This key sheet examines how social exclusion influences the provision of infrastructure services that meet the needs of poor people. Infrastructure is both a source of benefits (immediately through employment, and in the long term from education and health facilities and from transport, water, irrigation and flood control); but also a cost, as livelihoods are disrupted by infrastructure-related displacement or externalities (pollution, traffic accidents, etc.). Unless their interests are considered explicitly, socially excluded groups may bear the costs of infrastructure development, but receive few of the benefits.
Tim Conway. Edited by Elizabeth Cromwell