basins and internationally.

IIED also participates in research work on :

  1. Social impacts of large dams. Social literatures and frameworks for managing displacement, this project will evaluate how the post-project benefit streams from dams promote or undermine equity within (eg gender) and between vulnerable populations (eg upstream-downstream). Moreover, we will determine how impacts of dams on local populations (on community cohesion, livelihoods, asset tenure, gender equality) can best be addressed within practical operational frameworks (the safeguards agenda) to ensure more equitable distribution of benefits (the positive benefits agenda).
  2. Climate finance. Decision making around pathways to low carbon and climate resilient development alongside insights on energy and water investment. The sustainability of infrastructure projects requires resilience to political imperatives, acceptability across the breadth of stakeholders and being aligned with existing and probable future environmental commitments. These in turn influence the finance institutions understandings of the risk of the investment and their interest in both future investment and risk transfer (i.e. insurance). Both public and private financial institutions are searching for opportunities to invest in the low-carbon, climate resilient economy to build ambition for the 2020 and future National Determined Contribution updates and deliver the $100 billion of climate finance promised.

Key staff:

Jamie Skinner   

Clare Shakya

Neha Rai  

About IIED:

IIED is a policy and action research organisation. We promote sustainable development to improve livelihoods and protect the environments on which these livelihoods are built. We specialise in linking local priorities to global challenges. IIED is based in London and works in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and the Pacific, with some of the world’s most vulnerable people. We work with them to strengthen their voice in the decision-making arenas that affect them — from village councils to international conventions.