Catherine MacDonald

Background

About Catherine MacDonald

Catherine Macdonald has been working in the community development and social impact field for nearly 30 years, much of that spent in the extractives sector. Catherine has provided social impact management advice to extractive industries projects in Australia, China, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Kosovo, Mali, Mongolia, the Philippines, PNG, Senegal and Tanzania. She specialises in encouraging community participation, especially of women, in sustainable local development planning. Dr Macdonald’s longstanding sensitivity to the importance of gender in human development was demonstrated by her doctorate on social change among woman-headed households in Tanzania, completed in 1996. Dr Macdonald has worked in the field of social performance in the Mongolian mining sector since intensively in South Gobi Province from 2007 to 2011. Her experience includes being the International Adviser for the Community Relations and Sustainable Development Department of the Oyu Tolgoi Copper-Gold Mine in Mongolia from 2007-11. This position included guiding the community relations team through the process of establishing and implementing community development plans with local communities near the mine. She also prepared the original Community Development Plan for the Boroo Gold Mine in Mongolia in 2003. Catherine also has donor agency experience, particularly in Mongolia. She was the Gender and Social Impacts Expert in the Design Team for the DFAT Australia Mongolia Extractives Program in 2013 and for AMEP Phase 2 in 2018. In 2014, she joined forces with the Mongolian Center for Policy Research on the World Bank MSISTAP Resettlement Remedial Action Plan and Resettlement Policy Framework for East Tsankhi Coal mine including a field visit in September 2014. In 2016, Dr Macdonald was the mining social safeguards expert on the World Bank Inspection Panel reviewing the Kosovo Power Plant project.