Getting a Fair Share: Designing Fiscal Regimes for Impact Benefit Agreements Webinar

The Rural Policy Learning Commons is hosting a free online webinar titled, "Getting a Fair Share: Designing Fiscal Regimes for Impact Benefit Agreements” on November 18, 2019 from 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EDT. The webinar will feature Cameron Gunton, Joshua Batson, Tom Gunton, Sean Markey, and Dan Dale. A brief description of the webinar is listed below: 

Agreements between communities and project proponents are an increasingly popular means for defining benefits and mitigating adverse effects of natural resource development projects. These agreements, which are commonly referred to as impact benefit agreements, community benefit agreements and/or benefit sharing agreements, are contracts signed between project developers, governments and impacted communities that outline obligations governing project development. A significant component of impact benefit agreements (IBAs) is the fiscal regime designed to provide financial benefits to impacted communities from resource development. Fiscal instruments are used to help compensate for adverse impacts that are not fully mitigated by other provisions in the IBA as well as provide a share of the profits generated by a resource project to stakeholders and owners. But while there is information available on the negotiation process, or on outlining some of the more common fiscal instruments used in resource development, there is an absence of research and information for communities and policy-makers to help evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of fiscal options used in IBAs – which ultimately determines who gets what, and what’s fair?

In this webinar, we will provide an overview of IBAs, and focus on three key learnings:

1. What types of fiscal instruments can be used to generate community revenue in IBAs? and,
2. How can a communities, companies, and policy-makers design and negotiate an optimal fiscal regime for an IBA?
3. How can non-revenue benefits be best incorporated into an IBA?

The webinar is free to attend, however, online registration is required. The School of Environmental Design and Rural Planning is a collaborator on the Rural Policy Learning Commons initiative.