8.1 Information Access Rights
The current attitude regarding the right of the public to be involved in the decisionmaking and development of a project has evolved over many years. Public consultation and information disclosure is becoming more common as a legal requirement and is often a condition of an investment or loan. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, has outlined four management principles for disclosing project information in its Good Practice Manual, “Doing Better Business Through Effective Public Consultation and Disclosure”.
They are:
• Disclose early: To the extent possible, be open about the project. Aim to provide information to the public as early as possible during the planning and implementation of a project, except in cases where such disclosure would materially harm the interests of the company.
• Use information disclosure to support consultation: Treat the disclosure of project and environmental and social information as an integral part of effective public consultation. In particular, provide information about the benefits and disadvantages of the project early enough to allow people time to think about the issues and weigh the trade-offs. Remember to be open about potential adverse impacts and associated mitigation measures that may be involved in the project, including possible benefits and positive impacts that may raise expectations.
• Provide meaningful information: Provide information in a form that is readily understandable and meaningful to project-affected people. The objective should always be to enable people to make informed judgements about changes that will affect their lives. Points to consider in determining what form this information should take include: local languages and dialects, clarity, cultural sensitivity, gender, age, ethnicity, literacy levels of the population and local methods of disseminating information within and among communities.
• Ensure the accessibility of information: Disclosing information solely by depositing project documentation in locations open to the public, such as government offices, is not a totally effective method of reaching the population who will benefit from reading the material. It is more useful and constructive to disseminate information to project-affected people in culturally appropriate ways such as in individual, small group, or public meetings, and through the local media or direct mail. Information should be provided early enough in the process to allow stakeholders time to understand and discuss what they have read or been told and to prepare their points of view.
The Model Provisions for the Right to Access Information is contained in Appendix 8. These show how access to information could be enacted as a legal right of citizens and affected communities.
8.2 Emergency Provisions
Recent accidents involving tailings dams and cyanide spills have highlighted the need for a company to have an emergency response programme and for the government and the public to be fully aware of, and understand, the programme. Emergency/contingency planning should cover all environmental hazards and should be integrated into the risk assessment and management (see Section 4.4). Planning needs to be based on rigorous hazard identification and testing of response capability. This analysis should then be used to establish site emergency plans. Emergency planning should include provisions for incident reporting, including near-miss incident reporting, and timely and rigorous incident investigation.
Emergency response planning should include the relevant regulatory authorities and the potentially affected community. Public anxiety about the impact of an accident is greatly reduced if an understanding about the possible consequences has been established. Such understanding is impossible to achieve after an incident because high anxiety levels and a low level of trust diminish learning ability. It is also essential that the government and the local population understand what their role is and what they must do in the case of an accident. UNEP's APELL (Awareness and Preparedness for Emergencies at Local Level) Programme has been designed to help companies, local governments and the emergency services put together a coordinated plan to improve public preparedness in case of industrial accidents, including those that may arise at mine sites. The APELL Programme is not a unilateral plan on the part of the company or of the emergency services, but involves all the affected partners and actors. An outline of the APELL process is given in Appendix 9.
8.3 Health and Safety
There is general and genuine confusion as to whether health and safety issues in the working environment should be included in the environmental legislation and documentation. Most countries with a mining past have separate legislation that covers technical safety regulations and health protection for workers in mining operations, which comes under the auspices of the relevant mining ministry. However, the late appearance of “the environment” on the mining scene meant that some mining companies attached it to the health and safety department, rather than creating a separate new department. This has led to some confusion over the implementation of the relevant legislation and for this reason, it is often better to keep the two separate, though there are obvious areas of overlap.