Community Benefits
CASA-1000 Community Support Program (CSP)
CASA-1000 brings in community support programs (CSPs) across the four partnering countries to help improve livelihoods of communities along the transmission line and foster local development. CSPs demonstrate a socially sustainable approach to large infrastructure investments by promoting community-led local development and sharing the benefits among communities along the CASA-1000 transmission corridor.
The commercial framework of the CASA-1000 project is designed to continue supporting the communities along the transmission corridor by providing them a share of energy transaction revenues. During the project’s operation phase, a mechanism for the provision of direct support to the communities will ensure continued funding to the CSPs that will be established as part of CASA-1000 during construction.
CSP in Kyrgyzstan
Implemented by the Community Development and Investment Agency of the Kyrgyz Republic (ARIS) in cooperation with the Aga Khan Foundation, CASA-1000 CSP in Kyrgyzstan covers 77 villages (located within 36 aiyl aimaks and 5 cities) in Osh, Jalal-Abad and Batken oblasts.
CASA-1000 Community Support Program (CSP) seeks to engage target communities in planning, decision-making, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating investments at the local level, as well as conducting capacity building activities.
CASA-1000 CSP works in three areas: enhancement of electricity supply, improvement of social infrastructure and services, and provision of funding to income-generating facilities.
The CSP is designed as a community-driven project that targets youth and women by offering them awareness-raising and social responsibility promoting activities enabling youth and women to gain new skills and find employment. To engage these target groups, the CSP organized social mobilization activities both in the traditional format (round tables, village meetings, focus groups) and online to meet the social distancing requirement during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this context, with technical assistance from the World Bank, ARIS developed an innovative digital communication platform. In total, the online activities, including public consultations and subproject selection, engaged 794,226 beneficiaries (51% women, 47% youth and 3% anonymous participants) who posted 379,489 comments (from November 2020 to July 2023).
CSP in Tajikistan
The CSP in Tajikistan aims at increasing the quality of, and access to, energy, social, and economic infrastructure services. It also aims to contribute towards strengthening local governance in communities in the project area.
The key components of the CSP focus on improving rural electricity supply; providing community-led investments in socio-economic infrastructure; community mobilization, capacity building, and local governance along the corridor of CASA-1000 transmission line. The improvement of quality of electricity supply focuses on two areas of the country covering 60 villages with about 130,000 people along the corridor of the CASA-1000 transmission line in the northern, central, and southern segments as it passes through Tajikistan; and 50 villages of about 73,000 people in the city of Isfara in Tajikistan.
As part of the support on community-led investments in socio-economic infrastructure, the CSP finances subgrants to villages to support priority small-scale socio-economic infrastructure investments in villages covering 24 Jamoats (sub-districts). Infrastructure other than for electrical supply that could also be funded through CSP include medical clinics, kindergartens, street lighting, schools, village-level water supply and sanitation stations, small-scale rehabilitation of on-farm irrigation systems and tertiary roads, as well as economic infrastructure.
The CSP supports the mobilization of communities and youth and local capacity building activities along the transmission corridor and target areas of Isfara city. This includes financing activities that support participatory needs assessment, planning and prioritization, implementation and monitoring of communities, targeted support for youth engagement, and innovative social accountability mechanisms as well as capacity building for good local governance.
Given the importance of community understanding of the CASA-1000 and the CSP as a benefit-sharing mechanism, the project undertakes communication and outreach activities related to the construction of the CASA-1000 Transmission Line.
CSP in Afghanistan
The Community Support Program (CSP) in Afghanistan aims to increase the shared prosperity associated with the project for communities along the CASA-1000 transmission corridor. This includes individuals and communities located within the 4 km wide and 562 km long (2,248 square km) transmission line in Afghanistan.
The CSP is designed to provide: (a) community support activities and feasible power projects from alternate sources to the affected communities without access to power supply; and (b) other development projects with a socio-economic impact in communities that already have access to power. In November 2020, the project was augmented to include, as part of the COVID-19 relief efforts, Social Inclusion Grants and Maintenance and Construction Cash Grants to provide communities with food and livelihoods.
In terms of Community Service Standards Grants and Community Mobilization, of the 711 communities targeted, 631 had been mobilized, 626 had established Community Development Councils, 610 had completed Community Development Plans, and 514 had submitted a total of 529 subproject proposals to be financed under the project. The activities that were planned to be undertaken under these subprojects included grid extensions but also infrastructure and socio-economic sub-projects such as road access, irrigation, water, and sanitation.
The implementation of the CSP activities in Afghanistan was suspended on August 15, 2021.
CSP in Pakistan
The Community Support Program (CSP) in Pakistan is being implemented to directly benefit the communities located along the transmission line which is passing through three districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan including Khyber, Peshawar, and Nowshera. Based on the community-driven development model, the CSP is sharing the socio-economic benefits associated with CASA-1000 and generating local support for the construction of the transmission line.
The CSP in Pakistan aims to improve access to local infrastructure and basic services by strengthening community engagement in the project target areas. With the active participation and direct involvement of the local communities, the CSP has been supporting, through sub-projects, various local development activities such as rehabilitation of primary schools, improvement of basic health units, construction of drinking water facilities, development of farm-to-market roads, etc.
In all these activities, the CSP in Pakistan has adopted a community-driven development model whereby community members are enabled to form their representative Community Development Councils (CDCs) within their villages. These communities, through their councils, are identifying and prioritizing the local development needs of the villages involving community stakeholders across the board. The communities then receive infrastructure grants and technical assistance from the CSP to plan and oversee the construction, operation, and maintenance of their own local development sub-projects.
The sub-projects identified and prioritized by the communities in the villages across the Khyber, Peshawar, and Nowshera districts can be categorized into the following two broad categories.
Goodwill Schemes: Based on the frequent and priority community demands, the CSP has initiated “goodwill” schemes for quick impact as a means of building trust and mobilizing communities. Implementation is underway on 17 goodwill schemes, including rehabilitation of government girls’ primary schools and basic health facilities in all the project districts. The goodwill schemes include rehabilitation of eight government girl’s primary schools and nine basic health facilities.
Community Development Council Schemes: The communities in the project target areas are articulating their development needs and priorities through their representative CDCs. Following the phase-wise approval of these sub-projects, the CDCs are being awarded the financial means and technical assistance to undertake their development initiatives such as, drinking water supply, irrigation tube wells, farm to market roads, lining of water courses, street pavements with drainage, etc. A total of 166 CDC schemes will be implemented in the project target areas under the CSP in Pakistan.
The CASA-1000 Project aims to involve the local communities living along the route of the transmission line infrastructure. Community Benefit Sharing studies for all the project countries are in progress. Based on the studies and in consultation with the Joint Working Groups of the four project countries, community benefits will be appropriately incorporated into the project components during the periods of design, construction, and operation. By encouraging community benefit sharing, the CASA-1000 Project can demonstrate good practice for other large infrastructure projects in the region.
The contracts were awarded to UN-Habitat, Afghanistan for Afghanistan, SABAWON for Pakistan, and Foundation to Support Civil Society Initiatives, Tajikistan for the Central Asian countries.