MULTINATIONAL ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIAL ASSESSMENT SERVICES (MESAS)

MESAS, LLC is an association of independent consultants specializing in the environmental, social and cultural dimensions of major energy and water resource installations. Our expertise includes projects to rehabilitate displaced populations, as well as plans for community development, and socio-economic survey design.

Areas of Emphasis—

Each of MESAS, LLC's internationally known professionals has between 15 and 40 years of experience, including membership in international advisory panels for hydro projects, in such fields as Hydrology, Aquatic Ecology, Wildlife Inventory, Natural Resources Management, Risk Analysis, Watershed Management Planning, Environmental Anthropology, Institutional Development, Rural Sociology, Resettlement Planning, Community Participation, and Social Policy, and Privatization and Planning of Hydroelectric and Multi-Purpose Water Resources Development. Contact MESAS, LLC to learn about availability, rates, and services.

MESAS, LLC Prepares and Manages Implementation of:		MESAS, LLC Provides Comprehensive Expert Services:
Environmental Impact Assessments Property Transfer Contamination Surveys Pollution Liability Evaluations Social Impact Assessments Political Risk Assessments Resettlement and Rehabilitation Action Plans Community Development Training Programs Hydroelectric and Water Resources Development Tourism Development Services download brochure, Acrobat pdf file, 1.9 MB		Identify local government and co-financing institution requirements for EIAs and SIAs; perform EIA and SIA studies; identify political risks. Identify standards and regulations for emissions and effluent. Review legislative requirements and national capability for land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R); prepare comprehensive assessment of social impacts; recruit local expertise; provide environmental & social management training. Screen sites and scope projects; identify key environmental and social issues and required mitigations. Supervise environmental management at construction and operations stages; perform environmental audits. Survey site contamination; evaluate environmental impairment liabilities; perform hydrogeologic surveys; prepare remediation cost estimates and remediation plans; act as regulatory agency liaison and supervise remediation. Review legislative requirements and national capability for land acquisitions, resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R); prepare comprehensive assessment of social impacts; recruit local expertise; provide environmental and social management training; design and administer socio-economic and baseline surveys. Review river basin development plan, electric system generation expansion plan, and initial project. Conduct due-diligence study to select project installation, and assess economic and financial justification.

Project Accomplishments—

The individual and collective expertise of MESAS, LLC's principals assures our clients a high level of professional service. We have served clients in a wide range of infrastructure, industrial, energy, and natural resource development projects in forty countries, located in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and North America. Explore Our Environmental and Social Resources Web Site! We have provided a number of articles and photographic essays.

Our clients have included: World Bank (WB); Asian Development Bank (ADB); United States Agency for International Development (USAID); AUSAID (Australian International Development Cooperation); Inter-American Development Bank; Eximbank; International Finance Corporation (IFC); United Nations Development Program (UNDP); Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), UNHCR, CITES, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and Lloyds of London, as well as numerous independent power producers (IPPs), and engineering firms, including Harza, Morrison-Knudsen, Electricité de France, Lotti & Associati, Mott McDonald, SOGREAH, Worley, Meritec, Maunsell, Nippon Koei, Oriental Consultants, Northwest Hydaulic Consultants, Dames & Moore, Nexant, and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

We have provided services to engineering firms meeting multilateral lending agency policy guidelines, such as those of the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, and the regional development banks for Africa, Asia and Latin America and insurance institutions, such as the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), as well as turnkey environmental and social assessment services due diligence study and economic and financial evaluation of potential power projects for private power developers.

Let Us Introduce Our Principal Associates—

... Tod A. Ragsdale, PhD ... Stefan Jan Filip Gorzula, PhD ...
... Mark G.Hodges ... Leei-Luoh Wang, MSCE, PE ... Wyre "Herb" Platt, Ph.D. ...

Select Photos to See Larger View with Caption
National Minority Women, China	Tod A. Ragsdale, PhD, see detailed CV, go back to list MESAS Co-Founder and Principal. Dr. Ragsdale has more than twenty years experience in socioeconomics, as well as environment and development anthropology. He has worked for the World Bank the Asian Development Bank, and JICA, as well as for consulting and engineering firms (inter alia, Morrison Knudsen, Harza, Electricité de France, SOGREAH, Worley, Meritec, Maunsell, Electrowatt, Fichtner, Nippon Koei, Oriental Consultants, Northwest Hydaulic Consultants, Nexant), on socioeconomic, cultural and environmental issues surrounding some twenty large scale development projects, including Resettlement in, inter alia, India, China, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Philippines, Tajikistan, Jordan, Somalia, and Zambia. Dr. Ragsdale's Services encompassed project preparation, supervision, monitoring, and evaluation. His experience also includes social impact assessment for urban electrification, community development, social funds, rural water and sanitation, public health, irrigation, education, minority and indigenous peoples development plans, and social forestry. In addition to being a principal for MESAS, Dr. Ragsdale has been a Principal Consultant for PriceWaterhouseCoopers' Management Consulting Services (MCS) and Social Development Specialist on the Independent Panel of Experts for the Nam Leuk Hydroelectric Project in the Lao PDR and the Zhejiang Shanxi Water Supply Project in Wenzhou, China, and is currently on the Panel of Experts for the ADB-financed Melamchi Water Supply Project for Kathmandu Valley, Nepal .
Crocodile Survey	Stefan Jan Filip Gorzula, PhD, see detailed CV, go back to list Environment and natural resources specialist. Dr. Gorzula has more than 30 years of experience in environmental/social impacts of development projects, environmental legislation, river basin management, wildlife conservation and management, CITES, ecological inventories, human impacts on biodiversity, biomedicine, and endemic and protected areas. He has spent 24 years living and working in developing countries. He has described 2 new genera and 22 new species of reptiles and amphibians. A species of frog, a species group, and an endemic plant are name after him. He has led teams of between 3 to 20 personnel. As a manager, he planned and handled the CITES survey budgets in Guyana and Ghana, and the field budgets of the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas (IVIC), the Venezuelan Ministry of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (MARNR), and the Dai Ninh Hydro in Vietnam. He is experienced with UN, World Bank, and USAID protocols and procedures. Geographic experience: More than one year in Guyana, Nepal, United Kingdom, USA, Vietnam, and Venezuela; Three months to one year in Ghana, and Brazil; Less than three months in Australia, Ecuador, Holland, Papua New Guinea, Spain, Switzerland, and Tunisia. Fluent in English and Spanish, working knowledge of Portuguese.
ADB Phillipines, Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Assessment	Mark G. Hodges, see detailed CV, go back to list Environmental Engineer. Mr. Hodges has over 25 years of experience in air pollution control and management, environmental regulatory compliance review and in the performance and management of Asian Development Bank, World Bank and host country-compliant Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) and associated Environmental Management Plans (EMP) for thermal power, hydroelectric and petrochemical projects. His experience includes long and short-term assignments in the US and over 30 countries in Central and South America, Caribbean, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Asia Pacific and Russia, where he has provided senior technical services in the areas of EIAs for a wide range of industrial and power generation projects – including all types of renewable energy, fossil fuel fired projects of all sizes, associated pipelines, fuel delivery and power transmission. Services provided also include all aspects of air pollution measurement, control and management; development and review of environmental regulations for air quality management; documentation and training programs in support of development of host-country environmental management capabilities; and integrated collaboration with social and economic impact assessment specialists.
Zhanghewan Pumped-Storage Project, China	Leei-Luoh Wang, MSCE, PE, see detailed CV, go back to list Hydropower and Water Resources Planning Engineer. Mr. Wang has over 40 years of experience in privatization of hydropower projects, selection of river basin development plans, least-cost generation expansion plans, initial projects, and optimum project development including power installations. He has served in various capacities, including resident chief of party, team leader, project manager, and lead planning engineer, for over 50 major hydroelectric and water resources projects in 20 countries in Asia, Central and South America, Africa, and United States. Mr. Wang has also served as staff and independent consultant to Asian Development Bank and a number of independent power producers and engineering firms, for review of technical documents on privatization of hydroelectric projects, load forecast, generation expansion plan, and economic analysis of hydropower and water resources development.
Water impoundment outside Grande Recife, Pernambuco in Northeast Brasil	Wyre "Herb" Platt, Ph.D. see detailed CV, go back to list Infrastructure Development and Social Impact Analyst. Dr. Platt has more than 32 years of experience in the performance and management of social (SIA) and poverty impact assessments, and participatory planning in support of a wide range of power generation, agricultural, industrial, mining and minerals, and civil works projects. Worldwide, his primary interests are socio-economic, including involuntary resettlement effects, sociocultural, environmental health, and physical accessibility issues resulting from large-scale development projects that impact rural and urban communities; in particular, the vulnerable subpopulations. He has participated in scoping sessions, environmental impact assessments (EIA), fatal flaw analyses, and cultural resource inventories for the construction or expansion of power plants and linear facilities in Pakistan, India, and Jamaica. He has conducted social soundness assessments for the female-dominated cottage industries in rural Bangladesh, and social and poverty impact assessments of illegal land occupants in Costa Rica. Regarding voluntary resettlement and migration issues, his major subspecialties are primary health care utilization, accessibility to rural clinics, and tropical disease control programs, principally malaria, schistosomiasis, onchocerciasis, dracunculiasis (Guinea worm) and trypanosomiasis (Chagas’ disease). Dr. Platt has served on long-term assignments in Northeast Brazil (five years) and on the western slopes of the Guatemalan Highlands (one year). Dr. Platt is currently participating in a working group to define and standardize terms of reference for Environmental, Social and Health Impact Assessments, as part of the preparations for the forthcoming 2007 world conference for the International Association of Impact Assessment (IAIA).

You Can Reach MESAS at mesas@his.com to learn about availability,
rates, and services.

Explore Our Web Site!

MESAS ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIAL RESOURCE Page
The MESAS, LLC Environment and Social Resource page focuses on the environmental and socio-cultural and issues surrounding large scale infrastructure projects, with reference materials about best practices case studies in such countries as China, India and Nepal; World Bank and Asian Development Bank environmental and social guidelines for project preparation, supervision, monitoring, and evaluation; and valuable Internet links for environmental, social science, and involuntary resettlement sources on the web. The MESAS, LLC Environmental and Social Resources page is new and continually under construction.

Environmental Science
The Development of Resettlement Policy in China: Two Case Studies in Sichuan and Hebei Provinces; RAGSDALE, Tod (Mesas, LLC) and BIZER, John (Harza Engineering). 1997. Resettlement Issues in China. Presented at WaterPower 97 Conference, August 1997 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Involuntary Meets Disaster Mitigation Resettlement: A Case Study from Erosion Mitigation on the Lower Brahmaputra/Jamuna River in Bangladesh; RAGSDALE, Tod (MESAS, LLC); OBERHAGEMANN, Knut (nhc); and FAISAL, M. Amir (BWDB, Chief Resettlement Officer). Presented at the Expanding the Borders of Disaster-caused Displacement Research (INDR) Session of the 68th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in Memphis, TN (The Public Sphere and Engaged Scholarship: Challenges and Opportunities for Applied Anthropology. March 28, 2008:
click link to download this report .
(708 kb pdf file, Adobe Acrobat)
Insurance Institutions
Social Assessment Services

Gurung, Goorkhalis, Gurkhas: Speculations on a Nepalese Ethno-History. RAGSDALE, Tod (Mesas, LLC) Contributions to Nepalese Studies CNAS, Tribhuvan University, Vol. 17, No. 1,
January 1990..
click link to download this article.
(194 kb pdf file, Adobe Acrobat)

Tourism Development Services:
click link to download our brochure.
(1.9 MB pdf file, Adobe Acrobat)

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