Effective Community Engagement

October 10, 2024

La Guajira, Colombia - © Eduar Monsalve - Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)

Meaningful community engagement around RE projects is necessary for reciprocal information sharing, consensus building, and defining mutual success. Engagement approaches must start early, establish institutional structures, have reliable information, communicate effectively, and create effective grievance mechanisms and binding agreements. Tailoring these processes to the local political economy and fully appreciating the history of the community’s relationships with developments are crucial to avoiding local elite capture and ensuring diverse community representation. The project’s financial resourcing should factor in the cost of engagement strategies, with core company staff and community members empowered to participate constructively.

Utility-scale renewable energy projects can trigger multiple interactions between developers and communities who inhabit, use, or transit the land they occupy. This chapter discusses the challenges of these interactions and how community engagement can be done effectively.

Context

A complex interplay between stakeholders affected by RE projects is almost inevitable. Given the long-term nature and scale of these projects, the rights and interests of the community should be safeguarded. When done responsibly, renewable energy projects can benefit communities, particularly those most vulnerable, such as Indigenous Peoples. The question is how the project can generate local development, uphold human rights and protect the environment. Answering this necessitates effective community engagement, which includes close conversations and trust-building processes amongst all stakeholders.

Utility-scale renewable energy projects can be located in rural land or seascapes where livelihoods are under stress from climate change.^{[1]Christopher Atkinson and Allison Atkinson, 2023, Impacts of Climate Change on Rural Communities: Vulnerability and Adaptation in the Global South}^{[2]Santos da Silva et. al., 2021, Power sector investment implications of climate impacts on renewable resources in Latin America and the Caribbean} Often, host communities have experienced trauma from past exclusion, which can be exacerbated through poor engagement efforts and result in heightened distrust and risk of conflict. Social performance is defined as “the direct and positive social impacts on the wellbeing of individuals and communities during the development and implementation of energy projects that effectively and comprehensively improve the lives of people and local communities”.^{[3] Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, 2021, The Social Performance Approach: Fostering community well-being through energy-sector investments} Underestimating community-related risks can generally result in insufficient investment in social performance, particularly in community engagement processes. Consequently, minimal or counterproductive community engagement may foster internal community divisions, generate resentment against the project, and, ultimately, impact the project’s social acceptance. Project delays and cancellations due to community opposition are costly and nonetheless generally poorly integrated into company risk assessments.

Despite the extensive guidelines available and the legal and/or institutional requirements for community engagement, project time and cost pressures usually result in hurried, superficial, compliance-based practices. Carrying out meaningful community engagement processes under project constraints is a challenge that many large development projects in energy and other sectors share.

Community engagement in practice is guided by norms and regulatory requirements which vary widely in different jurisdictions and for various groups. While stringent practices derived from Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC)^{[4]Institute for Human Rights and Business, 2022, What is Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC)?} apply to Indigenous Peoples in many contexts, community engagement can become a merely transactional requirement guided by intermediaries who may not be aligned with communities’ interests, rather than an ongoing dialogue process to ensure long-term sustainability.^{[5]Stockholm Environment Institute, 2024, Enabling factors of social acceptance of wind energy projects in La Guajira} Furthermore, in many cases, RE projects are exempt from community consultation requirements, such as public hearings, because they are considered inherently green, and therefore, good.

On the other hand, funding institutions, such as the International Finance Corporation (IFC), outline detailed social and environmental safeguards, including provisions for community participation in the projects they finance. The IFC’s Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability provide detailed guidelines for engagement and participation processes.^{[6]International Finance Corporation, 2012, IFC’s Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability} To comply with these standards, developers must periodically report on their implementation to their lenders. Similarly, some private companies have detailed and context-specific community engagement strategies. However, little recourse exists for communities where standards are implemented superficially.

Emerging Good Practice

Community engagement is a common concept in project development, but is conceived and implemented in widely divergent ways and is highly dependent on the context. Adequate attention and resources are necessary to ensure that engagement strategies are high quality and result in the desired outcomes. Ensuring the participation of all relevant stakeholders, including vulnerable groups, and creating adequate space for them to contribute to decision-making are crucial. Meaningful community engagement is not merely a procedural requirement but a fundamental strategy for fostering a just energy transition.

Engagement should allow for a comprehensive understanding of stakeholder interests and priorities, including the potential synergies for shared prosperity and trade-offs. It is the basis for consensus building and the community’s acceptance of the project.

To establish meaningful community engagement, each party must understand what success and coexistence means for the other. While there will always be trade-offs, engagement aims to build joint value through synergies and distribute the costs associated with negative impacts that cannot be avoided or mitigated. Stakeholders often accept a project if they perceive the process has been conducted fairly through their participation and representation. Considering the above, a non-exhaustive chart defining the key stages of a basic model for meaningful community engagement is shown below.

Key elements of meaningful engagement

Table 1

Early and continuous engagement

Engage with the community early in decision-making, such as the project design process, considering the physical footprint and technology choices. Continue this engagement throughout construction, operation, and decommissioning. Community perspectives are critical not only during construction, when land use, water use, and major construction activities are likely to have negative (and positive) impacts on communities, but also in planning socio economic development programmes.

Institutional structures

Establish or collaborate with existing institutional structures, such as local clubs and women’s groups, and harness the local government’s commitment to supporting partnerships during the entire lifecycle of the project.

Community input and generating trustworthy data

Ensure clear and predictable opportunities for community input on key issues such as optimal design to permit the co-existence of established livelihood practices, skill development aligned with the RE project and compensation measures. Pursue local socio economic support, environmental preservation, and remediation measures. Include communities in data generation such as skills mapping. Methodologies such as Participatory Rural Appraisal can be used to survey the landscape, assets, services, and livelihood patterns, informing Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs). Create reliable socio economic data and spatial maps with accurate land and resource uses. This approach reflects lived experience and local knowledge, providing a basis for development planning.

Effective and culturally appropriate communication

Develop inclusive communication strategies that are effective and culturally appropriate to ensure all community members understand project details and have their voices heard. This includes using local languages, respecting cultural norms, and employing diverse communication methods tailored to the community’s needs. Establishing continuous information-sharing channels between project developers, including their contractors and host communities, is essential.

Grievance mechanisms

Design a robust grievance management process with clear channels for community members to raise concerns, provide feedback, and seek resolution throughout all project phases. Regular reviews and adjustments based on community feedback are essential to maintaining trust and addressing emerging issues promptly.

Binding agreements

Develop binding agreements that outline the responsibilities, participation, ownership, benefits, and obligations of all parties involved. Ensure agreements are accessible and understandable for all relevant stakeholders. Consider mechanisms for periodic review and amendment to adapt to changing circumstances and ensure continued relevance and fairness over the project lifecycle.

Finding a common understanding is the ultimate goal of a community engagement process, and this requires consultations with all relevant groups, particularly vulnerable groups, such as Indigenous Peoples, who are often most at risk of adverse project impacts and have the least ability to claim their rights. In this sense, diversity and inclusivity are crucial in the engagement process. Diversity of knowledge and contexts is relevant, particularly in situations with significant power asymmetries between stakeholders.

Community engagement forums in South Africa and Kenya

In South Africa, some renewable energy projects have experimented with creating formal community engagement forums to establish reliable engagement channels and co-create community socio economic benefit programmes during the operations phase. One project established a forum in response to the community’s dissatisfaction with not having input in the design of programmes funded by the community development trust — a mechanism for community shareholding (minimum 2.5%) of the project. Various forums were set up in line with the pillars of the community development strategy: education, youth development, health and wellbeing, and local economic development. They provided a space for community members to meet with the project company’s social performance team to discuss current community assets, challenges, and additional support needed to advance the community development strategy.

This case is similar to the Local Community Benefit Sharing Forums (LCBSFs) in Kenya, which recommend and oversee the implementation of development activities at the community level. At the same time, the County Benefit Sharing Committees are responsible for implementing development activities at the county level. See Chapter 5 for more details.

Xazulula “Resolve” — Trauma-informed community leadership development in South Africa

INSPIRE and the Centre for Mental Wellness and Leadership (CMWL) partnered in the project Xazulula — Effective Social Performance in Traumatised Contexts. The project focuses on communities hosting and holding shares in a large-scale RE project by assessing the psychological architecture of the communities and implementing trauma-informed community leadership interventions.^{[7]Initiative for Social Performance in Renewable Energy, 2024, Trauma-informed leadership in Community Development: A case study of the Xazulula project in South Africa} The word Xazulula is significant as it explores and uncovers the nature, extent, and depth that stress and trauma have on a community, thereby working to unpack and address the underlying neuropsychological factors. This allows people to recover and build sustainable coping strategies for the individuals and the community at large. Following thorough analysis, the project developed strategies and objectives to address leadership challenges and ultimately provide frameworks, tools, and support to unlock the potential for community development and deepen positive community impact associated with renewable energy shareholding and other benefits. Addressing existing (historical and present-time) societal traumas is key to creating developmental impact.

What has emerged during the implementation of the Xazulula project is a lack of understanding and appreciation of the role that unresolved psychological wounds, whether collective or individual, play in hindering collaboration within and between RE projects and advancin sustainable impact. Moreover, there has been a lack of appreciation of the role of wounded/traumatised leaders in preventing the success of community engagement and development programmes.

Relevant Stakeholder Insights

Challenges and Opportunities Commonly Raised

Lack of resources: Companies can be wary of getting drawn into intra-community conflicts and sometimes find their engagement channelled through local power brokers. Decision-making usually occurs at the company’s headquarters, which tends to be far removed from host communities. Bridging those divides takes consistent effort and adequate resources, including financial and staff time. Devoting resources to these processes is challenging. Utility-scale renewable energy projects have relatively long development and construction timelines (2-6 years on average) and do not start yielding profits until they begin commercial operations. Years without financial flows pose a challenge to secure the budget to carry out engagement strategies and meet community expectations.

Expectation management: Companies can be sceptical about engaging with communities and local governments, wary of creating expectations before the project is fully funded and resources are defined.

Outsourcing leads to a lack of direct understanding: Contracting out community engagement can mean company employees are poorly informed.

Recommendations for Practitioners

Quantifying the costs of inadequate engagement: Work with the corporate sector to quantify the costs of inadequate engagement, making the value of a sound engagement strategy better understood. For example, these costs include litigation risk, foregone earnings from delayed commercial operation dates, and security concerns that impair smooth operations.

Planning for adequate resources in project budgets: Community engagement activities should be budgeted in the project’s financial modelling and initial investment. Building solid foundations of community and local government relations up front minimises the cost of fixing relationships at a later stage. This is similar to remedying a building’s structural errors after the construction is finished.

Aligning incentives to social performance: Management teams in specific projects may have a shorter tenure than the time required to reap the benefits of investing in a good community engagement strategy. Managers might be rewarded for minimising costs and increasing short-term profits. Personal and team incentives and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) must be aligned with good social performance.

Mainstream professional social performance practices throughout project engagement activities: Ensure appropriate company staff are informed of and participate directly in community engagement processes; that agreements reached with the community are preserved in written form; and that they remain part of the project management portfolio.

Challenges and Opportunities Commonly Raised

Lack of accessibility: In the absence of consistent information shared in accessible ways (e.g. local office to lodge grievances and material in local languages), influential actors in the community, including elected representatives from local government, often have earlier access to information that they can leverage to reap whatever benefits a project brings (e.g. land leases, jobs). Even where there are local project officers or community liaison officers, like in Kenya and South Africa, companies can be found to establish digital grievance procedures for community members to voice their concerns. Yet such approaches that avoid direct interaction may not be appropriate in certain contexts. Increasingly, the social divide is widening with automation. An RE project, remotely managed, in a remote location, does not require constant physical presence of technical staff on site, widening the gulf between company and community.

Superficial engagement: Local communities are commonly briefed on the project through workshop or public hearing, where presentations are made, and communities can ask questions. This is usually offered in the local language. However, the predominant belief may be that the project will go ahead regardless of the community’s inputs being valued or welcomed as part of the project’s design.

Scepticism based on previous negative experiences: Previous engagements with external actors in the same geography may have left communities feeling powerless to determine the project outcome. Memories of such experiences could also have been passed down through generations.

Recommendations for Practitioners

Effective community liaisons: Establishing a working community engagement forum can enable information-sharing and a more robust grievance redressal process. This communication channel informs the community of emerging opportunities (e.g., short-term or long-term employment, service requests, and more).

Use appropriate participatory methodologies for community consultations to gain and build on local knowledge and gain understanding and buy-in for project-related and social performance alternatives. The community’s needs and priorities should drive the engagement process. It is advisable to use community-based groups with the capacity and trust to work at the local level as intermediaries rather than professional consultants from outside the community, but it is essential to be aware of local bias.

Boosting communication through digital networks: Not all community members, especially pastoralist communities, can access telephones or regular electricity to charge their devices. Conversely, this presents an opportunity for further infrastructural development, increasing the community’s social and economic well-being.

Trauma-informed engagement: Design trauma-informed engagement processes to ensure psychological safety and allow everyone to participate fully. For instance, social practitioners and community shareholders in South Africa received training in trauma-informed leadership approaches to community engagement and development (See Case Study 8).

Challenges and Opportunities Commonly Raised

Capacity and competing priorities: Effective regulations and policies are pivotal in ensuring fair processes, particularly clearance and auctioning procedures. When accompanied by effective implementation and accountability structures, these mechanisms establish standards for procedural due diligence and robust tools for promoting best practices. However, their effectiveness hinges on the political will and administrative capacity to enforce them.

Lack of effective enforcement mechanisms: Enforcement of procedural rights can be a challenge, especially in regions where judicial and administrative systems are ineffective or inaccessible. Strengthening the legal basis and administrative and judicial structures to enforce community engagement obligations and mechanisms for accountability and justice are essential for fostering meaningful community involvement in project development.

Recommendations for Practitioners

Support policy development and institutional capacity building for participatory development, drawing on domestic constitutional and other legal provisions as well as relevant international guidance (e.g. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries).^{[8]Food and Agriculture Organization, Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication [Accessed in June 2024]}

Adopt a systematic and systemic approach: Drawing from a triple helix approach of community, conservation, and collaboration suggested by National Geographic and African People and Wildlife, the government should uphold and ensure effective implementation of the principles of effective community engagement through relevant policy and regulatory frameworks.^{[9]National Geographic Society and African People & Wildlife, 2019, Community, conservation, and collaboration: A framework for success. National Geographic Society} It emphasises recognising communities as creators of programmes, environmental entrepreneurs, and catalysts of change.

Legislated community capacity support: Local communities often lack the capacities to comprehensively understand the implications of a renewable energy project and foster positive long-term impacts. Indigenous communities may request an adviser during the process of Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC), such as in Colombia^{[10]Corte Constitucional República de Colombia, Sentencia T-969/14} and Peru.^{[11]Ministerio de Cultura. Perú, 2013, Consulta a los Pueblos Indígenas. Guía Metodológica} However, establishing a regulated mechanism for providing such services, as well as the best advisory practices and funding alternatives, is sorely needed in many contexts.

Future glimpse

“Yesterday was an incredible day”, Thandiwe wrote in her journal. The journal has grown into many books in the two decades since her early twenties. She started it when she spent six months, in 2026, in the Initiative for Social Performance in Renewable Energy’s (INSPIRE’s) social performance programme for rising leaders in the renewable energy sector. The early entries reflect some difficult days. Conflicts with her social performance department manager or stories about sexual abuse or violence in the communities where she worked left her depleted. She wanted to hide and not leave her bed, let alone return to work the next day.

However, the training and a degree in social development with psychology as a major were the best preparation for her role as the bridge between the RE company and the communities where they work. Her last two decades have been based on a fundamental understanding of herself, her wounds, her triggers, and how to take care of and sustain her energy. She even mentors young professionals on this trauma-informed approach.

She suddenly flashed back to the day she knew she needed the INSPIRE training. She was meant to attend a community forum meeting with a project construction manager, who looked frightfully similar to an apartheid politician. By chance, he couldn’t attend that day, and the conversation with the community flowed much better than in previous engagements. In the end, she asked for feedback about the meeting, and a quiet old woman stood up and said: “we finally felt that we could speak freely. The manager you usually have with you reminds us so much of past injustices. Our hearts freeze when we see him, and it’s hard to want to join hands. Without him in the room, we feel better. Please leave him at the office in future, and we can hear you better”.

The community’s trauma from the past was triggered by the sight of this man, who unfortunately looked so similar to the former politician that they could not concentrate on the opportunities Thandiwe was discussing.

Today’s entry is so different. Yesterday, she witnessed the quiet old woman’s son become a member of the RE company board.

Clean Energy Council, 2018, COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT GUIDELINES For the Australian Wind Industry
USAID, 2018, GUIDE TO COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT FOR POWER PROJECTS IN KENYA
BRE National Solar Centre, 2015, Community Engagement Good Practice Guidance for Solar Farms
Taryn Lane and Jarra Hicks, 2014, Best practice community engagement in wind development
Stockholm Environment Institute, 2024, Enabling factors of social acceptance of wind energy projects in La Guajira
Initiative for Social Performance in Renewable Energy, 2020, Committing to community engagement
Iniciativa Climática de México, 2020, Lineamientos para el Desarrollo de Proyectos de Energía Renovable Participativos, Incluyentes y Transpatrentes

[1] Christopher Atkinson and Allison Atkinson, 2023, Impacts of Climate Change on Rural Communities: Vulnerability and Adaptation in the Global South
[2] Santos da Silva et. al., 2021, Power sector investment implications of climate impacts on renewable resources in Latin America and the Caribbean
[3] Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, 2021, The Social Performance Approach: Fostering community well-being through energy-sector investments
[4] Institute for Human Rights and Business, 2022, What is Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC)?
[5] Stockholm Environment Institute, 2024, Enabling factors of social acceptance of wind energy projects in La Guajira
[6] International Finance Corporation, 2012, IFC’s Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability
[7] Initiative for Social Performance in Renewable Energy, 2024, Trauma-informed leadership in Community Development: A case study of the Xazulula project in South Africa
[8] Food and Agriculture Organization, Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication [Accessed in June 2024]
[9] National Geographic Society and African People & Wildlife, 2019, Community, conservation, and collaboration: A framework for success. National Geographic Society
[10] Corte Constitucional República de Colombia, Sentencia T-969/14
[11] Ministerio de Cultura. Perú, 2013, Consulta a los Pueblos Indígenas. Guía Metodológica