Breaking Ground

WRI developed seven Principles for Effective Community Engagement for extractive and infrastructure projects after analyzing existing standards and high-profile project experiences. The report argues that inclusive, accountable, and transparent engagement reduces risks for companies and governments while ensuring communities benefit from development. It provides specific recommendations for project proponents to disseminate best practices, for financial institutions like the IFC to increase disclosure of community support, and for citizen organizations to advocate for transparent processes.

• WRI established seven Principles for Effective Community Engagement to help project developers solve engagement challenges and empower local communities to influence project design and implementation. These principles are: preparing communities before engagement, determining the required level of engagement, integrating engagement into all project phases, including excluded stakeholders, gaining free, prior and informed consent, resolving grievances via dialogue, and promoting participatory monitoring.
• There is a significant gap between the availability of community engagement manuals and the actual ability of project proponents to apply that guidance effectively on the ground.
• Financial institutions are urged to link community engagement with risk management and improve transparency. Specifically, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) should disclose how it determines "broad community support" for projects, and Equator Principles financial institutions should disclose projects where IFC Performance Standards are applied.
• In low-income, resource-rich countries, the lack of strong governance systems often leads to extractive and infrastructure projects causing harmful environmental and social impacts, which in turn creates risks for financiers, governments, and companies.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Breaking Ground. https://www.wri.org/research/breaking-ground

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Breaking Ground. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/breaking-ground.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Breaking Ground |url=https://www.wri.org/research/breaking-ground |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendbreaking, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Breaking Ground}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/breaking-ground}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }