The lack of engagement with local communities is at the root of many conflicts arising in the extractives industry.
When foreign investors come to a host country in order to establish their company in this sector, they usually negotiate directly with governments and only rarely with local communities, according to Luis Ore, a Peruvian mediator, negotiation trainer and expert in cross-cultural stakeholder engagement, who singled out mining as particularly problematic.
Mining, he told Devex, “is like a chair with three legs, where the other three are not engaging properly with the leg that is a problem.”