7 - Negotiating Land Outcomes

Summary

This chapter extends examples of the second field of private mechanism: direct mediated agreement-making between concessionaires and indigenous groups. Through transnational examples from plural contexts in Russia, Suriname, Australia and Mongolia, I illustrate how concessionaires can plug and also worsen the lacunas in formal law through agreement-making, with mixed outcomes for indigenous communities. The findings suggest a link between the level of recognition afforded to groups in an underlying formal legal regime and the quality of agreement-making. In some cases, private mechanisms when integrated with the domestic legal framework, might address some of the problems that exist within the contemporary legal framework for development projects in Chapter 3, and provide clearer and fairer outcomes for communities. Other cases reveal negative practices around corporatised arm’s-length methods, behaviours and conditionalities through which integration is conducted. The debates in this chapter signal a new species of specialised commercial contract that merit regulation for their ability to speak to formal laws and principles of (un)fairness whilst sitting on the private plane.