“This grant (and those grants that preceded it) are examples of innovation, which the Foundation has charted for increased priority.Your ability to bring technical knowledge to these conflicts and leave behind a trained cadre of local interested parties to carry on the close monitoring offers a means for the Foundation to have both immediate and longer-lasting impact on the policies and practices of nonrenewable resource extraction. It is not designed to stop development, but to bring about a broader understanding of the trade-offs and the means of mitigating mining and hydrocarbon extraction. You won’t get a moratorium on this kind of extractive industry, but that is not the aim. Rather this is seen as a valuable step towards empowering local communities who have the most to lose from such activities when they are marginalized or ignored. Hopefully this work will have tangible impacts that far out live our grant and your technical assistance provision.” -Steve Cornelius August, 2014
