Project Case Study
Developing community consultation guidelines in South Sudan
Making recommendations for how the Government of South Sudan should effectively establish and manage the process of community consultation
South Sudan is the newest country in the world, established in 2011. South Sudan produces 375,000 barrels of oil per day, and as companies sought to take advantage of its mineral reserves, the government saw an opportunity to use the sector’s development to manage existing and potential social and environmental issues, including unemployment amongst a large number of migrants. The rising profile of corporate social responsibility has meant that the relationship between private sector companies and their host communities is under scrutiny.
As a result of our unrivalled experience, Adam Smith International was asked in 2010 to make recommendations as to how the government should set up and maintain the process of consulting communities about the benefits they could expect from mineral investment. We advised seeking a balance between ensuring that social development obligations – such as providing improved water sources to the approximately 50% of people without one, or education to the 73% of people who are illiterate – do not overburden the mining sector and deter investment, and ensuring that local and regional economies benefit from extraction.
We also proposed ways in which communities could partner with local government to identify priorities for development from their perspective, how a joint management body might be established so that all parties are involved with community and government objectives, and how the government could show local communities the ways in which an operational mine can generate small business opportunities.
We then drafted community development regulations as part of the new mining legislation. These regulations now apply to a large-scale mining lease holder and ensure that an arrangement of benefit-sharing from mining operations revenue is negotiated with the local government authority, the Payam Administrations.
