Extracting justice? Exploring the role of FPIC, consultation and compensation related to socio-environmental conflicts in Latin America.

Recognizing the increasing number of socio-environmental conflicts surrounding resource extraction in Latin America over the last decade, this three-year research project studies the nature and outcome of currently available mechanisms for conflict resolution. The project questions whether prior consultation and free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) processes represent a set of effective mechanisms for preventing resource conflicts. Moreover, we ask how consultation, consent and compensation practices strengthen or weaken affected peoples democratic participation in decisions concerning their development futures and concerning their rights to self-determination. As a result of our empirical work in several Latin American contexts, the relevance of broadening the focus on participatory practices has become apparent to us. The strength or weakness of FPIC mechanisms depend on how they are implemented, on the constellations of actors controlling the processes, and on the possibilities of combining FPIC with other participatory practices. This insight has guided our researhc foci, and we include compensation processes, territorial planning, people-led consultations and referenda, legal FPIC claims, rural based resistance practices and modes of participatory environmental monitoring as practices studied in connection to those related to FPIC. The project is interdisciplinary in nature and involves research partners from nine different university and research institutions and civil society based organizations in Europe, Latin America and the US. The research teams have carried out work with the country specific case studies from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The case studies capture local dynamics and histories whilst also considering participatory practices within a wider domain of national and regional politics and economics. Understanding the wider contexts is highly relevant for this project since we observe significant variation in the conditions for FPIC implementation in the four countries. The project has specific policy relevance in relation to ongoing initiatives to develop and implement FPIC guidelines and principles by national governments and by international institutions and actors. Our last project meeting was held in Oslo and Ås in late June 2017, and consisted of a series of public seminars focusing on the main themes and results of the research project.

As governments in Latin America have sought to make use of the high prices for commodities in the international markets, a drive has been made by states and corporations to expand both the exploration and exploitation of natural resources. This has extens ively been accompanied by large-scale infrastructure projects aimed to complement and assist the extraction of resources that are seen as key in securing the possibilities for further national development. The expansion of extractive activity is also refl ected in public discourses that relate the common good of national populations directly to economic development. Extractive activity has inevitably led to a series of confrontations with local communities, and particularly indigenous peoples and in some countries Afrodescendants, as ever-more remote areas are opened for new concessions. Recognizing the increasing number of socio-environmental conflicts surrounding resource extraction in Latin America over the last decade, this proposed project aims to s tudy the nature and outcome of currently available mechanisms for conflict resolution. In particular the project questions whether prior consultation and free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) processes represent a set of effective mechanisms for prevent ing and resolving resource conflicts. In theory, prior consultation is assumed to appease conflicts by including affected populations in the assessment of possible positive and negative impacts of planned extraction projects, in the formulation of respect ive mitigation measures, as well as in the negotiation of equitable benefit-sharing and compensation regimes. Whilst also considering the conflict resolving potential, we intend in this project to go beyond conflict resolution as such and ask how consulta tion, consent and compensation practices and processes strengthen or weaken affected peoples democratic participation and rights to self-determination.