COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS TOOLBOX

The Community Protocols Toolbox is a guide designed for NGOs and civil society to support local communities in documenting their identity, customary laws, and development priorities. It emphasizes a participatory, community-led process to enable meaningful engagement and free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) when facing industrial investment projects. The toolbox includes practical methodologies—textual, visual, verbal, and dramatic—to map territories, analyze power dynamics, and navigate legal landscapes across national and international frameworks.

• Community protocols serve as a mechanism for communities to collectively document their identity, link customary laws with national and international law, and engage with external parties, particularly regarding industrial investment projects.
• The development of a protocol is a community-led process that can be either 'aspirational'—seeking opportunities and equitable benefit sharing—or 'defensive'—opposing harmful activities or asserting rights to consultation and consent.
• Facilitators are encouraged to use a variety of participatory tools to ensure inclusivity, including textual, visual, verbal, and dramatic methods, to overcome barriers such as literacy or language.
• Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is identified as a minimum international legal standard, requiring that communities be free from coercion, informed in a language they understand, and have the right to say 'no' at any stage of a project.
• In the context of extractive industries, communities face significant legal challenges, including the lack of recognition of customary land rights and the fact that states often reserve ownership of sub-soil mineral resources regardless of surface land ownership.
• The toolbox identifies a five-stage mining life cycle—exploration, feasibility and planning, construction, operation, and closure and reclamation—and suggests that protocols are most effective when developed at the earliest opportunity to define engagement terms.
• Community protocols can be used as evidence in legal or administrative processes to contest the legality of impact assessments, dispute claims that land is 'vacant', or prove that meaningful participation did not occur.
• The guide warns of 'red-flags' in the protocol process, such as the risk of 'elite capture' where a small influential group protects their own interests, or the potential for documentation of sensitive information to attract predatory external interest in lucrative resources.

APA

Natural Justice (n.d.). COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS TOOLBOX. https://naturaljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/toolbox_complete.pdf

Chicago

Natural Justice. COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS TOOLBOX. n.d. https://naturaljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/toolbox_complete.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Natural Justice |title=COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS TOOLBOX |url=https://naturaljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/toolbox_complete.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{naturaljusticendcommunity, author = {{Natural Justice}}, title = {{COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS TOOLBOX}}, institution = {Natural Justice}, url = {https://naturaljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/toolbox_complete.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }