8 - Moving Forward

Summary

This chapter concludes and provides recommendations for the better integration of the judicial and private mechanisms discussed in previous chapters so that they deliver fairer, clearer, more predictable and UNDRIP-compliant outcomes for indigenous communities. National laws must recognise the special vulnerability of land-connected people to development projects and impose a moratorium on land disturbance until a developer has undertaken a preventative conflict assessment. That assessment must take no longer than state divestment of land and must necessitate a mediation process which interfaces with the layers of race, ethnicity, legacy and postcolonial histories that can relate to land. This chapter considers what this process entails (including the requirement for the legal ability of communities to say no at this point) and methods for dealing with the cost and independence of such a process (blind trusts). Aspects of this assessment could, through a code of practice, then feed into project governance much further upstream and tighten existing documentation at the specific points at which indigenous vulnerability to dispossession is high, as detailed. Other suggestions on institutional culture are made.