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tion or water and sanitary investments have been made
with poverty reduction in mind. Alas, the great major-
ity of private investments are related to either resource
exploitation or allocated to upper and middle-income
developing countries. Most infrastructure development
in developing countries is a product of international
donor policies supporting existing power structures,
institutions and elites. The majority of these policies
are not effectively sensitive towards gender issues and
impoverished groups, although their official goals may
say otherwise. However, on the local level there are
several notable exceptions like Aga Khan Rural Support
Programme in Northern Pakistan.
The fact that infrastructure development often acts
counter to reducing poverty is reflected on different lev-
els from global to local arenas. The structural and global
economic policies of the World Bank, the IMF and
other large institutions require the same development
responses across widely different contexts and cultures
(Stiglitz 2000). These projects are often directed at, or
containing large infrastructure components. Frequently,
such development approaches disagree with the needs
of the poor and instead strengthens local elites and cor-
rupt systems. Secondly, bilateral attempts are almost al-
ways influenced by global power games. Thus bilateral,
and even multilateral aid officially aimed at alleviating
poverty seldom challenge dysfunctional social systems
and elites, and may instead strengthen powerful local
actors like local politicians and contactors. The resultant
infrastructure development usually benefits only a few
already powerful interests. Hydropower and road de-
velopment in the Himalayas is a typical example where
great benefits are extracted, and then distributed, and
often exported, among a relatively small group of actors.
And since infrastructure development mostly reinforces
existing power structures locally and nationally, the basic
social determinants of poverty, such as gender bias, ex-
cessive use of local resources, lack of local control etc. re-
main unchanged. Albeit there are many instances where
privatized infrastructure development have proven more
effective and providing better services to the public than
public services (Harris /Worldbank, 2003). However, it
is crucial to bear in mind that the far majority of the road
construction, such as in tropical rainforests are built pri-
marily to serve logging or mining companies, and are
not built primarily to improve sanitation or local trade
opportunities in rural areas.
As infrastructure development projects to a wide extent
are designed to extract resources and capital is widely
channeled through economic networks, impoverished
rural local populations get very little in return. Many
of the areas with extreme exploitation rates of timber
and minerals, only the few workers directly involved
benefit through employment, while many local popula-
tions often are in direct conflict with the companies, as
they become exposed to environmental pressures. This
said, it is also clear that infrastructure development can
be important for poverty alleviation, but only when it is
directed towards that purpose, such as to increase local
trade opportunities for areas that have the potential for
surplus production (Leinbach, 1995), increased access
to basic health care provide such will be made available,
and also sometimes improved sanitation and education.
Once again, this is only the case where the development
is an active part of a larger and well-coordinated effort
that simultaneously aims to reduce or mitigate the
negative impacts. As illustrated from the major larger
construction projects in the Mekong, this is too often not
the case. Furthermore, most of the piecemeal develop-
ment takes place by the expansion of the secondary road
network, which is often directed towards exploitation
opportunities of minerals or timber. If the development
does not have economic and welfare development of lo-
cal populations as a direct objective including actual real-
life implementation funds, infrastructure will generally
not contribute to poverty alleviation.