Oil And Gas Industry Learning Project On Community Grievance Mechanisms
Authors: Boladeras Shane , Wild Elizabeth , Murphy Helen 
Published: March 2016

Operational level grievance mechanisms are an important part of a company's approach to strategic stakeholder engagement, helping to reinforce constructive long-term relationships and generating feedback that can help to drive continuous improvement. They enable communities to raise issues with companies at the site level and obtain redress in a timely manner where their complaints are justified, without having to resort to external legal processes.

Community grievance mechanisms (CGMs) are part of the ‘Access to Remedy’ expectations defined in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). Effective Remedy processes provide options for people who believe that a company has violated their rights to seek redress. These options can be state-based judicial mechanisms, state based non-judicial mechanisms, and non-state based mechanisms. Operational level grievance mechanisms fall into the third category.

IPIECA, the oil and gas industry association for environmental and social issues, led a two-year collaborative learning project from March 2012 to test the implementation of operational level grievance mechanisms on the ground. It used the learnings to produce tools, templates and a practical manual for implementing operational-level grievance mechanisms and designing corporate frameworks. The project was based on a seven pilot projects implemented by member companies that either established a new grievance mechanism or improved an existing one. The pilots are diverse; they span three continents including developed and developing countries, onshore and offshore, conventional and unconventional projects as well as indigenous and non-indigenous contexts.

Lessons learned from the pilots suggest that the vast majority of community grievances reported by companies through their complaints processes can be solved amicably and promptly, particularly if they are addressed before they become acute. This finding underscores IPIECA members’ belief that grievance mechanisms should generally be part of a comprehensive stakeholder engagement process. Industry experience also indicates that grievance mechanisms should be risk-based and responsive to local needs and circumstances rather than following detailed prescriptive or one-size-fits-all solutions. However, there are some basic principles and approaches that apply to all community grievance mechanisms such as the need for it to be credible in the eyes of the intended users, accessible to all potentially affected stakeholders, and have a clear and known procedure with an indicative timeframe for each stage of the process.

This paper will tell the story of IPIECA's learning project on community grievance mechanisms. It will present IPIECA's findings from the pilots and its work to create tools, templates and practical guidance to help businesses implement community grievance mechanisms that work for both the community and the company. It will also encompass new learnings since the Manual was launched in January 2015, including external developments in the ‘Access to Remedy’ pillar, and further challenges and opportunities experienced by IPIECA members in the implementation of CGMs.