Communities
Community engagement
Engagement at the level of the individual activity: who is engaged, how, on what, and what happens to what they say.
The engagement plan
Each activity has an engagement plan. It identifies the communities and groups within the area of influence, including those vulnerable to the activity's effects; the matters on which engagement is required; the method appropriate to each group; the frequency; and the person accountable. The plan is prepared before engagement begins rather than reconstructed from what happened, and it is revised as the activity develops.
Key facts
Engagement plan
The engagement plan precedes engagement; it is not reconstructed afterwards.
Representation
Mapping records the basis on which each representative body speaks.
Accessibility
Accessibility governs method: language, literacy, distance and the agricultural calendar.
Grievance rights
Using the grievance mechanism waives no right and requires no exhaustion.
Stakeholder mapping
Mapping identifies who is affected, who has an interest, and who represents whom. The last is the one most often got wrong. A community frequently has several forms of representation, some statutory, some customary and some informal, and engaging only the most accessible of them produces an engagement record that is formally complete and substantively hollow. The mapping therefore records the basis on which each representative body speaks, and engagement covers the ones the community itself recognises.
Method
Method is chosen so that engagement is in fact accessible to the people concerned. Language, literacy, distance, the seasonal pattern of agricultural and pastoral work, and the timing of meetings relative to the working day all determine whether a process that formally took place in fact reached anybody.
Citizen participation
Formal citizen participation processes attach to the environmental assessment of a mining activity and form part of the engagement plan rather than sitting outside it. Our own engagement continues between the points at which a formal process is required.
Grievance handling
Submission
Recording
Investigation
Response
We review grievance trends for systemic issues. The mechanism does not require a person to exhaust it before seeking any other remedy, and using it does not waive any right.
Cultural heritage
We identify sites, practices and traditions of cultural significance through baseline assessment and mapping, avoid or mitigate them in planning, and protect them in operation. Where work uncovers a previously unrecorded site, work stops, we secure the area and we notify the competent authorities and community representatives. The reference standards are Performance Standard 8 of the IFC Performance Standards and the UNESCO World Heritage Convention as implemented by the states in which we operate.
What is done with what is raised
Engagement that does not change anything is not engagement. We record what is raised and route it to the function able to address it, and where we cannot address a matter, we say so and give the reason rather than leave it unanswered. Commitments arising from engagement enter the commitments register with an owner and a date.
Reporting
Where an activity generates them, engagement and grievance statistics are published, and we maintain the records described above so that reporting rests on a consistent basis.
Raising a concern
Employees, suppliers, communities and any other party may raise a concern through the confidential reporting channels. We provide for anonymous reporting, and we do not tolerate retaliation against a person who raises a concern in good faith.
