Community-Company Engagement: “Good” Practice in Extractive Industries

The extractive industries, including mining, oil and gas, continue to have large-scale and systemic impacts on indigenous peoples and local communities that live on or near such projects. Communities, whether they seek to resist the entry of extractive industries on their lands – due to the well-known history of gross violations of their rights as a result of mining activities or due to lack of obvious benefits – or whether they seek to cooperate with the hope of obtaining some benefits, will usually interact with companies in some form or another. 

Over the past years companies and communities have increasingly engaged through amicable means. These types of ‘community-company engagements’ have taken a broad range of interactions inducing dialogue throughout a project’s life cycle, including specific negotiations, agreements and accompanying mechanisms such as grievance mechanisms and development funds. This paper  by Marie Wilke, Laura Letourneau-Tremblay and Stephanie Booker seeks to examine community-company engagement through the lens of communities that, for a variety of reasons, struggle to engage with companies and who seek to use these types of agreements to formalize their role in the process, to obtain clear commitments on key points such as the scope of impact assessments, to draw up mechanisms that can address potential conflicts and to set the stage for more comprehensive socio-economic participation negotiations at a later stage.

LAPSSET Community Forum Holds 'People’s Dialogue on LAPSSET

Energy. Transportation. Trade. These are the economic drivers that the Kenyan government is seeking to tap at scale as it attempts to meet the goals in its "Vision 2030" plan for turning Kenya into a middle-income country. Central to this plan is an infrastructure corridor known as LAPSSET, which stands for "Lamu Port, South Sudan, Ethiopia Transport."  But there is another element that needs to be considered in infrastructure development: people.

To ensure that that happens, a coalition of civil society organizations have joined together to form the LAPSSET Community Forum (LCF) in order to examine the potential benefits and impacts of the LAPSSET corridor on affected communities and respond to those benefits and impacts in an organized manner. On 24 November 2014, the LCF kicked off a four day meeting in Lamu to discuss issues related to LAPSSET and strategize on a way forward. The meeting brings together stakeholders located all along the LAPSSET corridor, from northern Kenya to those in Lamu itself.

If LAPSSET is completed as planned, many parts of Kenya that have seen little development since decolonization, such as the northern part of the country and the northern coast, will experience profound changes in existing infrastructure. New infrastructure will include paved roads, railways, airports, and even entire cities. Such infrastructure will bring new economic opportunities, but it will also cause major environmental and social impacts. The LCF seeks to understand these impacts and ensure that community rights, particularly those relating to land and livelihoods, are taken into account in the planning and implementation of LAPSSET.

Kenya’s New Mining Bill, 2014

Natural Justice’s work in Kenya has focused around the LAPSSET project. One major factor around our work has been the myriad of bills in Parliament waiting passing that will regulate community land, mining, oil and gas, energy and infrastructure.

One of the more significant and impactful pieces of legislation, the Kenya Mining Bill 2014 was passed on its third reading last week.  The bill repeals the former archaic remnant of a long-forgotten epoch, the Mining Act from 1940 and still in force, which fails to adequately meet the current demands of the emerging sector.  The primary objective of the bill is to consolidate all of the current laws related to mining.  It also seeks to implement a number of articles within Kenya’s Constitution pertaining to land management, respect for the environment and agreements for natural resources.

BLINC Workshop and Exhibition: 'Asserting Community Rights over the Environment'

Natural Justice India office is hosting a two-day workshop and exhibition called BLINC on the 27th and 28th of June, 2014. BLINC aims to bring together NGOs, academics, activists, designers and individuals or groups interested in the overarching theme of ‘Asserting community rights over the environment’. Some of the objectives guiding this workshop and exhibition are:

• To bring together interested individuals and groups to discuss their approaches when they encounter challenges on the field while working with communities;
• To experiment with new methods of conducting such workshops;
• To work with the participants in arriving at new ways or potential approaches to challenges they experience in the field whilst engaging in such work.

National Consultation on Forest Rights Act and Protected Areas, Indian Social Institute, New Delhi

Source: http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/rights-without-benefits 

From 11th to 12th November, 2013, Apritha Kodiveri, Vaneesha Jain and Revati Pandya (of the NJ India office) attended a two day consultation aimed at discussing Community Forest Rights under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act (Forest Rights Act), 2006 (FRA). Members from various groups working on FRA issues in Maharashtra, Orissa, Gujarat and Karnataka attended, and updates and status of its implementation from respective states were shared and discussed. One of the overarching issues was the lack of implementation of processing claims largely based on administrative setbacks. Different state’s Forest Department officials’ individual desires for implementation of the FRA or processing of claims appear to be a major hurdle. 

New Paper on Resource Conflict Prevention References Community Protocols

A new paper by the Quaker United Nations Office entitled "Building peace around water, land and food: Policy and practice for preventing conflict" highlights the fundamental importance of securing natural resources on which our survival and well-being depend in the face of climate change and increasing conflict and competition over resources. It also focuses on the need to strengthen peace-building skills among actors at all levels (including effective communication and engagement with decision-making processes and constructive dispute prevention and resolution) and cites relevant international instruments that can help prevent conflict through inclusive natural resource governance and management.

One of the case studies explored the development and use of a biocultural community protocol to negotiate community resource rights in the Potato Park in Peru. The paper also references Natural Justice's Biocultural Community Protocols: A toolkit for community facilitators and the 2012 special edition of the Participatory Learning and Action Journal on community protocols, rights and consent, which was co-edited by Natural Justice, among others (also available in Spanish). Please download and share this new paper here.