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Theme: Legal empowerment for secure resource access

Legal empowerment in investment projects

Across rural Africa, most people depend on natural resources such as land, water and forests for their livelihoods. Natural resources are also an important sector for larger-scale investment, for instance in the agribusiness, forestry, tourism, mining and petroleum industries. Overlaps between these resource claims raise the challenge of maximising the benefits of investment projects to local resource users, and of minimising costs.

Secure local resource rights are key to doing this. Where local resource rights are weak, investment projects may undermine the ability of local groups to access the resources on which they depend. This may take the form of expropriation or otherwise loss of resource access without adequate compensation; or of environmental degradation such as the pollution of water and other resources essential to the local population. Weakness of local resource rights may also undermine the position of local resource users in their negotiations with incoming investors; and therefore limit their ability to benefit from investment projects through negotiated benefit-sharing arrangements.

Investment contracts and related deals between states and investors raise complex legal issues and are little known outside the small circle of specialists involved in their negotiation. But they have far-reaching implications for the lives of many people. Local capacity to monitor government negotiations with large-scale investors is key to establishing deals that maximise local benefits and minimise costs for the local population.

Our work in this area entails collaboration between the IIED Natural Resources, Governance and Sustainable Markets Groups

Legal tools for community empowerment - Securing local resource rights within investment projects in Africa
The “Legal tools” project helps local resource users in Africa have greater control over the natural resources on which they depend - particularly within the context of large-scale investment projects. It combines action research with training and policy engagement, and legal expertise with participatory approaches.

“Legal tools” is a new initiative, and is currently at its pilot stage. A scoping study reviewed relevant law and literature, and enabled discussions with potential partners. An inception partners’ workshop took place in September 2006. In-country work is now being piloted in Senegal, Ghana, Mozambique and Mali. This involves:

• Identifying innovative legal tools to secure local resource rights, developing ways to sharpen these tools, and engaging with policy processes to change the legal framework as needed. For instance, in Mozambique and Ghana, legally required consultation processes and “social responsibility agreements” aim to enable local groups to participate in benefits generated by investment projects (e.g. in the tourism and forestry sectors). However, our research has highlighted shortcomings in the design and implementation of these tools. Building on these findings, project partners are engaging with policy processes - for instance, in Mozambique, to strengthen the procedural safeguards necessary for the meaningful participation of local groups in consultation processes.
• Designing, testing and implementing legal literacy training and other para-legal tools, targeting selected sites while developing approaches and materials that can be replicated elsewhere. In Senegal, for instance, we held a meeting with two local communities (Yène and Dias, in a coastal area of growing tourism development) to assess local demand for para-legal training. Using simple language and speaking in Wolof, a law professor discussed with participants legal opportunities to secure local resource rights, and their limitations. Participants expressed great interest (“nobody ever comes to tell us these things”, a woman participant said) and asked a great deal of questions. Building on this experience, we will develop, test and implement para-legal materials for more systematic training in the communities, emphasising participatory discussions among participants rather than conventional lecturing.
• Facilitating cross-country exchange of experience and wider lesson sharing to enable project participants to learn from each other, and others to learn from the tools developed by the project. This entails lesson sharing among and beyond the focus countries on innovative ways to secure local resource rights, and on innovative approaches to para-legal training and to assisting local groups. This component is currently taking off. It is centred on an international workshop, on a web site and on practitioner-oriented publications.

The project is implemented in partnership with the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD);; with the Centre for Public Interest Law (CEPIL) and the Faculty of Law of the University of Ghana, in Ghana; with the Groupe d’Etude et de Recherche en Sociologie et Droit Appliqué (GERSDA), in Mali; with Centro Terra Viva (CTV), in Mozambique; and with Innovations Environnement et Développement en Afrique (IED Afrique), in Senegal. Discussions with potential partners in other countries are underway.

For key findings of the scoping study, read Legal empowerment for local resource control: Securing local resource rights within foreign investment projects.

For more information on the “Legal tools” project, contact Lorenzo Cotula at lorenzo.cotula@iied.org.

Improving the governance of natural resource investment
The “Legal tools” project is linked to a broader body of work to improve the governance of investment in the natural resource sector, so as to enhance its contribution to sustainable development goals. This work is led by the IIED Sustainable Markets Group. It entails policy research, capacity building and policy engagement on the sustainable development issues raised by legal and other arrangements regulating investment projects.

For a scoping paper on foreign investment contracts and sustainable development, read Lifting the lid on foreign investment contracts: The real deal for sustainable development.

Building on this scoping paper, a set of briefing notes explores in more detail the sustainable development challenges raised by international investment law. The notes aim to provide accessible but accurate information for human rights, development and environmental organisations. They will provide the basis for training materials and events targeting civil society organisations in low and middle-income countries. To read the Sustainable Markets Investment Briefings, click on the links below:

For more information about this body of work, visit the IIED Sustainable Markets Group webpages.

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