POPULAR CONSULTATION AND SOCIAL LICENSE

• Jurisdiction: Derecho Internacional

MINING LAW & INVESTMENT IN LATIN AMERICA
(April 2003)
CHAPTER 10C
POPULAR CONSULTATION AND SOCIAL LICENSE

Popular Consultation is not provided by the Peruvian legal framework as a valid legal mechanism for communities to regulate private investment in the country. Therefore, communities cannot express their ideas by means of Popular Consultation, to decide upon the possibility of accepting or rejecting private investment projects.

The economic development policy of the Peruvian Government is based upon free private initiative and free market, and is expressed, regulated and developed through the Regional and Central Governments, as promotion entities of private investment, for the benefit of the community and the common interest.

This doest not mean that the rights of the communities to participate in the investment projects which affect them are not respected, as no mining project shall be developed if it does not have Social License or the acceptance it implies on the hand of the communities directly affected by the project. Our company is aware that it shall have the social license to be able to develop and to run the mining project. Finally, these factors will permit a positive Social Balance to the affected communities.

Nevertheless, Social License and Popular Consultation are two completely different concepts.

Social License means the permanent acceptance of the mining Project by the affected community, and it occurs as a consequence of a gradual, dynamic and permanent process of communication and interaction between the company and the affected communities.

This citizen participation process allows the company to permanently inform the communities about the characteristics of the project; answer and gather its questions and initiatives; inform and implement joint alternative community development programs; as well as to create valid conflict solving mechanisms, is performed by means of implementing an adequate Citizen Participation mechanism which allows the company to

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acquire this Social License which is required for the development and operation of a mining project.

This initiative is regulated by the peruvian mining legal framework which requires that every mining company that intends to develop a mining Project, has to have a Citizen Participation Plan to regulate the way in which the company will interact with the communities where they develop their activities and that it is part of the Environmental Impact...