Community Development Requirements: Laws, Best Practices, and Community Development Agreements Database

Investments in extractive industries, agriculture, and forestry often include processes for sharing benefits with, or fostering development of, project-affected communities.

These benefit-sharing arrangements are often governed by agreements between the investor and project-affected communities. In some contexts—especially for mining and forestry projects—governments are increasingly imposing legal requirements on companies to deliver benefits to local communities. Such requirements can take many forms, from loosely expressed obligations to provide benefits to local communities, through to more concrete obligations to establish community development plans, community development funds, and Community Development Agreements (CDAs). In other cases, companies and communities negotiate CDAs or other benefit sharing arrangements voluntarily (i.e., in the absence of legal requirements).

CCSI conducted a portfolio of activities regarding community development requirements and CDAs that includes:

• Mapping domestic legal requirements for community development in the context of mining projects;

• Policy and research on best practices around CDAs and benefit sharing for extractive, agricultural, and forestry projects; and

• OpenCommunityContracts.org, a repository of publicly available CDAs and other community-investor contracts concluded in the context of agriculture, forestry, extractives, renewables, and other natural resource projects.

Community Development in Mining Collection

The International Institute for Environment and Development, the Sustainable Development Strategies Group, and CCSI created a  catalogue of community development laws related to the mining sector. It features legislative arrangements from 54 countries. All legislation can be seen in the interactive map below, while all laws and community development agreements are searchable and can be downloaded here.

Requirements for community development in mining laws

This Matrix summarizes the requirements for community development in domestic mining laws throughout the world as of February 2017.

Best Practices and Case Studies

CDAs can be helpful in formalizing relations between a local community and an investor, and establishing a mechanism by which local communities can receive social and economic benefits from large-scale investment projects. Such agreements have been negotiated for projects in industries including the extractive industries, renewable energy, agriculture, and forestry. Such benefits can include fiscal revenues from the project, employment creation, construction of local infrastructure, or capacity building, among others. CDAs, also known as Community Benefit Agreements (CBAs) or Impact Benefit Agreements (IBAs), amongst other terms, can be entered into voluntarily; or can be required by host government legislation.

See these resources below.