Abstract
Are conflicts between extractive companies and communities on the rise? Or are they simply more visible now? The answer seems to be both. For the past year, International Alert has been working with companies in the mining sector in order to better understand the practical dilemmas faced by operational staff with respect to company/community conflict. The objective now is to bring this discussion to the oil and gas sector in order to share learnings as well as best practices in the field, with the aim of building a community of practice within the extractive sector.
The research process included the following activities:
Survey of mining companies leading to the identification of 5 conflict drivers (water, land, consultations, distribution of benefits and community economic issues)
Identification of practical challenges companies face when managing conflicts as well as ways in which some of them have responded to such
Workshop in Chile with companies and NGOs to present and discuss findings and feed this into current thinking
The results of the research yield a set of dilemmas, all of which were grouped in six different categories mainly related to: stakeholder perceptions, issues of representation and information, legacy issues, others more process-oriented and a number of dilemmas related to specific contexts of operations.
When responding to community-company conflicts, the research also identifies some emerging trends that are slowly becoming standard practice. Some of those include:
Grievance mechanisms consistent with the UN Guiding Principles' effectiveness criteria;
Participatory approaches to performance monitoring complemented with capacity building on technical issues;
Independent third parties to serve as experts, monitors/auditors, facilitators or mediators;
Multi stakeholder dialogue processes.
It is widely recognised that many resources already exist to provide high-level guidance on management systems and approaches to understand and manage community-company conflict; where companies feel a gap exists is in responding to the type of practical challenges faced by operational staff in the course of their work. This research process seeks to contribute to fill that gap.
