Tintaya Copper Mine
TINTAYA COPPER MINE: BUILDING TRUST AT THE MESA DE DIàLOGO
While the concept of a dialogue is desirable, building trust and confidence in the process is not easy, yet necessary for success.
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| Ingrid Macdonald, of Oxfam Australia - Community Aid Abroad, at a meeting of the Mesa de Diàlogo. By: Diego Nebel/Oxfam |
All the parties to the Mesa de Diàlogo had to work hard to build this trust. The community and NGO participants had to show that people were not out to cash in on unreasonable claims, nor use the process to vilify the mine company. BHP-Billiton needed to demonstrate that the Mesa de Dialogo process was not going to be a public relations exercise with no tangible benefits to the people affected by the mine.
One of the most significant achievements of the Mesa de Diàlogo process so far is that the parties have achieved a measure of trust, and agreed that they need hard information on the facts of the cases to be discussed. Oxfam America played an essential role in building this working trust, at the request of its partners CONACAMI and CooperAcciòn.
According to Paul Warner, BHP-Billiton's community relations representative for the Base Metals division, "With Oxfam Australia, Oxfam America has been instrumental in getting us all past some hurdles so we can sit down and address the issues. Once our attention was on the issues, Oxfam America helped generate trust between the parties."