SECTION 2: Alignment across actors: permits, activities, and communication

What the Evidence Shows

Four alignment failures appear consistently across project contexts in the field research. They are presented here in anonymized form.

Site Transition and
Excluded Non-landowners

Work Preceding Communication

Project context: site transition and excluded non-landowners

In a large-scale project spanning agricultural land across multiple municipalities, land acquisition proceeded in phases as parcels were secured progressively. Site preparation began in areas where acquisition was confirmed, while other areas were still under negotiation. Tenant farmers and farm workers, whose livelihoods depended directly on the land but who held no formal title, were not notified of activity timelines and were not offered transition arrangements. In several cases, they learned that clearing was beginning when they observed equipment on the fields.

“If there’s already work being done, it means it’s going through."

Community member

Project context: work preceding communication

Contractors were mobilized and began site activities based on schedules that were not fully synchronized with the status of land acquisition and community notification. LGU officials received questions from community members about activities they were observing but had not been briefed on. Across the different actors involved, no shared real-time view of authorized activity areas and permit status existed. The result was a pattern of visible action that consistently ran ahead of explanation.

“The crops were still there. The harvest hadn’t finished yet, but clearing had already started.”

Community member

“Sometimes the work comes first. It wasn’t clear to us yet if everything was in order.”

LGU Official

Governance Gaps in Emerging Technologies

In newer RE technologies, alignment challenges can extend beyond the project level into the institutional level. Where multiple agencies hold partial jurisdiction (environment, water bodies, fisheries, LGUs), communities may not know where to raise concerns, who is responsible, or whether concerns are being acted upon. Without a clear grievance pathway, the experience is not bureaucratic delay. It is institutional absence.

Project context: governance gaps and institutional confusion

In a pre-development project involving a waterway, community members, fisherfolk organizations, and LGU officials who had concerns about fishing access and water conditions were uncertain which institution was responsible for receiving those concerns. The technology involved was novel enough that the regulatory framework had not clearly assigned primary responsibility across the relevant agencies. When community members raised concerns with one institution, they were frequently referred to another. No project-specific grievance mechanism was operational. Concerns that existed circulated in community conversations without ever entering a system that could receive, track, or respond to them. The absence of a formal mechanism was not experienced as bureaucratic delay. It was experienced as institutional abandonment.

Governance Gaps and
Institutional Confusion

Toolkit

Who uses this Part: Developers’ project management, ComRel, and site supervision staff. LGU focal persons and barangay officials. Contractors who need to understand their role in the notification chain. CSOs and community organizations. National agency field officers with compliance monitoring roles.

DIAGNOSTIC: SELF-ASSESSMENT SECTION 2

Work through these questions with your project team and, where possible, with LGU and community partners.
Score each on a 1–4 scale using the rubric in Annex A.
Pay particular attention to Q2.3 if your project involves agricultural land, as tenant and farm worker exclusion is the most consistently missed dimension in land-based RE projects.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR: EARLY WARNING INDICATORS

• Site clearing, surveys, or equipment delivery are observed by communities before any notification has been given.

• Contractors are mobilizing in areas where land or water use acquisition or permits are not yet confirmed.

• LGU officials are receiving community questions about project activities but do not have accurate information to respond with.

• Community members receive different answers depending on who they ask.

• Tenants, farm workers, or fisherfolk directly affected by land or access changes are not listed in any project documentation.

• Clearing or construction has begun in areas where crops, aquaculture, or other active livelihoods are present with no transition arrangements.

• Communities describe feeling that decisions are already made: engagement has shifted from dialogue to observation.

• Stakeholders are unable to name which agency handles a specific concern, or do not know what permits are required and in what order.

• Community members or LGU partners are unaware that the GRM is not solely the developer’s mechanism.

WHAT NEEDS TO SHIFT

Each pattern below describes a condition that keeps the loop running. Read across and find what resonates in your context.

• Notification needs to become a condition for mobilization, not an afterthought to it.

• A single shared reference needs to exist, and everyone who faces the community must work from it.

• Those without formal title need to be actively found and included, before decisions affecting them are made.

• At least one actor needs to change posture (shifting from informing to listening), before the next interaction.

• Every concern needs a named institutional home, and communities need to know where to bring it

DEVELOPER: You control the schedule and the information. Make notification a gate, not a courtesy. Build it into the system so it doesn’t depend on anyone remembering.

LGU / BARANGAY: You are the first face constituents turn to. Be honest when you don’t have the answer, and use that moment to demand better information from the developer rather than fill the gap with speculation.

COMMUNITY: You hold knowledge no one else has: what is actually happening on the ground. Name what you are seeing, to someone, even informally. Observation that stays private cannot interrupt anything.

CSO: You move across groups that don’t talk to each other. Carry what you hear in one room into another. Bridge the information gap before it becomes a trust gap.

NGA: You set the conditions under which others operate. Treat community-level misalignment as a compliance signal, and make that visible in your monitoring before it becomes a crisis.

Toolkit response — protocols, tools, and skills

The following protocols, tools, and skills address the conditions identified in Section 2 of the self-assessment. They are designed to be used together: the skills build the practitioner capabilities needed to recognize signals; the tools provide the structures for capturing and monitoring them; the protocols define when and how to act on what is found.

Protocols

P-03 Pre-Activity Notification

P-06 Pre-Engagement Entry

P-07 Reputational Risk Briefing

P-09 Contractor Onboarding

P-10 Inter-Agency Coordination

P-28 Contractor Offboarding

Tools

T-01 Stakeholder Mapping

T-02 Power & Influence Analysis

T-03 Conflict History Scan

T-04 Project Stage Risk Profiler

T-05 Community Context Assessment

T-10 Activity-Communication Alignment Tracker

T-11 Multi-Actor Messaging Matrix

T-12 Land & Permit Status Dashboard

T-13 Non-Landowner Impact Register

T-QR RE Permits Quick Reference

Skills

SK-01 Landscape Awareness

SK-02 Contextual Humility

SK-14 Coordination Awareness

SK-15 Inter-Agency Facilitation

Starting point: If site activities are already underway, activate T-10 (Activity-Communication Alignment Tracker) immediately and require contractor supervisors to confirm notification status before mobilizing. Lock T-12 as the shared reference for all authorized work areas.

Before first community engagement, distribute T-QR (RE Permits, SE & GRM Quick Reference) to project staff, LGU partners, and where possible, community representatives. If your project involves agricultural land and tenants or farm workers have not been mapped, activate T-13 now. For governance gaps in novel technology contexts, use T-22 (Governance Gap Mapper) at project inception, then P-10 (Inter-Agency Coordination Protocol) to establish coordination before a crisis.