Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

172 Pitfalls and Pipelines: Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries
may draw on scarce time and resources, but can also add to
them in terms of overseas support and funding. Any struggle
is really about levelling the playing field between the corporations,
who tend to have the economic and political clout, and
indigenous peoples and local communities. A local community
can draw on a number of factors to even the imbalance, but
access to international organizations and solidarity can be a
huge help, especially when the national government is firmly
behind the company. 1 This is one reason that the workshops
in the 2009 Manila Conference explicitly emphasized this area
of work. 2
Once again it is worth stressing that the activities outlined
should not be viewed in isolation. They are an extension of any
local and national campaign. Any well-coordinated campaign
will also use legal action or international complaint mechanisms,
and of course they are most effective when coordinated
with a campaign targeted at the company and its investors.
(See, for example, the case study of Vedanta in this chapter,
which combines concerted campaigns for disinvestment with
national court cases and a complaint using the voluntary
OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises).
Finally, much of this chapter is focused on actions that are
complaints against a company. If the decision has been made
to negotiate, points in the next chapter may be more relevant,
but it will still be useful to review the information here as it
covers how to make direct approaches to the company, and
it may be that influencing shareholders, or others financiers,
could support a negotiating strategy.
2.3.1 Company Structure and Financing
Before seeking to influence companies it is worth reviewing
the ownership of companies and how they are financed. 3
It is also important to establish the company’s form of
ownership. This is not something that can be assumed—large,
well-known companies may be private, and smaller local com-