These guides provide communities and frontline advocates with concrete strategies to protect themselves from unjust land-based investment projects and ensure that the community’s long-term prosperity is at the center of all negotiations.
download the guides from namati website
Guide 1: Preparing in Advance for Potential Investors
This guide supports communities to understand their legal rights and prepare themselves before investors arrive. Strategies include creating a vision for their future, assessing the value of their lands and natural resources, and developing rules to ensure all community voices are authentically included in decision making around investments.
It details how the community can:
- Create a shared vision for their future development, so they can assess whether an investment would be in their best interest;
- Understand the holistic value of their land in order to better assess investors’ offers;
- Make rules to guide how they and their leaders will interact with potential investors and help to manage their lands and natural resource sustainably and equitably;
- Work to resolve intra-community conflicts around how to react to potential investors; and
- Prepare for negotiations by researching the investor, creating a negotiating team, and agreeing on points the team will advocate for incorporation into the contract.
Guide 2: Negotiating Contracts with Investors
This guide contains advice for communities who have agreed to negotiate with a potential investor. It describes the various sections and clauses that should be in a contract, advises what protective language to include, and warns of “red flag” language to avoid. It is designed to help communities and their frontline advocates to negotiate clear, fair, and enforceable contracts that require investors to respect community interests, conserve the local environment, and support the community’s development—all on the community’s own terms.