A/HRC/43/45/Add.1 affected communities are required. In many cases, the exploitation of “renewable” resources – such as hydroelectric power – entails a significant impact on human rights and the environment. Although a bill on free, prior and informed consultations was prepared and presented to the Plurinational Legislative Assembly in 2014, it has not been further considered since then. 41. Many of the infrastructure projects are financed by international financial institutions and multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank and the Development Bank of Latin America. For such projects, the Government is required to comply with their environmental and social safeguards. However, their environmental and social safeguards do not explicitly refer to human rights or include a comprehensive human rights impact assessment, but deal with specific environmental and social issues, such as the environment, gender, involuntary settlement and indigenous peoples, in a piecemeal manner. Furthermore, while those environmental and social safeguards tend to focus on “up-front” requirements, prior to the approval of loans, there have been reported cases in which loans were approved even before the necessary environmental and social impact assessments had been carried out.87 42. Bilateral lenders such as the Chinese development banks are increasingly important players in infrastructure projects. China has supported a number of strategic infrastructure projects, such as the San José hydroelectric power plant and the construction of roads in Rurrenabaque, El Espino and El Sillar. The growing importance and influence of China is also evident from the fact that it is now the country’s biggest bilateral creditor and one of the biggest among all external creditors.88 However, while it has significantly improved in recent years, the regulatory framework aimed at preventing and mitigating any negative environmental impact of the Chinese international lending and outbound investment, a comprehensive framework for explicitly ensuring respect for and protection of human rights is still lacking.89 43. The implementation of infrastructure projects should be based on adequate human rights impact assessments and the free, prior and informed consent of affected communities. There is a clear need for comprehensive and robust legislation on human rights impact assessments for infrastructure projects, based on international human rights norms and standards, in order to ensure transparency and participation of and consultation with potentially affected people in any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources – whether they concern non-renewable or renewable resources. F. Insufficient and uneven distribution of revenue to subnational governments 44. In a decentralized system of administration, the central Government has the responsibility to ensure that subnational governments have adequate resources to fulfil their obligations to provide essential goods and services to the population. Pursuant to Law No. 31 on autonomy and decentralization, the administrative structure has been significantly decentralized and departmental and municipal governments bear substantial responsibilities to provide for public infrastructure and services. However, the level of responsibilities does not appear to be fully commensurate with the level of available resources. The departmental and municipal authorities have limited ability to raise their own revenue and are almost entirely dependent on transfers from the central Government. Departmental governments’ 87 88 89 14 See, for example, John Redwood, Managing the Environmental and Social Impacts of a Major IDBFinanced Road Improvement Project: The Case of Santa Cruz–Puerto Suarez Highway in Bolivia (Washington, D.C., Inter-American Development Bank, 2012), pp. 4–5; and Rebecca Ray Kevin P. Gallagher and Cynthia Sanborn, “Standardizing sustainable development? Development banks in the Andean Amazon” (Boston, Global Development Policy Center, 2018), pp. 7–10. Central Bank of Bolivia, figures as of 28 February 2019 (on file). See Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, “A human rights focus to upgrade China’s international lending”, Chinese Journal of Global Governance, vol. 5, No. 1 (15 March 2019); and Ray, Gallagher and Sanborn, “Standardizing sustainable development?”.