Open Land Contracts and the Bid for Community Agency

​​In his own words, Francis Colee describes his organization, Green Advocates International Inc.,  as a leader in the effort to “build back Liberia better.” Facing daunting reconstruction challenges brought about by fourteen years of civil war, the new presidential administration of Liberia overhauled the economic governance plan, awarding a series of foreign direct investment (FDI) contracts to interested companies. Many of these give investors rights to use or develop land that local communities have long had rights to. In a July 2024 interview with CCSI, Colee noted that contracts are often awarded without the participation of the communities in the areas where the projects take place—many community members are not made aware of the terms of contracts, or even why the agreements involve concessions of their community land. 

With support from the OpenLandContracts Mini-Grants Program and the OpenLandContracts.org repository, Green Advocates International has worked to empower communities by raising awareness about the land usage of these FDI projects, coupled with increasing engagement with OpenLandContracts.org. 

OpenLandContracts.org is the only online repository dedicated to publishing publicly-available contracts for agricultural, forestry, and other land-based investments— including many of the aforementioned FDI contracts. Emulating the accountability-promoting mission of web platforms such as Open Timber Portal and Resource Contracts, additions to OpenLandContracts.org reflect the emerging global norm of contract transparency. By equitizing the availability of information about land-based investments, OpenLandContracts.org seeks to empower the legal autonomy of community-based institutions. The ultimate aim is to put community members in a better position for negotiation with companies and governments. 

This fall, as CCSI adds 40 additional agreements to its database, the total number of available published contracts nears 1,800. Many of these newly-added agreements, such as that between the Société Likouala Timber and the Republic of Congo’s Ministry of Economy and Finance, concern land from which timber is harvested. Others, such as a 2024 social agreement between the Government of Thailand and Breeze and Shine Power Company Limited, are projects that will use land to develop solar and geothermal energy fields. 

As highlighted in CCSI’s Business Guide for Commercial Wind and Solar Project Deployment, human rights impacts can arise at each phase of solar and wind project lifecycles and across their entire value chains. Project documents like contracts and impact assessments can support communities in understanding company and state responsibilities to mitigate any adverse project impacts. Such knowledge is a crucial first step toward accountability if an investor–community relationship negatively impacts a community’s rights.

Lack of transparency around FDI agreements is a global problem. For example, According to Golda Benjamin of  the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, a recipient of an OpenLandContracts Mini-Grant in 2016, contract transparency is a perennially difficult problem in Asia. 

Legislation on freedom of information has become more prevalent in many countries around the world. Contract transparency is foundational for civil society, communities, and other stakeholders to constructively engage in matters of public interest—matters that impact their lives and livelihood. Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantees the right to seek, receive, and impart information, and many national Constitutions have recognized access to information as a fundamental human right.  

Local communities and the NGOs which support them are not the only groups to benefit from publicly available contracts. Host governments gain competitive benefits when they promote contract transparency, along with the opportunity to learn from other countries’ experiences. The Government of the Democratic Republic of Congo offers one such example, having first announced in October 2016 that it would disclose its agricultural contracts on a platform developed in partnership with CCSI. Government transparency efforts such as this constitute a step toward meeting their duty to protect people from business-related human rights abuses, as  clarified in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. If affected stakeholders are better aware of the terms they are negotiating, with consideration for potential language and accessibility barriers, they may be able to more directly communicate concerns.

When asked what he would like to see evolve in the advancement of contract disclosure, Colee pointed out the difficulty remote community members may face in accessing the internet, and thus, repositories such as OpenLandContracts.org. When contracts are published, internet access and location of constituents presents gaps in user outreach and capacity. Thus, those who use the material found on OpenLandContracts.org for education and awareness raising campaigns may seek to draw from the support of civil society members well placed to disseminate information to a wider constituency. As Benjamin suggests, continuing to build partnerships between online repositories such as OpenLandContracts.org and civil society, media, and business groups on the ground allows for the proliferation of key contracts with the potential to transform community, investment and policy realities. OpenLandContracts.org offers contracts that are understandable and easy to find—enabling community members to monitor corporate actions, scrutinize government contracting processes, and use such information as a basis for effective self-advocacy.