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Research on Company–Community Conflict

23 March 2015

Mining related company–community conflicts receive a great deal of attention by advocacy organisations and traditional and social media. For companies, conflict with host communities can impact productivity, opportunityand reputation. For communities, conflict with companies can, among other negative impacts, limit/undermine mining’s contribution to social and economic development.

  • To deepen understanding of trends related to conflict between companies and communities and to examine the related causes, ICMM undertook research which focused on reported incidents of company-community conflict between 2002 and 2013.
  • Mining related company–community conflicts receive a great deal of attention by advocacy organisations and traditional and social media, creating the perception that such conflicts are on the increase.
  • ICMM conducted desk-based research, which focused on reported incidents of company–community conflict between 2002 and 2013, based on publicly available sources. The objective was to deepen understanding of whether mining-related conflict between communities and companies was on the rise and to explore the causes of conflict between communities and companies.
  • Using a range of publicly available sources the scope of work included:
    • Identifying the number of reported incidents between 2002 and 2013.
    • Determining whether the number of conflicts had changed over the period 2002–2013.
    • Identifying the type of concerns reported based on 15 issue indicators and definitions for 2012 and 2013.
    • Identifying the nature of concerns – whether these were primary or underlying reasons for the conflict – and the implicated parties, if known.
    • The results indicate that these conflicts are at the very least persisting. We were able to confirm anecdotal suggestions that environmental and economic grievances are a dominant feature of these incidents. Most conflicts occur in countries where governance is weak.