“For extractive industry companies, getting stakeholder engagement right is a key element of securing a social licence to operate. Governments also have a responsibility to ensure that communities are adequately consulted before decisions are made on extractive industry developments. While there is a lot of guidance on how to do stakeholder engagement well (mostly targeted at companies), there are still major challenges around actual implementation, and ensuring that public consultation and other forms of community engagement represent a constructive, ongoing dialogue – between companies, communities and the government – and that this leads to positive outcomes for local people and broader society. The term ‘meaningful’ has started to appear in international standards for public consultation and stakeholder engagement that are applied to the extractive industries, including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2011), the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises (2011) and the World Bank Safeguard Policies (currently in its Phase 3 review as of January 2016). In 2014, in response to the World Bank Safeguards Review, the Bank Information Center (BIC) developed guidance on environmental and social assessment and management (ESAM), including a proposed standard for ‘meaningful consultation’. In 2015, the OECD produced draft due diligence guidance on ‘meaningful stakeholder engagement’, which was reviewed publicly (OECD, 2015). In the light of these developments, this paper explores whether there is a shared understanding of what ‘meaningful’ means in this context; to what extent companies, governments and civil society organisations are ensuring that public consultation and other stakeholder engagement processes meet this standard; and what is required to ensure that consultation and engagement lead to better environmental and development outcomes in practice. The paper explores some of these questions from the perspectives of a number of different stakeholders in the extractive industries, including government, industry and civil society.1 The paper is based on the results of 25 interviews carried out in 2014 with civil society groups, NGOs, researchers, government and businesses based in the UK, the US, France, Romania, Rwanda, Kenya and Kazakhstan, an interactive seminar with 15 students at Imperial College London in 2014, and a meeting with a group of experts from Total in Paris in February 2015. The initial findings were summarised in a background report that was shared with a mixed group of stakeholders who were invited to comment on the paper and/or to attend a half-day workshop at IIED’s London offices on 2 March 2015. The workshop was attended by 30 participants from industry, research organisations and NGOs. A final draft of the paper was reviewed by two reviewers, one from the private sector, the other from a civil society organisation. Given the limited nature of the project, this paper should be seenas a scoping study, and while we have suggested
recommendations based on the research findings,
we have also identified areas for further research,
which we hope will be taken up by IIED and other
organisations. Given the number of initiatives,
publications and public discussions on this topic,
we believe that it has enduring significance and
topicality that will only increase with time.
The main focus of this study is the relationship
between extractive industry projects (and their
company and government proponents) and the
local communities living close to such projects,
who may experience positive or negative
environmental and social impacts (or indeed
both). The target audience for this paper are
those who seek to understand current practice,
challenges, gaps, opportunities and expectations
relating to community engagement. “