Over the past several decades, international financial institutions (IFIs) have mandated ever-more stringent social safeguards requirements for project operators to comply with when projects affect Indigenous Peoples lives and livelihoods. There is no shortage of examples: Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), cultural heritage management, land acquisition compensation frameworks, benefits-sharing requirements, health and safety safeguards—the list goes on, and gets longer every year. Even when a project is not financially dependent on IFI funding, non-adherence to these kinds of Indigenous Peoples safeguards entails a range of costs, from reputational damages to forced shut-downs of operations. Compliance with Indigenous Peoples social safeguards (both national and international) is key to demonstrating project commitment to social sustainability.
When it comes to establishing, demonstrating and maintaining compliance with lender social safeguards requirements, CCCS will serve you well. We are especially adept at integrating international safeguard requirements with national regulatory requirements into a seamless whole, and providing capacity building of project staff so that FPIC and Indigenous Peoples safeguards compliance management can be handled proactively.
The Indigenous Peoples safeguard compliance services that CCCS can provide include:
- Designing Indigenous Peoples Plans (IPP) that unify national regulatory requirements and international safeguards requirements in one integrated plan, which drastically reduces the cost of maintaining compliance
- Establishing cost-effective engagement mechanisms for achieving the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) of project-affected Indigenous Peoples for the project and its social planning
- Working with Indigenous Peoples Organizations and Indigenous Peoples specialists to ensure culturally appropriate approaches to FPIC and IPP preparation
- Promoting a new paradigm of Stakeholder Engagement with Indigenous Peoples: the Participation and Partnership Paradigm (PPP) which infuses FPIC-Standards of collaboration and power-sharing throughout the project-indigenous community interface
- Raising the capacity of company/project staff to deal with issues of social sustainability requirements