• Stakeholder involvement

Citizen participation and stakeholder involvement

This report assesses the effects of a Rio Tinto owned company's project to for a large scale ilmenite mine in southern Madagascar. It assesses the impacts of the global on the local as perceived by a diversity of local stakeholders, some of whom are themselves ‘outsiders’ from the business and NGO communities. It is intended to provide insights into the varied ways in which a range of stakeholders understand their situation.

The research highlights that a communication deficit is not only the result of distance and access such as the classic case of distant unconnected rural communities being left out of the loop. In this case many of the stakeholders were neighbours in a small town where proximity was not the main issue. The gulf of communication was due to other social and cultural factors such as language, education, the way knowledge’s are conveyed and a host of other reasons.

Key concluding points include:

• the experience of implementing the project illustrates the difficulties in imposing a project of this scale on an isolated locality. Different world views, cultural backgrounds, needs and motivations, all contribute barriers to communication
• it is to the credit of Rio Tinto that after many years of operations it has recognised that projects can no longer be imposed on local people and environments without taking steps to mitigate the negative impacts
• while some uncertainties have been generated by the changing power positions, other more worrying claims highlighted an atmosphere of fear of political persecution by vested interests.
  

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