Community Veto

One of the most contentious issues around the discussion on Free Prior and Informed Consent/Social License to Operate/Social Acceptability is whether communities ultimately have a veto on projects carried out on their lands. While this is indeed an important part of the debate, I would argue that it is not as central as people make it out to be. Ultimately, the question of whether or not communities ultimately have a veto will eventually need to be dealt with. However, the implications of such a discussion go far beyond development projects into the role communities can and should play in political decision-making. In other words, not a question that will be easily resolved in the short-term.

In the meantime, I would suggest we look at this issue from different angles. Suppose that a development project has undergone the various review processes, and by all intents and purposes, will be approved to go forward. However, the local community continues to demonstrate strong resistance to the project. Firstly, in many parts of the world (but certainly not everywhere), the authorization process includes important considerations of local perspectives and concerns. In fact, the authorization process is designed to reconcile these differences to come up with different measures to bring proponents and communities closer together. In these cases, therefore, the situation where an authorization would be at odds with the dominant local view of the project would be a very unlikely outcome anyway (assuming that the process actually works, which admittedly can at times be a stretch). Secondly, today’s successful projects are often designed to maximize local input in supply chains and mitigation, to name a few. This would not logically be possible if the local community is not even in favor of the project. Finally, many projects are funded through global capital markets. This is not surprising, given the required initial investment. How would investors feel knowing that their investment is being carried out in an area where most people are against the project. This would pose significant political and operational risk, likely beyond the threshold of many investors.

The most compelling argument for making a project acceptable for local communities is the triple-bottom-line of sustainable development. When proponents engage meaningfully with local communities, when the latter are given a space to share their own vision of sustainable development, which is in turn integrated into the broader vision of the project, good things happen. Communities become resources upon which proponents can draw to address challenges, and partners in the long-term success of the project. In these cases, the veto debate becomes completely unnecessary.