Accountability: The concept of accountability describes the rights and responsibilities that exist between people and the institutions that affect their lives, including governments, civil society and market actors. In practice, accountability can take a number of different forms, depending on the institution in question. In general, relationships of accountability have two important components:
- answerability (the right to get a response and the obligation to provide one) and,
- enforceability (the capacity to ensure an action is taken, and access to mechanisms for redress when accountability fails).
Artisanal/Small-Scale Mining: Artisanal and small-scale mining refers to mining by individuals, groups, families or cooperatives with minimal or no mechanization, often in the informal (illegal) sector of the market. Despite many attempts, a common definition of ASM has yet to be established. In some countries a distinction is made between ‘artisanal mining’ that is purely manual and on a very small scale, and ‘small-scale mining’ that has some mechanization and is on a larger scale.
Baseline Data Information: Gathered prior to a project that demonstrates the magnitude of the development problem, the extent to which the problem exists in the community, and, overtime, will enable a measurement of the progress in addressing the problem.
Business Sustainability: Defined as “creating long-term shareholder value by embracing opportunities and managing risks from economic, environmental and social factors”. This can be called the “sustainability dividend”.
Capacity Building: A managed process of (a) skill upgrading, both general and specific; (b) procedural improvement; and
(c) organizational strengthening. Capacity building aims to develop the ability of individuals, groups, institutions, and organizations to identify and solve development problems.
Civil Society: The network of associations, social norms, and relationships that exist separately from government or market institutions. Civil society may include religious organizations, foundations, professional associations, labor unions, academic institutions, media, pressure groups, and environmental groups. Civil society reflects social diversity and may provide the intellectual, material, and organizational basis for community interaction with the state and business sectors.
Community: A social group possessing shared beliefs and values, stable membership, and the expectation of continued interaction. It may be defined geographically, by political or resource boundaries, or socially, as a community of individuals with common interests.
Community-based Organizations: Groups of individuals within a village or group of villages or residential area with similar interests, established to work together to achieve common objectives. This term ca refer to organizations that provide care or services in the neighborhood as well as initiatives by individual citizens and groups within the community.
Community Development: The process of increasing the strength and effectiveness of communities, improving peoples’ quality of life, and enabling people to participate in decision making and to achieve greater long-term control over their lives. Community development aims to empower and help communities to improve their social and physical environments, increase equity and social justice, overcome social exclusion, build social capital and capacities, and involve communities in the strategic, assessment, and decision-making processes that influence their local conditions.
Community Foundations: Community Foundations are independent philanthropic organizations that serve a geographically defined community. Community Foundations apply a variety of creative approaches to support citizen-led development efforts, and sustain community dynamism.
Conflict: Tension or disagreement between people or institutions; it may be pre-existing or caused by an extractive project.
Conflict Resolution: The process by which the participants together with the assistance of a neutral person or persons systematically isolate disputed issues to develop options, consider alternatives, and reach a consensual agreement that will accommodate their needs.
Consultation: A tool for managing two-way communications between project developers and stakeholders. The goal is to improve decision-making, reduce risk, and build understanding by actively involving individuals, groups, and organizations with a stake in the project. Their involvement increases the project’s long-term viability and enhances its benefits to locally affected people and other stakeholders. To be meaningful, consultation should be carried out in a culturally appropriate manner, with locally appropriate timeframes and in local languages.
Core Indicator: An indicator of performance that is generally reproducible and relevant to most activities in the oil and gas industry and of common interest to a wide range of stakeholders.
Corporate Citizenship: The management of the totality of relationships between a company and its host communities, locally, nationally and globally.
Corporate Governance: A set of relationships between a company’s management, its board, its shareholders and other stakeholders. Corporate governance also provides the structure through which the objectives of the company are set, and the means of attaining those objectives and monitoring performance are determined.
Conflict Management: This includes conflict prevention, conflict resolution, post-conflict reconstruction and education, as well as other measures designed to improve the stability of a country.
Corporate Community Engagement: The realization of strategic partnerships between businesses, governments and communities. Corporate Community Engagement is the realization of strategic partnerships between businesses, governments and communities.
Corporate Community Involvement: Refers to activities to enhance a company’s relationships with, and to contribute to the well-being of, the communities in which it has a presence or impact. It encompasses programs that advance the interests of both the company and its communities, including donations (cash and in-kind), sponsorships, volunteering, community partnerships, and direct involvement in social and community initiatives and policy-making.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): CSR is defined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development as "the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large.” For an individual company, this means the integration of social (including human rights), environmental and economic concerns into that company’s values and culture. These values are then incorporated into the way in which the company goes about its business and are reflected in that company’s policies and strategies, decision-making, and operations.
Downstream: The term ‘downstream entities’ is based on the concept of a production chain that extends from the extraction of raw materials to the use of a good or service by an end-user. ‘Downstream’ refers to those organizations that play a role in the distribution or use of goods and services provided by the reporting organization, or, more generally, play a role in a later step in the production chain than the organization itself.
Economic Impact: Defined as any increase or decrease in the productive potential of the economy. Economic impact extends beyond the boundaries of any single organization and is linked to both the environmental and social elements of sustainable development. By understanding economic impact, we seek to understand how a company adds value to society.
Empowerment: Increasing peoples’ ability to participate in decision making; that is, the ability to negotiate with, influence, control, and hold accountable the institutions that affect their lives. In its broadest sense, empowerment is the expansion of freedom of choice and action and implies transferring decision making responsibilities and operational resources to project beneficiaries.
Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA): A process for predicting and assessing the potential environmental and social impacts of a proposed project, evaluating alternatives and designing appropriate mitigation, management and monitoring measures.
Extractive Sector: Oil, gas and mining industries.
Evaluation: Systematic investigation of the worth, value, merit, or quality of an object. It is an assessment of the operation or the outcomes of a program or policy compared to a set of explicit or implicit standards as a means of contributing to its improvement. Criteria for evaluation may include relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability.
Focus groups: A group selected for its relevance to a particular area of investigation that is engaged by a trained facilitator in discussions designed to share insights, ideas, and observations on the area of concern. Focus groups are typically open ended, discursive, and used to gain a deeper understanding of respondents' attitudes and opinions. A key feature is that participants are able interact with, and react to, each other. The group dynamic often provides richer insights and data than would have been achieved by interviewing the participants individually.
Foundation: A foundation is a non-profit corporation that donates funds to support other organizations and projects, or funds activities directly. A foundation can be publicly or privately funded by multiple or single donors. A foundation has a legal status, constitutive documents, defined objectives, an administration that runs operations and a supervisory board. A foundation may spend or preserve its capital.
Gender: The socially constructed roles ascribed to males and females and resulting socially determined relations. Gender roles are learned, change over time, and vary widely within and across cultures. Gender is a key variable in social analysis. It is important to understand the social, economic, political, and cultural forces that determine how men and women participate in, benefit from, and control project resources and activities. Social analysis should highlight gender-specific constraints, risks, and opportunities.
Human Rights: Refers to programs designed to promote and protect fundamental human rights; whether social, economic, and cultural or political and civil rights. In addition, it includes gender equality and children’s rights.
Impact: Any effect, whether anticipated or unanticipated, positive or negative, brought about by a development intervention.
Impact Assessment: Is the process of identifying the future consequences of a current or proposed action.
Indicator: Quantitative or qualitative factor or variable that provides a simple and reliable means to measure achievement, to reflect the changes connected to an intervention, or to help assess the performance of a development actor.
Input: The activities and resources allocated to the implementation of community development projects.
Institutional Analysis: Analyzes the institutional capacities and relationships critical to operational success, and identifies gaps or weaknesses in institutional resources, performance or sustainability. Over time, an institution may be considered sustainable if it can secure necessary support, provide continuing development activities and services that are valued by its stakeholders, and maintain its functions with decreasing levels of external support.
Indigenous People: No definition has been agreed upon internationally, but the principle of self-identification has been broadly accepted. The World Bank treats as indigenous people “those social groups with a social and cultural identity distinct from the dominant society, which makes them vulnerable to being disadvantaged in the development process.” They are distinctive from other vulnerable social groups insofar as they are recognized by international law and by some states as autonomous seats of power within the state, and exercise collective rights as groups.
Locally-based Suppliers: Providers of materials, products, and services that are based in the same geographic market as the reporting organization (i.e., no transnational payments to the supplier are made). The geographic definition of ‘local’ may vary because, in some circumstances, cities, regions within a country, and even small countries could be reasonably viewed as ‘local’.
Local Community: The term local communities, refers to towns, villages or other units within the significant community.
Local Economic Development (LED): The purpose of local economic development (LED) is to build up the economic capacity of a local area to improve its economic future and the quality of life for all. It is a process by which public, business and non-governmental sector partners work collectively to create better conditions for economic growth and employment generation.
Logical Framework: A simplified chain of relationships that demonstrates the logic and assumptions underlying a program or intervention and how it intends to achieve its expected results. It states the logic of the program, identifies the assumptions on which it is based, and outlines the logical connections between the activities undertaken, the outputs to be produced, the immediate or short-term outcomes that are expected, and the ultimate or long-term impacts the program is designed to achieve.
Mediation: A voluntary and confidential process in which a neutral third-party facilitator helps people discuss difficult issues and negotiate an agreement. Basic steps in the process include gathering information, framing the issues, developing options, negotiating, and formalizing agreements. Parties in mediation create their own solutions, and the mediator does not have any decision-making power over the outcome. (Source: ICMM, ESMAP and World Bank: Community Development Toolkit Bibliography: Glossary).
Micro-credits: This refers to local entrepreneurs in developing countries accessing external finance from micro-credit institutions for income-generating activities.
Microenterprise: In many countries, microenterprises — small, informally organized commercial operations owned and operated mostly by the poor — constitute the majority of businesses. They account for a substantial share of total employment and gross domestic product and they contribute significantly to poverty reduction. USAID defines “microenterprise” as a firm of 10 or fewer employees, including unpaid workers, which is owned and operated by someone who is poor.
Microfinance: Small loans that help poor people who wish to start or expand their small businesses but are not able to get banks to lend to them.
Monitoring and Evaluation: A management tool that provides managers with feedback on project effectiveness during implementation. This is important in enabling project managers to move away from prescriptive planning toward a more flexible planning approach that enables those in charge of projects to learn and adapt to changing conditions and experience on the ground. Managers use participatory monitoring and evaluation to systematically evaluate progress throughout the project cycle, ensuring the incorporation of the perspectives and insights of all stakeholders, beneficiaries, as well as project implementers. Stakeholder participation in the identification of problems and solutions helps to develop ownership and commitment to any corrective actions that may be decided on.
Multi-sector Partnerships: A multi-sector partnership describes a strategic alliance between organisations drawn from the three sectors of society - government, business and civil society - who commit to work collaboratively on a project or programme to pursue sustainable development goals, and in which all partners contribute from their core competencies, share the risks, and benefit by achieving their own, each others, and the overall partnership's objectives.
Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs): Alliances that include balanced representation between four categories: business, NGOs and civil society, labour, and mediating institutions (such as government, academia, and the accounting world). To be a multistakeholder initiative, it is not enough to have diverse representation of, and consultation with, NGOs. A MSI’s governance structure must allow for an equal opportunity for input among the various partners in steering the course of the initiative.
Non-government organizations (NGOs): Private organizations that pursue activities to relieve suffering, promote the interests of the poor, protect the environment, provide basic social services, or undertake community development. NGOs operate independently of government, are often value-based and guided by the principles of altruism and voluntarism. Broadly, NGOs may be operational, when their primary purpose is the design and implementation of development-related projects, or advocacy-focused, when their primary purpose is to defend or promote a specific cause or seek to influence development policies and practices.
Outcome: The objectives of community development; that is, the longer-term results aimed for at the end of a program.
Output: The direct results of an intervention, a deliverable for which management is responsible.
Participation: A process through which stakeholders influence and share control over development initiatives and the decisions and resources that affect them. Participation can improve the quality, effectiveness and sustainability of projects and strengthen ownership and commitment of government and stakeholders.
Participatory Rural Appraisal: A range of participatory approaches and methods that emphasize local knowledge and enable local people to conduct their own appraisal, analysis, and planning. It uses group animation and exercises to facilitate information sharing, analysis, and action among stakeholders. Although originally developed for use in rural areas, it can be employed successfully in a variety of settings, enabling development facilitators, government officials, and local people to work together to identify and address local development needs.
Partner: The individual and/or organization with which one collaborates to achieve mutually agreed upon objectives.
Partnership: Negotiated relationships that exist between two or more entities that have voluntarily entered into a legal or moral contract.
Partnership Brokers: A partnership broker is a ‘go-between’. He/She acts as an intermediary within or between different parties in an active rather than passive manner, guiding a partnering process, interpreting one party to another or negotiating some kind of agreement. A partnership broker inspires others to work together, building collaboration between partners, encouraging the adoption of behaviours that enable the partnership to function effectively, and developing or protecting the principles and vision of the partnership.
Performance Indicator: Qualitative or quantitative information about results or outcomes associated with the organization that is comparable and demonstrates change over time.
Poverty Reduction and Development: Refers to pro-poor projects that contribute to wealth creation and the overall development of low-income communities. It includes creating employment opportunities, improving productivity, and generating income and savings.
Primary Data: Qualitative or quantitative data that are newly collected to address a specific research objective. Primary data may include original information gathered from surveys, focus groups, independent observations, and test results.
Problem Census: A tool used to gain a balanced and comprehensive understanding of community needs. The Problem Census is particularly useful in understanding the causes of local development problems, identifying all possible solutions to those problems, and, by enabling the broadest community participation, developing program goals and strategies that reflect the needs and aspirations of all sections of the local community.
Qualitative Surveys: Research more subjective than quantitative research and uses very different methods of collecting information, mainly a relatively small number of individual, in depth interviews and focus groups. Qualitative surveys are exploratory and open ended, and allow respondents greater freedom to influence the research scope and design. Participants are asked to respond to general questions, and the interviewer or group moderator probes and explores the responses to identify and define perceptions, opinions, and feelings about the topic or idea being discussed. The quality of the findings from qualitative research is directly dependent upon the skill, experience, and sensitivity of the interviewer or group moderator. Qualitative research is often less costly than quantitative surveys and is extremely effective in understanding why people hold particular views and how they make judgments. While qualitative research does not produce results that are statistically reliable, its findings can, if participants are broadly representative, be strongly indicative of the population as a whole.
Quantitative Surveys: Research concerned with measurement of objective, quantitative, and statistically valid data. It is about numbers. In quantitative surveys a relatively large and scientifically calculated sample from a population is asked a set of closed questions to determine the frequency and percentage of their responses. Quantitative surveys can be used with reasonable levels of confidence to assess community attitudes across large populations. Weaknesses of quantitative surveys, however, are that they are relatively expensive, questions are strictly ordered and determined by the questioner, and are closed; that is, respondents cannot introduce topics into the survey and cannot expand on or qualify their responses.
Ranking: An exercise in which respondents identify what is most important to them (for example, in identifying development needs, communities may rank livelihood as more immediately important than education). Ranking allows facilitators to understand local preferences and to understand how values differ among different groups. Identifying local preferences and priorities is critical to choosing appropriate and effective development strategies and interventions.
Responsible Entrepreneurship: A concept put forward by the United Nations which recognizes the business role for the accomplishment of sustainable development and that companies can manage their operations in such a way as to enhance economic growth and increase competitiveness whilst ensuring environmental protection and promoting social responsibility.
Sector initiatives (SIs): Alliances between companies and/or industry bodies, which may also include NGOs, trade unions, UN agencies and/or development agencies. These alliances are formed with a view to taking concerted action within an economic sector to achieve socially responsible goals. The members of the SI may work towards a common code of conduct; they may develop guidance materials, training and procedures for monitoring.
Social Accountability: Social accountability is an approach towards building accountability that relies on civic engagement, i.e. in which it is ordinary citizens and/or civil society organizations who participate directly or indirectly in exacting accountability.
Social Capital: The stock of shared meaning and trust in a given community. Social capital is a prerequisite for cooperation and organized human behaviour, including business. Social capital can be transformed, consumed or replenished, just as financial capital.
Small and Medium Enterprise Development: This refers to projects that seek to build the capacity of SMEs to strengthen their operational capabilities.
Social Impacts: Relate to the production and maintenance of community history, culture, identity, traditions and institutions. Social impacts inform ways in which the company's presence changes the community and its capacity to adopt to change.
Social Impact Assessment: Systematic analysis of the impact of a business project or operation on the social and cultural situation of affected communities.
Stakeholder Engagement Process: The process of identifying and communicating with those people with a legitimate interest in a proposed activity.
Stakeholder: Stakeholders are defined broadly as those groups or individuals: (a) that can reasonably be expected to be significantly affected by the organization’s activities, products, and/or services; or (b) whose actions can reasonably be expected to affect the ability of the organization to successfully implement its strategies and achieve its objectives. They can be an individual, community or organization that affects, or is affected by, the operations of a company. Stakeholders may be individuals, interest groups, government agencies, or corporate organizations. They may include politicians, commercial and industrial enterprises, labor unions, academics, religious groups, national social and environmental groups, public sector agencies, and the media.
Stakeholder Analysis: A process that seeks to identify and describe the interests and relationships of all the stakeholders in a given project. It is a necessary precondition to participatory planning and project management.
Sustainable Livelihoods: Refers to initiatives that seek to improve the quality of life of people living in poverty. It includes business activities that are designed to serve the needs of the poor or to create new opportunities for the poor to become involved in local economic activities.
Sustainable Development: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Progress measured in social or economic terms is accomplished without irreversible environmental degradation or social disruption. The benefits should not only outweigh the social and ecological costs but should also be founded on a rational use of human and natural resources that can be maintained indefinitely.
Sustainable Development (Mining): Sustainable development in mining is often characterized in terms of action today with a view to a future when mining operations have concluded. The challenge of community level sustainable development is to find other drivers of development so there are viable social and ecological systems as well as a thriving economy after extractive operations have shut down. In the context of the minerals sector, the goal should be to maximize the contribution to the well-being of the current generation in a way that ensures an equitable distribution of its costs and benefits, without reducing the potential for future generations to meet their own needs.
Sustainability: The ability of an organization to secure and manage sufficient resources to enable it to fulfill its mission effectively and consistently over time without excessive dependence on a single funding source. Sustainable organizations have (a) the ability to scan the environment, adapt to it, and seize opportunities it offers; (b) strong leadership and management; (c) the ability to attract and retain qualified staff; (d) the ability to provide relevant benefits and services for maximum impact in communities; (e) the skills to demonstrate and communicate this impact to leverage further resources; (f) community support and involvement; and (g) commitment to building sustainable (not dependent) communities.
Sustainability Report: Sustainability reporting is the practice of measuring, disclosing, and being accountable for organizational performance while working towards the goal of sustainable development. A sustainability report provides a balanced and reasonable representation of the sustainability performance of the reporting organization, including both positive and negative contributions.
Tri-Sector Partnership: Partnerships among communities, local governments, and extractive industry companies to develop not only immediate win-win-win benefits but strategic, sustainable solutions that will, over time, effectively reduce poverty and create further opportunities for the extractive industry community.
Trust: A trust is a legal entity whereby money is owned and managed by an individual or organization for the benefit of another. Fiduciary responsibility is assigned to trustees who act on behalf of the beneficiaries. Sometimes trusts are viewed as foundations as well.
Upstream: The term ‘upstream entities’ is based on the concept of a production chain that extends from the extraction of raw materials to the use of a good or service by an end-user. ‘Upstream’ refers to those organizations that play a role in the supply chain of the reporting organization or, more generally, play a role in an earlier step in the production chain than the organization itself.
Voluntary Initiative: The term ‘voluntary initiative’ is used to denote coordinated activities undertaken by groups of companies to go beyond the environmental and social performance requirements set by legislation.
