9.7 General Principles for Response

Good practice suggests a number of general principles to be respected by investors and governments alike in responding to social and environmental issues. These include:

Stakeholder Involvement. Involve all key stakeholders – government, investor, civil society, and affected communities – to the maximum extent feasible in critical decisions with respect to project development. All key documents that are submitted to government for approval by investors and operators, as well as data collection, impact assessments and management plans, should also be made available to communities in the local language.  Where communities are largely illiterate meetings should be held to present the documents and findings to communities verbally – especially to the poorest and most vulnerable segments of communities. Finally, approved documents should be provided to communities including if needed summaries in local language or understand able form for all the community members.

Grievances and Disputes.  While much attention is given to broad community support at project approval, there is often less attention during project implementation and operation. Thus, governments and ideally also companies should ensure that there are easily accessible and affordable environmental/social grievance or dispute resolution mechanisms that address the needs of the community, and give an effective voice to the poorest and most vulnerable. 

Building Trust. Communities are often concerned about the unknown – will the tailings impoundment collapse and harm those living below it; will local water sources be polluted or poisoned; will they lose their food self-sufficiency and livelihoods because of deforestation and soil degradation? Participatory community monitoring can go a long way to reducing community concerns about environmental risks and building broad based support for the mining operation through social accountability.

Early and Continuous Engagement. Engage with stakeholders in a consultation process as early as possible, beginning at or before license award and continuously through the project cycle.
Maximum Access to Information. To make intelligent decisions or contributions and to make those decisions or contributions politically legitimate, stakeholders must have access to information relative to the project – historical, current and forecast.

Legal Context. Legislation, regulations and guidelines setting out required responses to social and environmental impacts in line with international practice should be in place, together with credible assurances of enforcement, including penalties for non-compliance. 

Capacity Development and Technical Assistance (TA). Governments should build domestic capacity to deal with social and environmental impacts and pending completion of that process, seek technical assistance from qualified international consultants.

Recognition of the Long Term.  Stakeholders should recognize that social and environmental safeguarding of a project is a long term process, given project lives of 30 to 50 years, and should continue through the sensitive phase of project decommissioning or closure. 

 

Box 9.3 Social Impacts – Special Issues.

There are a number of special social risks and benefit sharing opportunities that require very close attention.  These require tripartite engagement between the investor, the government and the community – and not just the community leaders and elite but also representatives of the most vulnerable groups such as women and youth.  Well-designed social mitigation measures will:

  • Include identifying established legal and customary community residents and users and their assets, crops and livelihoods at the earliest stage practical so that they can be identified separately from any newcomers who might arrive as news of a potential development spreads;
  • Specify mandatory requirements related to mitigating social risks such as community notification, information dissemination, community consultation;
  • Ensure that any involuntary resettlement takes place according to applicable laws, guidelines and agreements in an acceptable manner to those being resettled with acceptable forms of replacement or compensation for lost land, dwellings, crops and livelihoods not only for those including the poorest and most vulnerable who may be customary owners and users without formal rights according to the modern day legal system;
  • Require the preparation of in-migration management plans, and management plans for any community related health and safety impacts and for site security arrangements;
  • Ensure that social audits take place if required; 
  • Undertake initiatives to reduce the dependency of the community on the mineral or hydrocarbon operation to avoid the community collapsing when production ceases including developing economic activities that will be able to survive when production ceases; and
  • Ensure that populations are be fully protected by law.  But even in countries where this is not the case,  companies should respect the rights and culture of  indigenous peoples and only undertake exploration or mining activity if they have well documented evidence that their activities have the broad consent of the concerned peoples.

 

Ensure that the rights and customs of indigenous hydrocarbon and mineral operations offer economic development opportunities.  Well-designed benefit sharing arrangements will include:

  • Developing a shared understanding between the government, the company and the community of how benefits can be increased, improved and shared and by including related commitments in a development agreement between the government, the investor and affected communities;
  • The preparation and implementation of community economic development plans supported by job skills training programs, micro finance schemes and  agreements with the company regarding community programs, local employment, local procurement and sourcing of goods and services – all linked to the community economic development plan;  
  • Building the local capacity (of both government and community) to both plan well and implement effectively with good accountability to avoid 'elite capture' of the benefit; and 
  • Identifying opportunities for growth through 'resource clusters' and/or resource growth corridors – where minerals and hydrocarbon developments can contribute to broader regional growth.



Within This Chapter

Mining Specifics

Oil & Gas Specifics

Africa

Latin America

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