Over 100 people were injured in the unrest, and over 1,200 people were taken into custody. Panama’s Supreme Court eventually ruled that Minera Panamá’s contract was unconstitutional, and the mine closed.

What happened at Cobre Panamá is only one example of a larger phenomenon in which critical mineral mines are delayed — or even cancelled — when communities mount effective opposition. Legitimate concerns surrounding pollution, lack of consultation, and other factors, are usually at the heart of these movements.

Mounting needs for critical minerals to power a clean energy transition make it urgent to identify institutional and governance solutions to mitigate mining impacts on communities and deliver economic benefits to them. Now, some communities are directly negotiating legal agreements — called “impact-benefit agreements” (IBAs) — with mining companies. Yet we know little about IBAs from a scientific perspective to date, partly because these agreements were often confidential.

Kaki Comer, Manager, Standards & Systems, at US-based nonprofit Equitable Origin observes that “as critical mineral mining is ramping up, mining companies are approaching communities we work with in the Global South to sign agreements. But sometimes it’s challenging for the communities to know what to ask for — because most of these mining agreements are confidential, and it’s difficult to find examples.”

We examine this problem in “Impact-Benefit Agreements in Critical Mineral Mining: A Typology and Analysis,” a new research paper published in Environment and Security which explains how local communities around the world use these agreements. The IBAs we assess are designed not just to mitigate impacts, but also deliver specific benefits to communities. One possible use for IBAs is to mitigate the many negative impacts associated with the so-called “resource curse”— in which the presence of a valuable resource may create bad incentives and poor governance prevents communities from receiving direct immediate economic benefits from the commodity.

Examples of these agreements are taken from an open-access dataset we collected that contains 27 publicly available critical mineral mining IBAs from regions across the Global North and South. We hope this dataset will help not only future researchers and policymakers, but also provide useful examples for practitioners and communities facing mining challenges.

Our paper offers a pathway to understand critical governance options for communities to reduce the negative socioeconomic and environmental impacts of mining, as well as deliver benefits to their members.

Critical Mineral Mining IBAs: A Primer

IBAs are company-community agreements between at least one community and one company signatory. Some agreements include more than one community. Sometimes they include state or federal governments. In some jurisdictions, IBAs are required by national mining law or Indigenous land claim agreements. Other agreements are voluntary.

Because many of these private contracts are confidential, previous researchers have seldom studied them. This is changing, however. An increasing number of critical minerals IBAs are now public, as part of a growing trend towards transparency in global extractive sectors. For example, parties to several recent IBAs in Nunavut, Canada included explicit clauses that state that the agreements are not confidential.

The use of IBAs in critical mineral mining is growing and now extends to at least five continents.

What Critical Mineral Mining IBAs Offer to Communities

While an increase in critical minerals mining has broad global implications for a just energy transition, the scope and purpose of individual IBAs is largely local and regional. And as negotiated agreements, their contents can vary a lot. What they contain is largely tailored to local priorities.

What IBAs do have in common, however, is that they usually contain a package of benefits (such as direct financial payments to the community, training and employment opportunities, and contracting opportunities for local businesses), as well as impact mitigation measures (such as enhanced environmental protections, a stronger role for the community in impact monitoring, and measures taken to protect cultural heritage sites).

Most IBAs also contain some form of direct monetary payments, such as fixed payments or royalty payments. Canada’s Raglan Agreement covering the Raglan nickel-copper-cobalt mine in northern Quebec contains both sorts of payment. The agreement provides milestone payments to the Indigenous signatories (such as CAD $1 million when the mine starts commercial production), rising annual payments over the life of the mine, and a 4.5% profit-based royalty.

Most IBAs also contain impact mitigation measures. For example, Ghana’s Ahafo Social Responsibility Agreement Between the Ahafo Mine Local Community and Newmont Ghana Gold Limited committed the company to co-develop an environmental and social impact monitoring program with the community. The company also agreed to build the capacity of community members by training them to conduct this monitoring.

A Useful Tool, Not a Panacea

IBAs are not a panacea. Indeed, as companies sometimes seek explicit agreement to not oppose the project through protest or litigation, communities may view such measures as limiting their options or stifling their voice. However, agreements do not always include such measures.

Power differentials between communities and companies who engage in negotiations also present a challenge. Each party has different access to information and resources. A key challenge for IBAs is to level the playing field by including governments and other players in these agreements.

While most research has focused on the text of the agreements, perhaps the biggest questions surrounding IBAs are how these agreements play out on the ground, and what makes for an “excellent” agreement – especially from a community perspective.

In sum, increasingly researchers present a pragmatic view: IBAs are a governance tool that communities can (and have) accessed. And while several factors shape the outcomes of such agreements, IBAs do have the potential to lead to net-positive outcomes for communities. Their use can reinforce greater transparency and accountability around projects, and as such, avoid resource curses through good governance. This in turn can help mitigate negative impacts of mining (e.g., pollution) and improve the delivery of benefits to communities (e.g., training, and payments).

As countries navigate the expanding extraction of critical minerals, they must confront mining’s direct impacts on local communities to ensure a just energy transition. IBAs have the potential to be a flexible tool communities can use to build out benefits of mining and mitigate impacts. Making these agreements more visible and building out our understanding of them is a first step towards realizing this promise.

This article was originally published on newsecuritybeat.org.