may also be asked to monitor compliance at certain, agreed on times. This monitoring will occur less often,
but it should be written into the agreement and the proponent should pay for it;
•
If government agencies are trustworthy and the law allows it, then large-scale projects should be monitored
by the government. In Guyana, only the environmental impacts will be monitored, but the government has
very few people to do this job.
That is why it is so important to always set up our own community-based monitoring of project impacts. This will
inform how the proponent is managing impacts and let them know if something needs to change. It will also inform
our ongoing negotiation and consent processes.
Monitoring should look for:
•
How all activities and benefit-sharing measures set out in the agreement are being implemented and if there
are any problems;
•
Problems with the mitigation measures or management plans that were agreed;
•
Unexpected impacts or impacts that are worse than those that were identified in the environmental and
social impact assessment;
•
Any concerns or complaints from both parties. Again, we should continue to take special steps to get the
views of all community members, including those who do not speak in community meetings.
See the Impact Benefit Agreement guide and the guide on environmental and social impact assessments for more
information.
4.4 Dealing with complaints and grievances
Few projects ever turn out exactly as planned. Unexpected impacts and misunderstandings usually arise during
implementation. The monitoring programme should help identify these issues, but we also need an agreed
mechanism to deal with problems when they come up. Some steps for dealing with grievances may be set out earlier
(see Section 2.1), but the agreement we sign should also:
•
Include measures to identify and register complaints or grievances;
•
Create mechanisms to resolve disputes. These may be our customary legal processes or a combination of
customary and modern processes. Often, companies establish their own dispute resolution processes, and
we need to assess whether these are appropriate or not, and how they might be adapted;
•
The most important thing is to have dispute resolution mechanisms that are accepted by all parties. They
have to be able to act quickly, so disputes do not get worse; and
•
Section 2.2e of the guide on impact assessment talks more about grievance mechanisms.
Key FPIC Tip: Consent can be revoked, but unless “triggers” (the reasons why we might revoke consent) have been
written down in a legalised agreement, the proponent could take legal action against our community. That is why it is
so important to make sure our consent is free, prior and informed, if we give it!
A practical guide for Indigenous Peoples in Guyana
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