Researcher from Asia Research Center, Murdoch University, Lian Sinclair, says participatory coorporate social responsibility (CSR) is the strategy that is often adopted by many companies, including mining companies, to resolve, depoliticise, and hide conflicts that happened.
“Companies made strategies to resolve conflict among people through participatory CSR programme,” he said on Thursday (23/11) in a discussion themed Conflict, Power, Capital: Australian Companies in Indonesia in the Centre for Security and Peace Studies UGM.
Lian said some participatory CSR programme that was often conducted include community development, consultation, compensation, socialisation, and environment handling. Companies would engage the impacted community through corporate management processes.
In the discussion held by the Centre with Peace Magister Programme, Lian announced the preliminary outcome of research for his doctoral degree at Murdoch University. Lian conducted the research in three areas, Kulon Progo ore mining, Kelian Kutai Barat gold mining, and Gosowong gold mining belonging to Newcrest Mining Ltd in North Halmahera.
“The three cases show participatory mechanism such as community development, damage payment, socialisation, and so on. These are done to respond to conflict, conflict depoliticisation, and building social relations that are needed for capitalist mining development,” he revealed.
Centre for Security and Peace Studies’ researcher, Muh Faried Cahyono, said conflict mapping by understanding the history, culture and socio-economic condition as well as security was needed to be done for conflict resolution.
“Externatilities mapping should also be done while data collecting has to be detailed to anticipate possible negative externalities among the community, such as community becoming marginalised, environmental destruction, etc,” he added.
Faried furthermore mentioned the need for anticipatory measures for conflict resolution. These need to be done based on a win-win solution that orientates towards the future.