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Advice today abounds for governments and companies on how to responsibly develop natural resources, with countless hours and workshops put into these efforts to tailor and test the advice. This ranges from the piles of research on the resource curse, the World Bank’s expertise on good resource governance, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, and the mountains of handbooks and good practice guides for companies from the International Finance Corporation, industry associations and consultants on stakeholder engagement, grievance mechanisms and the social license to operate. By way of example, the latest trend appears to be on stakeholder engagement for junior exploration companies and a new hub on security and human rights. Yet there is a dearth of relevant, community-tested and holistic guidance for communities on how to prepare for, make decisions about, and manage the consequences of a mining project landing in their communities. Few if any systematic efforts have been launched to produce such guidance by and for local communities — let alone facilitate access to the human and financial resources needed to act on it.
This is so, despite the wide recognition of the need for capacity-building of all stakeholder groups that is evident in the increasingly frequent multi-stakeholder discussions on mining, and as found in the two-year independent review of the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development (MMSD) initiative. In the post-MMSD world, the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) has been most successful as the industry’s hub in producing and disseminating information about company good practice. Governments, too, have a hub in the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals and Metals and a wealth of support from World Bank and other development bank projects building regulatory capacity. And while communities were meant to have a hub with the Communities and Small-Scale Mining Body at the World Bank, that initiative has stagnated and splintered, though admirable work on artisanal and small-scale mining continues with the Alliance for Responsible Mining.
Working to narrow the gap
To contribute to narrow this gap in community guidance and toolkits, I have been working together with two partners, Futuro Sostenible (Lima, Peru) and Sustainable Development Strategies Group (Denver, Colorado) on an initiative to develop an intercultural and holistic toolkit by and for mining-affected communities, including options for communities to fund the activity of using the toolkit. The toolkit is ultimately a way to help level the playing field for communities, by giving them access to information and tools to respond to the company’s social license, and have a foundation for free, prior and informed consent. We have been laying the groundwork for this initiative over the past two years, by collecting the scattered toolkits and guides for mining-affected and other resource-rich communities, and making them available in the library on this site.
To further our initiative, a few weeks ago we participated in the 5th Global Exploration, Mining and Minerals (GEMM) Dialogue hosted by the Responsible Minerals Sector Initiative at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. There, we hosted a working session to learn from participants’ experiences and lessons about funds for community-capacity building and empowerment, including sources of funds (whether government, project-level, global or regional), existing and proposed models for funding, and related challenges. About 26 people participated in our Working Session, including representatives of government, intergovernmental organizations, mining companies and NGOs, as well as social performance consultants and academics. Close to 100 people participated in the GEMM Dialogue, coming from across Canada, the Americas, and Africa, and including representatives of aboriginal groups, government, mining companies, NGOs, as well as lawyers, consultants and academics.
Some priorities
Our Working Session was a lively discussion teasing out a number of key priorities and challenges with community capacity-building, and ways to fund that activity.
First, mining company representatives spoke about the value to them of empowered local communities. They observed that with a community governance structure in place, the company is more certain of who the right people are to engage with, which also reduces opportunities for conflict likely to arise if the company engages with the ‘wrong’ people. When community members understand their rights and have a community decision-making process in place, the company’s engagements with local communities are more efficient. This makes it easier for the company and communities to find joint opportunities for shared value, especially around local employment. In all, they reflected that the stronger and more capable the community, the more durable the community’s relationship with the company and government were.
Second, participants recognized that community capacity-building (especially around community rights, decision-making and governance, in addition to the mining process) should happen early – before the mining project starts and any exploration companies arrive on the lands. They also saw the need to carry this capacity-building out independently of the mine project. The group identified some useful tools for communities, including land use planning and community consultation protocols. However, these and other tools take a long time for communities to develop, and they must be in place before government approves the arrival of a mining investment. To use these tools also requires increased capacity, especially scientific and technical capacity for land use planning processes. Here, the discussion gravitated towards the roles of government at the national, provincial and local levels in acting to deliver or facilitate the delivery of both public and independent sources of information to communities prior to the government granting concessions or approving licenses.
Third, participants spoke about some of their experiences with funding community capacity-building. Examples ranged from an Australian mining company paying for Aboriginal group capacity-building and hiring economic development officers under a participation agreement, to the duty of governments to fund participation under ILO 169, to the Canadian government funding participation in federal environmental impact assessment processes, to NGOs providing some capacity-building (though their own capacity may be limited on technical issues), to pooled funds from an NGO, a company and government being leveraged by a network of regional leaders in Peru.
And challenges
Of course, challenges abound in this work, and our Working Session certainly touched on a number of them. These included political motivations clouding government actions, government and company disdain for communities (referred to as “the tendency of government and companies to dismantle what they see as an irrational actor sitting across the table from them”), and companies wanting to ‘control’ the information. Another significant challenge is undoubtedly the complexity and diversity of communities, and their shifting needs during each of the phases of mining. Challenges also arise with the legitimacy and bias of the actor delivering the capacity-building and producing the toolkits. For example, companies may deliver a one-sided view of the mining process, highlighting the benefits and skimming over the negative impacts. And NGOs in their capacity-building focus solely on “rights, rights, rights” and not enough on the corresponding duties and obligations. And although municipal and local government may be better placed to deliver some kinds of capacity-building, they often may not have the technical or financial resources to carry it out.
Our next steps
We look forward to continuing this initiative, and with funding take it to the next step of community-to-community exchanges among communities in Peru, Canada and the Democratic Republic of Congo fostering learning and guided analysis of what in their experiences and in the library of toolkits works well, and in what context, in order to develop the mining-affected community toolkit supporting knowledge and decision-making.