Background:  World Bank supported  to develop a model Community Development Agreement, which regulates cooperation of mining companies with local community. In this regard, Hogan Lovells law firm developed the first draft of the contract in October 2015. In order to accommodate practicla needs, ensure balance of multilateral interests, need for wide range consultation had arised.  

The Independent Research Institute of Mongolia was contracted by the World Bank to facilitate and moderate the ‘National consultation on Model Community Development Agreement’ workshop.

Purpose: of this workshop was to present model agreement and obtain comments from related stakeholders. IRIM team was responsible for the following activities:

• Solicit feedback on model CDA from stakeholders using several methods during question and answer session, group work session and comment box.
• Design and develop group work and question and answer sessions
• Take notes on all sessions.

Activity: In overall, as a result of the workshop a total of 368 comments were collected from 65 participants on 6 sections of the agreement. In terms of topics, the highest numbers of comments were collected on the Right and Obligation of Parties and Dispute Resolution. The main comments received from the participants can be summarized as below: 

• Most participants did not have enough understanding and knowledge about MCDA. It was observed that some participants just introduced MCDA first time in the workshop day. 
• Most of the critical comments were that the obligations of draft MCDA were duplicated with other existing laws and regulations, especially on the Environmental Protection Law and Environmental Impact Assessment law. Therefore, most comments were connected to the doubts on participants whether any research about Mongolian context was conducted or not.
• The agreement needs to be tripartite, where it involves representatievs of local communities, such as Citizens Representative Khural members. Fundemental questions such as in Mongolian context, who are the key stakehodlers, how they relate to MCDA seem to be unclear.
• Most participants suggested that each section of MCDA must be consulted by particular sector experts, especially with mining experts.

Participants expressed the need to organize further discussions on the MCDA in provinces and soums. In addition, most importantly, participants highly interested in the process of finalization of the MCDA. They suggested that before the submission of MCDA to the Government, its revision should be presented to the related stakeholders.