Types Transparent and Mutually Beneficial Legal Framework
Transparent and Mutually Beneficial Legal Framework
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A Review of Sierra Leone’s Mines and Minerals Act
With the support of Oxfam, the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment reviewed select provisions in the Mines and Minerals Act 2009 and corresponding policy statements from the Minerals Policy 2018 to provide recommendations for how to best align the anticipated new mining law with international best practice.
OpenCommunityContracts.org: A Database of Publicly Available Community-Investor Contracts
In September 2018, CCSI launched OpenCommunityContracts.org, a collection of publicly available agreements between local communities and investors. In some instances, the repository also features agreements that include host government parties. The agreements featured on the repository include benefit sharing agreements, leases, memoranda of understanding (MOUs), and revenue sharing agreements concluded in the context of agriculture, forestry, mining, oil and gas extraction, renewable energy, and other natural resource projects.
ResourceContracts.org: A Database of Publicly Available Oil, Gas and Mining Contracts
CCSI, together with the World Bank and Natural Resource Governance Institute, has developed ResourceContracts.org, an online, searchable and user-friendly database of publicly available oil, gas and mining contracts from around the world. Users can search contracts by country, by natural resource or by type of contract; view summaries of key social, environmental, fiscal, and operational provisions; and download full contracts.
Comparing Mineral Regimes: Licensing vs. Contracts
CCSI examined the advantages and disadvantages of different mineral regimes (licensing regimes vs. contractual arrangements) in 18 countries around the world. For the 13 countries that used mining contracts, CCSI further examined the contract negotiation and implementation processes of 30 mining contracts as well as the relationship between those countries’ mining contracts and their legal regimes. CCSI also identified potential opportunities for external experts to support resource rich, low income countries in contract negotiations.
Review of Competitive Bidding Frameworks for Natural Resource Rights
This study surveyed the trend toward countries integrating competitive bidding provisions for mineral rights allocation into their national legislation and regulations, and sought to analyze the potential issues around these provisions.
Supporting Governments and Civil Society: Legal Frameworks Governing Extractive Industries
CCSI advises governments and civil society organizations on various issues relating to the legal frameworks that govern extractive industries.
Local Content Laws & Contractual Provisions
CCSI is examining local content provisions contained in legal frameworks governing resource investments, including in contracts, legislation and bidding practices.
Mining Contracts: How to Read and Understand Them
In December 2013, a diverse group of 14 experts from Africa, Asia, North America, South America, and Europe worked together for five days to produce a user-friendly guide in English and in French on “Mining Contracts: How to Read and Understand Them.” The guide was produced to help policy makers, civil society, citizens, and the media understand the often complex and opaque terms of mining contracts.
Review Mechanisms in Natural Resource Contracts
CCSI has published a brief which examines the use of built-in review periods in extractive industry contracts as a mechanism for managing investor and host-country relations over the duration of a project. CCSI completed a survey of periodic review mechanisms contained in extractive industry contracts, to analyze how they have been used to date, and to understand the purposes for which they may usefully be applied.
Enabling Resource Contract Transparency
Contract transparency in natural resources is an emerging norm that many governments, companies and international institutions have endorsed, particularly within the extractive industries. However, more must be done to make contract transparency a standardized and meaningful norm that leads to better accountability within the extractive industries, as well as around investments in land, agriculture, and forestry.
International Investment Law and the Extractive Industries Sector
Since the 1990s, international investment law has been rapidly evolving, resulting in a complex web of over 3,000 investment treaties. These treaties have been used to challenge a wide range of host state actions and inactions that have allegedly negatively affected foreign investors or investments. Those challenges, in turn, expose host states to potentially significant financial costs, and can restrict the ability of such states to maximize the benefits, and limit the environmental and social harms, that can result from the exploitation of natural resources.
Topical Contractual Issues
Contract Comparison Research: Using the ResourceContracts.org contract comparison tool, CCSI is researching local content and water provisions respectively in oil, gas, and mining contracts from select countries, supplementing and situating the analysis in the context of the projects to which the contracts apply to understand the impact of such provisions on water availability for communities surrounding a project, and the realization of local content objectives.