Awareness and Communication Strategy development and implementation of a comprehensive mitigation plan against adverse environmental impacts To who: Politicians, senior government officials, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), media sector, cooperating partners, and affected communities. How: Mass media, public events, publications, personalities, internet, advertisements, and entertainment. The message should be centred on promoting water resources developments only after an EIA that supports the projects with or without mitigation measures. This requires, among others, assessing and evaluation of information gathered through public scoping meetings involving interested and affected parties (IAPs). The exercise also identifies positive impacts of the development. Issues like poverty reduction, health and educational facilities are dealt with at this stage. For existing projects there are environmental audits which cover similar issues albeit after the fact. However this can still provide information for better management of socioeconomic and environmental impacts. The limitation of EIAs is their scientific jargon. The unclear boundaries of IAPs are limiting. Those IAPs who are reached often do not fully appreciate their rights and privileges with regard to the consultations. Page 38