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Embedded Files
Community Benefits Agreements 101
CBA Phases
In this section, you will find information, tools, and other resources to help you learn about and complete the highlighted step(s):
Overview & Objectives
This section offers resources to help you understand what a CBA is and evaluate whether a CBA might be right for your community.
Potential Outcomes
Complete the CBA evaluation rubric (Worksheet 1B) and discuss the outcomes to move your group toward a decision about whether to pursue a CBA.
Decide on whether to continue exploring a CBA to inform whether and how to use the remaining sections of this toolkit while noting that resources in this toolkit can be helpful even for communities that do not pursue a CBA.
What are CBAs?
In the United States, CBAs are legally binding contracts negotiated between project developers and community coalitions that can guarantee that affected communities receive specific benefits from proposed projects. CBAs fill a critical policy gap in land use and environmental regulations, which focus mainly on mitigating negative impacts that reach significant levels and often do little to address the community’s burden of hosting activities that deliver substantial financial rewards to a private company. Having a process for negotiating community benefits and a mechanism to ensure those commitments are honored increases the alignment of interests and wishes between the community and the developer. It may also enhance the community’s environmental, economic, and social sustainability.
Many Names for CBAs
CBAs are sometimes called “Community Agreements,” “Host Community Agreements,” and “Good Neighbor Agreements,” among other terms. CBAs that include Tribes and Indigenous people may also be called “Impact Benefit Agreements,” “Indigenous Land Use Agreements,” “Tribal Benefit Agreements,” “Indigenous Benefits Agreements,” or “First World Benefits Agreements.” The primary quality distinguishing these documents from other community development commitments stated by project sponsors is that they are legally binding, thus providing an opportunity to be enforced through the courts.
How CBAs Differ in the Renewable Energy Supply Chain from Other US CBAs
While many of the overall goals are similar, CBAs for renewable energy supply chain projects have certain unique features relative to their negotiation and content.
Extracting resources and producing products, such as batteries, to address climate change can put traditional allies on the opposite side of the issue.
For example, project proponents may object to extended community engagement or actions that ensure community members most impacted by the project share in its benefits, citing an overarching need to hurry and meet climate goals.
In another example, groups that want more renewable energy may brush aside concerns over how solar panels are produced or the environmentally damaging and explosive mining methods undertaken to obtain energy transition minerals.
Because advocacy is fueled by the right and the left for “project streamlining,” rigorous analysis and mitigation of impacts are pushed aside, meaning that the remaining permitting and licensing requirements and CBAs will need to pick up the slack.
The rural setting of many mining and renewable energy projects brings its own set of unique considerations.
Many projects are proposed on federal land, falling outside the regulatory control of states, counties, and local communities, meaning that some communities may see CBAs as one of the few pathways available to them to guide a project’s development.
Projects often take place in rural and historically underinvested areas. This has impacts on the local power structure, the community’s capacity to engage, and the ability to access an already skilled workforce or local suppliers and subcontractors. Many of the off-the-shelf CBA provisions from past urban redevelopment projects will not work without modifications to understand these and other local dynamics.
Negotiating CBAs within a renewable energy supply chain includes consideration of a more extended development and decommissioning life cycle than most traditional urban stadium, manufacturing, or shopping center development projects. The impacts from an open-pit mine that operates for only 10 years can last for generations, inflicting existential harm on natural water systems and the people, plants and animals that depend on them.
New threats to rural livelihoods may also bring together “unlikely allies,” such as Tribal nations, farmers, ranchers, fishers, and migrant farmworker communities. Attachments to the land and water in less developed places may offer common ground for challenging or minimizing harm and maximizing benefits, from a mine or renewable energy infrastructure project.
The Dangers of Greenwashing
Greenwashing involves deceptive tactics and misleading statements related to environmental sustainability claims. For example, a project sponsor has an advertising tagline that states, “We are committed to using the very best environmental practices,” or a CBA provision that states, “The project sponsor agrees to use the best available environmental standards at the time this agreement is signed.” These statements sound good, but they are too often either unenforceable or actually represent the minimum legal standard. Greenwashing can also occur when a third party, such as a government or a large nonprofit, steps in front of the project sponsor and either vouches for or creates an alternative, lower environmental standard, making it more difficult for community coalitions and Tribal nations to negotiate for a better provision.
Confronting greenwashing takes a steady hand to turn a problem into an opportunity. For example, advocate before local governments to ensure their ordinances create floors and not ceilings for CBAs or provisions that create opportunities for excluding groups with a history of speaking up for community needs.
Greenwashing can sometimes be leveraged to create real opportunities in CBA negotiations. For example, companies involved in global mining and extraction initiatives may be signatories to a sustainable development or an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policy, such as the development and extraction principles established by the International Council on Mining and Metals, which could be used as an example of greenwashing but could also provide a basis for arguing that a company must agree to certain demands. Companies often apply these principles and standards in their advertising and during meetings with investors. This means that even in cases where the standards are very general, project sponsors may find it difficult to turn down your proposed CBA provisions or reporting metrics that align with documents to which they are signatories.
To combat greenwashing, communities can push for policies that prioritize transparency; ensure environmental claims are backed by verifiable data; and have clear, overarching objectives that can be used to evaluate outcomes and unforeseen circumstances. If in doubt about whether the proposed CBA or the policy proposing a CBA is a victim of greenwashing, consider the questions in Worksheet 1A.
Greenwashing poses a significant challenge to advancing real community benefits for vulnerable fenceline communities. This is why communities must have the opportunity to make their voices heard early in the process.
Why Some Communities Choose to Pursue a CBA
The use of CBAs is growing in the US as frontline communities increasingly organize and prepare to be active participants in their community’s future. Some reasons that a community may want to pursue a CBA include:
Negative experiences in the past
Community outreach related to earlier projects had been insufficient, and significant changes had been made to their neighborhoods without those most affected being informed or consulted.
Developers had not fulfilled promises on previous projects.
Local governments failed to take action when developers failed to meet local hiring or environmental commitments made during the permitting process.
Specific concerns about impacts
The proposed project or new facilities are expected to result in a significant influx of new workers and businesses, potentially leading to gentrification or other challenges for existing residents and communities.
The community already bears a significant environmental burden from public-serving infrastructure and is concerned that further development will have untenable impacts on public health, especially for children and vulnerable populations.
Current environmental conditions, such as dwindling supplies of potable water, require careful planning and coordinated implementation to avoid triggering cascading negative impacts on the community.
Desire for long-term benefit
Corporate executives and shareholders will receive decades of financial gain after the project is permitted, while fenceline communities bear the impacts of air and water contamination with few benefits.
The community may believe that a project will happen regardless of any opposition and may desire to secure as many potential concessions, benefits, and mitigations for potential harms as possible.
An agreement that accounts for the eventual closure of operations and outlines what happens afterward may be necessary to ensure the long-term stewardship of community or Indigenous land, territory, and resources.
CBAs may help fenceline communities address these challenges by:
securing a commitment to receive financial compensation;
winning protections against environmental impacts and guaranteeing mitigation;
creating labor guarantees, such as leveraging commitments for local and diverse hiring and training opportunities, requiring the payment of a living wage and other benefits, and encouraging education partnerships between developers and community schools;
supporting local small businesses with local vendor requirements;
creating a new funding source for community-selected improvement projects, including parks, playgrounds, affordable housing, childcare facilities, and senior centers;
establishing a partnership with legally binding commitments can help communities or Tribal nations access other resources and services, including workforce training, health facilities, and housing.
In this toolkit, we explore options and processes for decision-making, provisions, and enforcement that can push the utility of the CBA to yield progressive benefits for the most impacted communities. These tools may help to avoid the pitfalls of exclusionary negotiations, predatory profit-sharing terms, and unaccountable implementation.
The Community’s Right to Say No
While some communities proactively come together to advocate for community benefits, many seek CBAs as a last resort to assert some power and control over the anticipated economic, environmental, health, and social impacts of projects. Other communities may be unsure whether a CBA is the right next step.
Every community’s values and priorities are different. Below are a few examples of why a community may not want to pursue a CBA:
The potential negative impact of the facility or activity cannot be reasonably mitigated and, therefore, represents a significant health, cultural, or economic risk to the community.
The current environmental conditions create such adverse public health conditions that any additional cumulative impacts would be untenable, especially for children, people with preexisting conditions, and the elderly.
In past experiences, the government has failed to hold business owners and project sponsors accountable when CBA commitments were unmet.
The proposed project or facility is incompatible with the existing activities in the region and could jeopardize the community’s economy.
The community is fragmented, and there is no path toward successful collective action.
Determining Whether a CBA Is the Best Choice for Your Community
Worksheet 1B provides a scoring rubric to assist you in exploring whether a CBA is a good next step for your community. Please undertake some preliminary research about the project before completing this form. Worksheet 2B can help to guide this effort. A CBA cannot overcome every issue, such as the potential negative impact of the project being too significant to mitigate or compensate for the community’s well-being. Alternatively, other issues may be more manageable, such as whether your organization has the funding and capacity to be part of a team that negotiates a CBA.
For Some Fenceline Communities, CBAs Help Counter Power Imbalances
Community partners, EJ organizations, Tribal nations, and advocates are facing a surge of proposed projects aimed at supporting the transition to a zero emissions economy. Beyond the traditional legal tools for mitigating the negative impacts through litigation, they are also seeking models and approaches to ensure that fenceline communities share in the wealth created. Climate and Community Institute intends for this toolkit to support these efforts.
Given the unequal power dynamics between affected communities and developers, financial institutions, and governments, CBAs offer communities a tool for negotiating and securing a more equitable distribution of benefits arising from new projects or proposed activities. However, to counter this power imbalance and achieve a CBA that effectively serves historically disinvested fenceline and EJ communities, several key actions are required. These include building coalitions, conducting research, implementing strategic initiatives, and engaging in effective negotiations. Ongoing funding is also essential to bring these efforts together and maintain momentum until an equitable CBA is completed and signed. The better organized a community coalition is, the more effectively it can shift the balance of power in its favor.
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Action Items
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Gather with like-minded and mission-driven community members and take the quiz in Worksheet 1B—Is a CBA Right for Our Community? These questions are designed to help you start exploring whether a CBA is a good fit for your community.
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If a CBA may be a good option, review the key steps in the development of a CBA and use CBA Roadmap and Progress Tracker to get started on creating your overall planning and implementation framework.
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