4F.1 About land access, displacement and resettlement

Resettlement is defined as the comprehensive process of planning for and implementing the relocation of people, households and communities, including (a) monetary compensation or compensation in kind for lost assets, resources and inconvenience, and (b) the provision of support for livelihood restoration and enhancement, re-establishment of social networks, and restoring or improving the social functioning of the community.¹ In practice, resettlement also includes activities aimed at mitigating the adverse effects associated with economic displacement.

Displacement emanates from a variety of site requirements and activities, including land access and land-take, as well as CHS impacts. The latter may relate to the location of communities in proximity to mine infrastructure such as tailings storage facilities (TSFs) and waste rock dumps (WRDs). Relocation, defined as changing the location of residential dwellings, businesses and/or livelihoods, cultural or other activities from one place to another, is required when communities are displaced from (or somehow restricted in their use of) land utilised for these purposes.

Resettlement is either voluntary or involuntary. In the case of voluntary resettlement, affected individuals, land users and/or communities have a choice to relocate. Involuntary resettlement occurs when affected parties do not have the right to refuse relocation and the legal right to expropriate land exists. As a safeguard, Anglo American considers all resettlements as involuntary and manages the process accordingly, even if negotiated agreement is reached with the affected individuals. As such, resettlement must be planned and implemented in accordance with good practice standards such as the IFC PS 5.

Decades of research have shown that resettlement associated with public and private sector projects, including mining, frequently results in the impoverishment of local land users. The most significant impacts associated with displacement are landlessness, joblessness, homelessness, marginalisation, food insecurity, increased morbidity and mortality, loss of access to common property and services, and social disarticulation.² The disruption of education is another notable impact.

Resettlement has a significant impact on affected communities, is often controversial, and also represents a high risk to the company. The way in which Anglo American engages stakeholders on the topic, relocates displaced communities and restores livelihoods is central to our Purpose to reimagine mining to improve people’s lives. It typically takes many years to plan and implement resettlement, and reach the point where unencumbered land access is achieved; accordingly, displacement impacts must be identified well ahead of the time, ideally 10 years or more in advance of the required land access date or when the impact resulting in displacement is expected to begin to occur. The resettlement process requires extensive and on-going topic-specific stakeholder engagement and negotiation, and detailed planning led by a team with significant resettlement expertise. Internally, dedicated resources and governance structures are required, and often also substantial funding.

Key objectives and guiding principles

Box 4F.2 lists the key objectives of good practice resettlement. Operations and project teams must adopt these as guiding principles during the planning and implementation of resettlement projects.

Types of displacement

In addition to voluntary and involuntary, it is important to distinguish between two types of displacement:

Physical displacement is the loss of houses, dwellings or shelter and entails the relocation of households to an alternative location given the need to access the land or potential sustained CHS impacts on the community.
Economic displacement is the loss of assets (including land), or the loss of access to assets that results in the loss of income or means of livelihood. While physical and economic displacement usually go hand in hand, in some cases households can be economically displaced without being physically displaced.

Both physical and economic displacement can be either permanent or temporary:

Permanent displacement occurs when displaced households are not able to return to or make use of the land from which they are displaced within a reasonable period such that there is no material impact on their socio-economic well-being and as appropriate to the context.
Temporary displacement occurs when a household’s access to their home or means of livelihood is disrupted for a short period of time, typically not longer than a year but it could be as short as few days. Additionally, there are no sustained impacts resulting from the temporary displacement that would alter post-displacement conditions. To manage expectations of local communities and be precise in describing the impact, temporary displacement should be referred to as disturbance.

As per IFC PS 5, persons eligible for inclusion in a resettlement or livelihood restoration process include households and land users with a variety of tenure circumstances and occupying/utilising the land to be accessed or impacted on prior to the cut-off date. These tenure circumstances include the following:

Those who have formal legal rights to the land and/or assets they use and/or occupy;
Those who do not have formal legal rights but who have a claim recognisable under national law over the land and/or assets they use and/or occupy; and
Those who do not have a recognisable legal right or claim to the land and/or assets they use and/or occupy. This includes informal or opportunistic settlers who reside in the resettlement-affected area prior to the cut-off date and customary land users.

Eligibility for compensation or resettlement assistance should take the type of tenure arrangement into consideration. For instance, those who do not have a recognisable legal right or claim to the land and/or assets they use and/or occupy may not be eligible for compensation for the land they use/occupy, but (depending on context) may be eligible for livelihood restoration and compensation for fixed assets established on the land. This excludes opportunistic settlers and speculators who encroach on to the land after the cut-off date.

Claims recognisable under national law should be verified through a legal process, as dictated by the local context. Table 4F. 7 (see 4F.4 Tools and guidance notes) provides a list of scenarios that may result in displacement, categorised according to the tenure arrangements listed above.

Different DMPs are required depending on the type of displacement:

Permanent physical displacement requires a RAP, inclusive of a plan to address livelihood restoration of the displaced households.
Permanent economic displacement requires a LRP, which is comparable to a RAP but applicable in cases where there is no physical displacement.
Temporary physical and economic displacement requires a Land Access Procedure (LAP).
Where a close-out audit of a RAP or LRP finds that the process deviated significantly from good practice standards, a Remedial (Corrective) Plan is required.

In the case of commercial land transactions, an impact assessment or due diligence must be conducted to determine whether the transaction may result in displacement impacts. The voluntary sale of a property by the landowner could result in the involuntary displacement of the landowner’s employees and/or other land users. If it does, the appropriate DMP is required.

Resettlement triggers

There are several possible triggers for permanent displacement. The most common ones are:

When households are living on or using land required for mining/processing purposes or within CHS buffer zones.
When households could be expected to experience significant or sustained health and safety impacts, or cumulative effects from the impacts, attributable to the activities of, infrastructure for and presence of the site.

Identifying permanent displacement is not always a simple task and requires thorough consideration with a long-term (more than 10 years) view. Even if a site does not cause physical displacement, it may inadvertently cause economic displacement. The displacement may be along the outskirts of the site’s Area of Influence and may only materialise in the future. Understanding the external context is therefore key to identifying displacement impacts. Similarly, displacement impacts must be considered even if the site or business unit (BU) has legal rights over the land it needs to access.

Disturbance (temporary displacement) is triggered by short-term land access needs at any stage of the lifecycle. During Discovery, for example, drilling activities may result in disturbance of agricultural land. During Construction, it may result from temporary laydown areas and, in Operation, periodic maintenance or temporary rerouting of access roads may cause disturbance. If the activity requiring short-term land access results in significant impacts adversely affecting the post-disturbance environment (for example, grazing land that cannot be fully rehabilitated once construction is completed), the displacement must be treated as permanent.

Resettlement timing

The identification of displacement impacts and their management by means of a DMP are long-lead items. The physical land area that will be affected is ideally vacated before it is required for mining purposes or before the CHS impact causing displacement begins to occur. To enable this, the following timelines are recommended:

Displacement impacts must be scoped five to eight years before land access is required (4F.2 Guidance, Task 4);
Detailed resettlement planning (4F.2 Guidance, Task 7) must start four to seven years before land access is required; and
Resettlement implementation must commence one to three years before land access is required (4F.2 Guidance, Task 9).

These timelines are recommended minimums; however, it is acknowledged that adherence to the timelines may not always be feasible or necessary. Small uncomplicated resettlements may require less time, and for larger resettlements, strategies such as phased land access can be employed to reduce timelines. Operations and project teams must seek guidance from Group SP in instances where the recommended timelines cannot be adhered to.

Managing accessed land

Securing and maintaining land access after obtaining the legal right and social licence to do so is both critical and challenging; it requires a predetermined strategy, ongoing cross-functional collaboration and is time and resource-intensive. Failing to prevent unauthorised land use in an area that has been accessed for a specific business purpose is a significant risk and may result in impacts, including additional displacement. The most common threats to maintaining land access are listed in Table 4F. 1, alongside potential prevention and mitigation measures for each.

Table 4F. 1 Threats to securing and maintaining land access and potential management strategies

Threat	Potential management strategy
Illegal settlement and/or economic activities, including ASM, on unsecured land	Proactively secure land and control or restrict land use on an ongoing basis. The use of physical barriers and signage should be considered. Monitor the accessed land against the census and asset inventory compiled during resettlement planning to detect, report and deal with illegal uses as soon as possible. Consider the use of satellite imagery, drone aerial imagery and the establishment of a joint task force with representatives from local communities and authorities. Liaise with appropriate local authorities responsible for dealing with illegal land use. Reiterate restrictions on land use in the accessed area and implications for transgression of these restrictions through instating a post-relocation moratorium or memorandum of understanding (MOU) with relevant stakeholders, such as local leaders or the Community Engagement Forum (CEF) ASM must be managed according to Section 4K
Speculative settlement and/or economic activities, motivated by hopes of inclusion in the resettlement process or other forms of compensation
Expansion of surrounding communities as a result of SIM	Ensure that a SIM management plan (see Section 4G) considers accessed land and includes measures to control access and prevent illegal land uses.
Delay between obtaining land access and site’s use of the accessed land	In collaboration with SED teams, identify suitable interim land uses that are mutually beneficial to the site and local communities, and that can be managed and discontinued without significant additional displacement prior to land access.

Resettlements as capital projects

All resettlement projects within Anglo American are treated as capital investment projects and follow the governance as set out in the InvestCo ToR. Specifically:

a pipeline of potential future resettlement is monitored by InvestCo;
resettlement projects must adhere to the IDM;
InvestCo/Group Director of Corporate Relations (CR) must approve the scope of review by Group Investment Assurance (GIA) or other delegated assurance body, and ensure that the appropriate assurance has been undertaken by an assessor with the suitable expertise; and
stage-gate approval of the resettlement process by InvestCo or the Group Director of CR.

Formal mechanisms to identify potential future resettlement projects and initiate resettlement investigations are as follows:

through the investment assurance process from a mining capital project; or
through a proposal from Group or BU-level CR to InvestCo for consideration, based on the site’s land access and displacement strategy (see Section 4F.2 Guidance, Task 1).

Once identified, resettlement projects are categorised according to the phases listed below, and progress through these phases by means of stage-gate reviews:

Pre-concept: the resettlement may be required in the long-term (more than 10 years in the future) and is included in the site’s land access and displacement strategy. The purpose is to document the potential future resettlement to ensure that relevant parameters (such as land use on and influx into to-be-accessed land) are monitored over time. If the displacement impact can be avoided, pre-concept resettlements will not progress into Phase 1; progression into Phase 1 is triggered by the nature and timing of mining activity and associated impacts and by means of the formal mechanisms mentioned above.
Phase 1 – Scoping and framing: the initial scope of and indicative approach to a potential resettlement is defined to inform the decision about whether the resettlement is indeed required and desirable from a business perspective. No engagement with the potentially displaced households is required for completion of this phase. This phase typically aligns with the Concept and Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) A stage.
Phase 2 – Resettlement planning: if there is a high degree of confidence that a resettlement project is required, robust planning is undertaken during this phase. Potentially displaced households are engaged in a participatory planning process which includes negotiations about compensation, replacement land and/or housing, livelihood restoration and other aspects of the resettlement process. Failure to complete the resettlement after commencement of this phase may have significant negative consequences for both the community and the business. This phase typically aligns with the PFS-B stage.
Phase 3 – Resettlement implementation readiness: resettlement planning documentation is operationalised during this phase, in preparation for implementation during the execution phase. This phase typically aligns with the Feasibility Study stage (FS).

Stage-gate reviews are carried out in accordance with the IDM and Investment Assurance Guidelines and are supported by this Toolkit. As per the IDM requirements, a Post-Investment Review (PIR) is completed after the commencement of implementation of a resettlement project (see 4F.2 Guidance, Task 9).

4F.1 Introduction

4F.1 Introduction