The World Bank's Forests and Community Project and legal pluralism in Northern Argentina: who decides who participates?

NATALIA CASTELNUOVO BIRABEN; STEPHANIE DE MOERLOOSE

Berlin

Conferencia; IV Annual Conference The Plurality of Law and Development; 2019

Faculty of Law, Humboldt University of Berlin

Development projects financed by the World Bank are often governed by multiple normative systems. Indeed, in addition to the Recipient State?s applicable international, national and local law, the World Bank operational policies and customary norms also govern the behavior of the project stakeholders. These normative systems coexist without always complying with each other. Our paper analyses this situation regarding participation norms in the World Bank ?Forest and Community Project? in Northern Argentina. Legal pluralism is particularly evident here: international law such as the ILO Convention No. 169 coexists with national and provincial law, the World Bank safeguards and different customary normative systems depending on the affected populations, which include indigenous peoples and criollos. We argue that the inconsistency of national and provincial laws with Argentina?s international commitments and the weak application of State law in the border region where the project takes place creates a situation where World Bank safeguards and customary norms are in fact applied primarily. This results in a sui generis participation process for the affected communities, where NGOs have an instrumental role. Our analysis is based on an interdisciplinary method. It combines, on the one hand, doctrinal and theoretical analysis of laws and institutional practices as well as, on the other hand, anthropological field research to gather empirical data.