HIV Impact Assessment Tools for Large Oil and Gas Projects: What Are They and Do They Work?

摘要

Increasingly, large oil and gas projects are planned and executed in those areas of the world that have been most affected by the HIV epidemic. Both the UN Development Programme and the World Bank have recognized that a large infrastructure project has the potential to dramatically impact the shape and speed of the underlying disease epidemic curve. As a result of this concern, specific analytic analysis tools have been developed. HIV Impact Assessment (HIA) has now become a required element for all World Bank environmental impact assessments (EIAs). The underlying rational for the HIA is that development projects often do not recognize the potential consequences of substantial population movements and interactions on the overall shape of a country-specific epidemic curve. The intermixing of groups of people with inherently different HIV risk profiles and prevalence rates can create and amplify an environment for high-risk behavior. There are a variety of published and proprietary analytical models that are available to assess the potential social and economic impacts and costs related to HIV prior to the implementation of development projects. The result of the HIA directly leads to an analysis of possible alternatives and mitigation measures, including preventive medicine strategies and community outreach programs. We have compared several of the available HIA models in a series of simulations for prototypical oil and gas projects, e.g., pipeline construction, oil field development, etc. The models vary dramatically in their ease of use, data input requirements and inherent uncertainty that produces a wide range of potential outcomes and significant impacts. Given the public scrutiny of oil and gas projects and their impacts, the industry should consider developing or agreeing on a scientifically based common platform for performing an HIA.