Getting The Best From Community Relations

• Local government authorities deny site access to a mining company’s survey crew, saying that there is local opposition to mining and they cannot be responsible for crew members’ safety.

• Starting construction on a mine access road leads to violent protests from members of a nearby community, who say that the intended route leads through a grove of trees they consider to be sacred.

• Despite significant spending by a mining company on safe-water measures such as village hand-pumps, there is no significant decrease in water-borne diseases among the people living near a mine, and the company is blamed for being uncaring about their well-being.

Those three fictitious, but realistic scenarios illustrate three aspects of Community Relations in today’s global mining sector. While many members of the mining sector have accepted Community Relations as a necessary cost, there continues to be a limited role for Community Relations in day-to-day mining operations, and thus the opportunities and benefits that result from well integrated Community Relations programs are not being fully realized.

In this, Community Relations is in a similar position to that of Health and Safety (H&S), perhaps 10 or 15 years ago. While mining companies at that time may have understood the need to keep employees healthy and safe, many of them invested only what was required by company regulations. The value of going above and beyond essential requirements, or building H&S considerations into their overall strategic planning, was not understood. H&S spending was considered a “black box” — there was uncertainty around how much they should spend, and where.

Better understanding of the benefits of H&S investment for employee satisfaction and retention, lower operating costs, better public reputation and easier financial access has encouraged companies to give H&S considerations a seat at the management table. Just as it took time for H&S procedures and standards to become accepted, it has taken time for Community Relations to develop accepted methodologies to produce results in what is often a fluid and volatile situation.

Before we move forward and discuss Community Relations, it is necessary to understand what it actually is. We find that Community Relations is often thought of as an aspect of Public Relations. However, while Public Relations works to protect and promote the organization, Community Relations emphasizes community development and engagement.

Some of the impetus to develop and implement good Community Relations practice comes through the emergence and growing influence of socially responsible investment funds and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. The mining sector is being encouraged to establish a systematic approach to managing its social aspects as it would economic aspects.

For example, International Finance Corporation (IFC) has established Performance Standards for Social and Environmental Sustainability and requires that applicants for financing demonstrate a systematic approach to operation’s life cycle. In absence of mandatory legislation across many of the social dimensions of mining, pressure from stakeholders such as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and other local advocacy groups, IFC’s standards are proving to be a significant driver for change especially in publicly traded companies.

Three of the ways in which the mining sector can get better results from Community Relations professionals, either externally or internally, are as follows.

Earlier involvement

In many cases, a mining company will call in Community Relations professionals only after a serious problem has developed — perhaps a protest by local people that turned violent, with damaging headlines in the international media. At that point, re-establishing trust with the news media, political leaders, NGOs and local stakeholders may be difficult, time-consuming and expensive.

Just as mining companies learned it was better to install effective H&S procedures and equipment than it was to incur accidents, it is wise to involve Community Relations expertise early in the project’s life. This helps to establish good relations with stakeholders early in the process, so that they will be more likely to support the project rather than oppose it.

In the first example given at the start of this article, good Community Relations practice could involve meeting with local stakeholders to determine their concerns about mining and develop ways to meet those concerns. This might include discussing ways that the mining company can help nearby communities through economic or social development.

Early involvement also gives time for Community Relations professionals to develop an effective process that is based on local conditions. One-size-fits-all Community Relations programs are unlikely to be as effective as those that are designed with site-specific issues in mind. For example, on a Caribbean island there may be coastlines that are important for tourism, and so to be effective, the Community Relations strategy for a mining project near the water must demonstrate to local stakeholders and tourism-related companies that the mine will not interfere with the tourism potential.

Better integrated into planning

For some mining operations, Community Relations considerations do not play a major role in the overall planning. This can lead to situations such as in the second example given above, about problems stemming from the mine access road. By involving Community Relations professionals in the planning process, a potential problem such as a site of local importance could be identified ahead of time, and the road re-routed to avoid it. The cost of changing the route in the early stages will be less than to change it after detailed surveying has been carried out or construction started.

Accordingly, giving Community Relations professionals a seat at the table where decisions are made can result in lower costs, more reliable timelines due to fewer interruptions, and fewer risks to the company’s external image.

Using Community Relations as a guide to action

It is all to common to find that Community Development money has been mis-spent because it does not meet the real needs of stakeholders. It could be, as in the third scenario above, that local culture supports using water from streams, so that the hand-pumps installed by the mining company are not being used. As a result, people are still drinking contaminated water. Good Community Relations practice could have discovered this issue before the pumps were installed, so that appropriate measures could be taken — perhaps capping nearby water springs so that the water would be less contaminated at the source, or showing community leaders the importance of safe water, available from the hand-pumps.

Information gathering by Community Relations professionals can be a useful guide to community investment in other ways as well. For example, Community Relations researchers might find that women in a community have a significantly lower educational level than the men, so the best use of resources might lie in developing educational programs with women in mind.

In one Caribbean country, our socioeconomic baseline for the Social and Environmental Impact Assessment (SEIA) indicated that in most instances women had either the same level of education as men or slightly higher.

Mining companies in the area can capitalize on this by working with local women to identify suitable employment opportunities in the mining sector.

Community Relations is a fast-developing field, and as it gains strength and acceptance, is likely to become a better risk-management tool for the mining sector worldwide.

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The Authors

Shilpa Tiwari

Ken DeVos

*Shilpa Tiwari holds a Master of Environmental Science (environment and community) from York Universi
ty in Toronto and is a PhD candidate (social anthropology) at the University of London, in the UK. She is a Social Scientist in the Mississauga ON office of Golder Associates Ltd.

*Ken DeVos, P. Geol. holds an M. Sc. in Applied Earth Sciences and is a hydrogeochemist and Principal in the Mississauga ON office of Golder Associates Ltd.

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