A/HRC/21/47 71. Corporations must, however, exercise due diligence to mitigate power imbalances and avoid outcomes that are not compliant with human rights standards, and States must act to protect against such power imbalances and ensure the adequacy of any agreements. Because of the significant disparities in power, negotiating capacity and access to information that typically exist between corporations and indigenous peoples, the protective role of the State is especially important in this context. This duty to protect includes providing for appropriate grievance mechanisms. 4. Towards new models of development for resource extraction 72. The above analysis suggests that extractive industries can legitimately operate within or near indigenous territories if specific measures of State protection and corporate respect for indigenous peoples’ rights are taken. The Special Rapporteur is aware, however, that across the globe indigenous peoples are continuing to resist extractive industry operations that may affect them. In many cases, they tend even to resist entering into consultations over proposed extractive and other natural resource development activity for fear of being forced down a path of acceptance of extractive activities that from the outset they do not want near them. In instances in which such resistance persists, it will be problematic for extractive industries to operate, even if only because of the practical consequences that derive from a lack of social licence. 73. The resistance of indigenous peoples to extractive industries is understandable, given the multiple human rights violations and instances of environmental devastation that indigenous peoples have suffered because of extractive operations, as discussed by the Special Rapporteur in his report to the Council in 2011. On top of this history of wrongs at the hands of extractive industries are the continuing lack of effective State laws, regulations and administrative practices to recognize and protect indigenous peoples’ rights, and the lack of demonstrated corporate responsibility to respect those rights as a matter of course (see paras. 57-61). Initial steps towards enhancing the possibilities of extractive industries in or near indigenous territories involve addressing these deficiencies. 74. In the view of the Special Rapporteur, however, a more fundamental problem persists: the model of natural resource extraction that is being promoted by corporations and States for the development and extraction of natural resources within indigenous habitats. It is a model in which the initial plans for exploration and extraction of natural resources are developed by the corporation, with perhaps some involvement by the State, but with little or no involvement of the affected indigenous community or people. The corporation controls the extractive operation and takes the resources and profits from it, with the State gaining royalties or taxes, and indigenous peoples at best being offered benefits in the form of jobs or community development projects that typically pale in economic value in comparison to the profits gained by the corporation. It is a model of colonial overtones, in which indigenous peoples see their territories again encroached upon by outsiders who control aspects of their habitats and take from them, even when done with the promise of corporate social responsibility. 75. The Special Rapporteur believes that new and different models and business practices for natural resource extraction need to be examined, models that are more conducive to indigenous peoples’ self-determination and their right to pursue their own priorities of development. Such models could include genuine partnership arrangements between indigenous peoples and corporations, in which the indigenous part has a significant or even controlling share in the ownership and management of the partnership, or models in which indigenous peoples develop their own extractive business enterprises. 76. The Special Rapporteur is aware that, in several places, indigenous peoples have in fact developed such partnership arrangements or their own extractive operations. On the other hand, some indigenous peoples may under no circumstances want to see natural 18

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