Element 1 – Understand: What is community support?
This toolkit provides an initial framework to help understand and measure community support. Seven key factors influence a positive outcome and need to be evaluated together.
The four main indicators – legitimacy, compatibility, respect and trust – overlap and influence each other and cannot be fully understood if three contextual factors – socio-political and governance, reputation and equity and social capital – have not be examined and considered alongside the initial four indicators.
These indicators and contextual factors are designed to find key variables and identify specific actions aimed at strengthening community-company relationships.
Indicators of community support and contextual factors:
Key factors:
Socio-political and governance (p17)
- government legitimacy and capacity
- legitimacy and accountability of political processes
Reputation (p18)
- mining industry legacy and current reputation
- company-specific reputation from other operation contexts
Equity and social considerations (p18)
- community impact and benefit from a mine
- perception of costs and benefits
- reciprocal nature of social relations
Legitimacy (p13)
- legal authorisations
- alignment with societal expectations
- individual acceptance
Compatibility of interests (p14)
- interests are aligned or complementary and not mutually exclusive
- interactions are seen as win-win
Respect (p14)
- interpersonal dynamics
- cultural boundaries and practices
- information sharing
- joint problem solving and decision-making
Trust (p15)
- trustfulness
- credibility
- transparency
- alignment between expectations and capacity