Legal empowerment for local resource control

BOX 2. LEGAL AND PARA-LEGAL TOOLS – DEFINITIONS
Legal tools are institutional arrangements anchored to the legal system that
help increase local resource control. This includes tools to secure resource
rights (such as community land registration, mandatory community
consultation and compensation for takings and damage to property) and tools
concerning “procedural rights” (access to information, public participation in
decision-making and access to justice). The focus here is on tools to secure
resource rights.
Para-legal tools are the range of materials and activities to build local capacity
in order to enable poorer and more marginalised groups to use legal tools
more effectively; and, more generally, the range of strategies and tactics for
helping these groups make the most of the opportunities offered by the law.
see e.g. Mayers and Bass, 2004), and within that on "power tools" ("policy
tools that address power asymmetries"; Vermeulen, 2005). This analysis
builds on that work, focusing on a particular type of tool – legal tools.
“Legal tools” are broadly defined here as institutional arrangements that
are designed to respond to specific needs or problems (hence “tools”), and
that draw legitimacy from their being anchored to the legal system (e.g.
legislation or case law – hence “legal”; see above, section 1.2). The focus
here is on legal tools that can help increase local resource control within
the context of foreign investment projects. In particular, the study focuses
on three sets of tools:
Tools to vest broader and/or stronger natural resource rights with local
resource users, or with local government bodies representing them;
Tools concerning mandatory consultation processes and benefit-sharing
arrangements negotiated between local resource users and foreign
investors;
Tools to minimise and compensate negative impacts on local resource
rights, including taking of property and pollution of natural resources.
Legal tools are shaped by the interplay of state and non-state actors. As legal
tools are anchored to the legal system, law-makers and judges play a key role
in shaping them. But the practical operation and social outcomes of legal
tools also depend on the way government officials, legal professionals and
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