(1)Chile's New Voluntary Standards for Company- Community Relations during the Pre-Investment Stage

摘要

Many actors in the mining industry emphasize the importance of early and meaningful stakeholder engagement to create the conditions for socially sustainable projects. In practice, companies have adopted very different approaches to this early-stage interaction, and governments have played little role in guiding or supporting these engagement processes prior to the formal environmental evaluation process. For the first time in Chile, a government entity is providing a structured process for companies, communities and other stakeholders to work together during the pre-investment stage. The National Council for Clean Production (CPL)has designed a voluntary instrument to guide earlystage engagement, with the aim of creating better and more sustainable projects. Developed with an inter-disciplinary team of experts, the process focuses on the period of time leading up to the formal environmental impact assessment process, when project design issues are still being decided. This paper analyzes the innovative aspects of this instrument, in particular the active role of the Chilean state through CPL, which will act as guarantor both of the quality of the participatory process and of the agreements reached through it. The instrument's methodology is based around a structured, participatory process, with defined milestones and products, guided by principles and criteria. The paper will highlight the key aspects of this methodology and its underlying assumptions. The instrument was announced in March 2015 as a working draft, and will be piloted with up to three projects this year.