Thomas Gaultier
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Cover of Rebuild Grounds: A Mining-Focused Mediation Practitioner's Methodology

Mediators running extractive disputes

Rebuild Grounds

A Mining-Focused Mediation Practitioner's Methodology

  • 5 parts
  • 23 chapters
  • 25 case examples
  • 15 figures

Two disputes arrive from the same district. One is a quarrel over dust, blasting hours and a haul road. The other began when a waste slope failed and three people did not come home. Run both through the same process and you will settle the first and deepen the harm of the second.

In mine-community mediation the most consequential decision comes before anyone sits at the table: which process does this dispute need? This book answers that question with a working method rather than a theory.

These are the two frameworks at the heart of Social Accord Architecture, built from more than fifteen years of frontline practice in extractive disputes.

What is inside

Choose the right process

Read the dispute, score it against a structured selection instrument, and know when a standard track will heal and when it will wound.

Run GROUNDS end to end

All seven phases of structured facilitation, each with its guiding question, its activities, and the test that must be met before the process advances.

Run REBUILD when harm sits in the room

Trauma-informed preparation, truth-telling, acknowledgment and closure rituals, with permission to pause built into the method.

Work from ready-to-use language

Sample scripts, checklists and phase-by-phase tools you can adapt and carry into next week’s session.

Learn from practice

Twenty-five case examples showing the frameworks succeed, fail and recover.

Who it is for

  • Mediators and conflict resolution professionals in extractive and community disputes
  • Grievance and social performance practitioners running processes inside an operation
  • Advisors, lawyers and facilitators supporting communities through conflict

Part of the same library

Every volume is built on Social Accord Architecture, written for a different side of the table.

If the relationship around a project is under pressure, or heading there, let us talk.

A 30-minute call is enough for me to understand the situation and tell you honestly whether I can help. Active opposition, a social licence problem, an FPIC process that needs an independent facilitator, a negotiation a community has to prepare for, or a conflict that is not public yet but will be. It makes no difference which side of the table you are on. No obligation, no generalist pitch.

Every first conversation is confidential.