Rethinking FPIC Without Diminishing It: Making Consent Continuous, Verifiable, and Accountable

The Promise and the Problem

For more than a generation, Free, Prior, and Informed Consent—known everywhere by its acronym, FPIC—has been held up as the global benchmark for respecting Indigenous rights in the face of development. It is codified in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted into national laws across continents, and embedded in frameworks ranging from the World Bank to the International Finance Corporation. At its heart, FPIC makes a deceptively simple but profoundly important claim: Indigenous Peoples must have the right to say yes or no to what happens on their lands, and that choice must be made freely, before decisions are locked in, and with full access to transparent, accurate information.

For Indigenous communities, FPIC promises a shield against exploitation and a tool of self-determination. For governments and industries, it offers legitimacy, an insurance policy against social conflict, reputational collapse, and costly litigation. For investors, it signals stability and proper risk management. On paper, FPIC seems to bridge worlds that otherwise stand in stark tension. Yet in practice, the story has been far more complicated.

Too often, FPIC has been reduced to rushed consultations, perfunctory document sign-offs, or narrowly interpreted procedures that leave its moral weight intact but strip away its substance. Communities promised decision-making power find themselves buried in paperwork, while industry actors who sought clarity are left entangled in ongoing disputes. Governments, caught between rights obligations and political pressures, oscillate between rhetorical commitments and minimal procedural gestures. The problem has not been the principle of FPIC, which remains unassailable, but the way it has been operationalized: as a one-time event meant to secure legitimacy in perpetuity.

But development projects are not static. They evolve. Risks multiply, benefits shift, technologies change, leadership rotates, and cumulative impacts compound. Asking a community to give its consent once, for all time, under these conditions is not only unrealistic; it is profoundly unfair. The promise of FPIC falters when it is treated as a frozen moment.

From Event to Covenant

What is needed is not a retreat from FPIC but a reimagining of it. Consent should not be understood as an event but as a covenant. A covenant implies continuity, renewal, verification, and accountability. It requires relationships that are tended, not signatures that are stored away. It transforms FPIC from a static test at the front end of a project into a living governance framework that endures throughout its lifecycle.

Seen this way, FPIC does not diminish—it deepens. Consent remains free, prior, and informed, but it becomes renewable as circumstances change, verifiable through transparent disclosures, and accountable through enforceable remedies when commitments are unmet. In effect, FPIC becomes continuous.

This is not some abstract theorizing. It is a model increasingly reflected in Indigenous-governed initiatives such as Pehta, which provide standardized disclosure frameworks that allow communities to assess impacts and benefits in real time. In these systems, evidence replaces promises, and accountability is built into the very architecture of decision-making.

Why the Current Model Fails

The failures of the current model are evident. Communities are asked to predict impacts decades into the future, an impossible burden of foresight when projects as varied as mines, pipelines, or hydroelectric dams can alter landscapes and watersheds in ways even experts cannot anticipate. Once consent is granted, it is often treated as irrevocable, as though a moment of approval could secure legitimacy forever. This creates the illusion of permanence in a world where ecosystems degrade, markets collapse, governments topple, and communities shift their priorities.

In many cases, the proceduralization of FPIC—meetings, translations, sign-offs—has created rituals without power, leaving the real decisions in corporate boardrooms or ministerial offices. And then there is the question of who gets to speak for the community. Indigenous Nations are plural, dynamic, and internally diverse. A one-time consent process can flatten complexity, deepen divisions, or reward expedience over legitimacy. Legal systems have added further uncertainty: even where FPIC has been endorsed in principle, statutory frameworks lag, leaving communities and companies alike mired in ambiguity.

The result is that FPIC, applied as a one-off event, has come to feel impractical—not because the right itself is flawed, but because the model asks for something that cannot exist: permanent legitimacy under changing conditions.

Building Continuous Consent

Continuous consent, by contrast, offers a way out of this bind. It frames consent not as a box checked once, but as an enduring relationship grounded in evidence and accountability. Consent is granted initially, but it must be reaffirmed at defined intervals or whenever circumstances materially change. Environmental thresholds exceeded, new technologies introduced, scopes expanded—these become triggers for renewal. Communities are empowered not just to grant or deny consent once, but to actively govern throughout a project’s life.

The backbone of this model is disclosure. Without standardized, credible, and transparent reporting, continuous consent collapses into another round of promises. That is why frameworks like Pehta matter: they translate complex impacts—environmental indicators, employment outcomes, procurement with Indigenous businesses, cultural safeguards—into structured, verifiable disclosures. These are not numbers that sit on corporate spreadsheets but community-defined metrics that resonate with lived priorities. They turn data into power.

Accessibility is equally critical. A disclosure that cannot be understood, deliberated on, or contextualized within a community’s decision-making traditions is little more than exclusion dressed up as transparency. Reports must be clear, translated, and accompanied by adequate time for deliberation. Independent verification strengthens trust, whether through Indigenous-controlled institutions, external auditors, or co-appointed panels. And when shortfalls occur, the system must be adaptive: corrective action plans, compensation, operational adjustments—graduated responses that aim to remedy before reaching the point of revoked consent.

Legitimacy and Law

This is not bureaucracy for its own sake. It is governance. Indeed, continuous consent aligns with systems already familiar elsewhere. Investors rely on recurring disclosures and covenants to protect their interests. Regulators insist on ongoing compliance for licenses to remain valid. Continuous consent simply applies the same principle to projects affecting Indigenous rights: legitimacy is not permanent but must be continually earned.

The model also harmonizes with legal and policy frameworks. It strengthens rather than replaces the obligations in UNDRIP. It reflects the emphasis on ongoing relationships found in World Bank and IFC standards. And it dovetails with Canadian jurisprudence, such as the Tsilhqot’in Nation decision, which affirms that projects on Aboriginal title lands require consent. By embedding continuous consent in Indigenous-governed frameworks like Pehta, these principles become operational, measurable, and enforceable.

What It Looks Like in Practice

Consider how this might work in practice. A community grants initial consent to a 25-year infrastructure project, co-designing indicators and renewal triggers. Three years later, disclosures show environmental thresholds being approached, prompting conditional renewal with stricter remediation measures. Eleven years on, new water-saving technology prompts renegotiated benefits. Eighteen years in, repeated safety violations lead the community to suspend consent until corrective actions are proven.

In every case, consent is determinative, not symbolic, and it is sustained by standardized, transparent disclosures that everyone can see.

Answering the Hard Questions

Skeptics may worry that continuous consent introduces endless uncertainty. In fact, it does the opposite. By structuring consent renewals and tying them to evidence, it creates predictable processes for both communities and industry. Others ask what happens if communities change their minds. The answer is that communities, like any society, evolve—and continuous consent provides a structured channel for that change, ensuring legitimacy rather than arbitrary reversal.

Far from weakening FPIC, continuous consent strengthens it. “Prior” remains intact: no activity begins without initial consent. “Free” and “informed” become measurable, not rhetorical, through transparent disclosures and independent verification. And “consent” itself moves from a one-time signature to an enduring covenant.

From Signature to Covenant

FPIC reshaped global expectations about Indigenous rights. But if it remains a static procedure, it risks hollowing out under its own weight. The path forward is not to abandon FPIC but to fulfill it—by making consent continuous, verifiable, and accountable.

In doing so, we move from signatures to covenants, from momentary approvals to enduring relationships, from rhetoric to governance. Through Indigenous-led disclosure frameworks already taking shape, this future is not speculative. It is emerging. And if the ultimate goal is relationships that endure rather than permissions that expire, then consent cannot remain frozen in time. It must live.