In recent years, mining related company-community conflicts have received a great deal of attention by advocacy organizations and traditional and social media. For companies, conflict has the potential to result in: lost productivity, lost opportunity, lost time and negative impacts on reputation. For communities, some ‘costs’ are the same as for companies, such as lost productivity, opportunity and time. Conflict can also undermine or damage their formal or informal institutions and decision-making structures, erode trust and damage relationships within communities. In extreme cases, it can result in physical harm to community members, company employees or security providers. In view of the direct relevance of conflict to the contribution of mining to social and economic development, ICMM undertook research which focused on reported incidents of company-community conflict between 2002 and 2013. The objective was to deepen ICMM’s understanding of trends related to conflict between companies and communities and to examine the related causes.
