Last year, we wrote about strategies to ensure communities benefit from the clean energy transition. As a follow-up to that work, we recently took a deep dive into Community Benefits Agreements as a strategy to achieve more meaningful community benefits. This blog is the next in the series and focuses on Tribal Benefits Agreements (TBAs), sharing results from a targeted Literature Review produced for the Washington State Department of Commerce as follow-on work to the 2024 Rural Clean Energy Economics and Community Engagement report. This blog aims to provide insight into topics, challenges, opportunities, and best practices for establishing TBAs as a commonly accepted component of clean energy projects developed on or near tribal lands.

There are many lessons learned from Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) about opportunities, barriers, and best practices described in the CBA blog linked above. While many of these lessons can be applied to TBAs, ultimately TBAs are different agreements with several unique considerations outlined here.

Background

A TBA is a legally binding agreement between a tribe and another entity to ensure that impacted tribes receive benefits in exchange for the development of resources or infrastructure on or near tribal lands. While this blog uses the term TBA, these agreements are more commonly referred to with other terms, such as Impact and Benefit Agreements (IBAs), especially in international contexts. Many sources also use the term CBA to describe agreements between developers and tribes.

Opportunities

TBAs have the potential to ensure that project development delivers desired community and economic benefits to tribes. Clean energy can offer economic opportunities for tribal nations and, according to Community Benefits Agreement Guidelines for Renewable Energy Projects on Tribal Lands in the U.S., can “counter systemic and historic violence against Indigenous communities." In addition to benefits outlined in a TBA, tribal ownership of energy projects can lead to energy sovereignty, which “has the potential to have disinvested and vulnerable communities benefit from the immense deployment of renewable energy.”

TBAs can provide additional benefits to tribal communities in the form of funding for specific purposes. One of the most well-documented examples of a TBA for a clean energy project is the 2024 agreement between the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and Vineyard Offshore, which established a foundation to support “various initiatives including scholarships, wastewater projects, language reclamation, workforce training, and importantly, tribal capacity to engage with offshore wind projects.”

Barriers

The barriers discussed in the blog about CBAs are applicable to conversations about TBAs as well. Lack of trust, confidentiality clauses / lack of documentation, limited experience with negotiating these types of agreements for clean energy projects, and challenges ensuring real community participation can all pose obstacles to establishing a successful TBA.

An additional potential barrier mentioned in the literature about TBAs is related to employment. Some TBAs may include employment as a benefit, but this benefit can be hindered by employment barriers faced by members of tribal and Indigenous communities , which may include lack of skills and experience, lack of training opportunities, racism by project proponent officials, alienation, loneliness, cultural isolation, and unwillingness to transition from traditional livelihood activities to project related employment. Therefore, commitments by project developers to maximize these employment opportunities should be accompanied by strategies to mitigate these barriers.

Best Practices

While each TBA is unique, there are some universal best practices—in addition to those outlined in Community Benefits Agreements: Opportunities, Barriers, and Best Practices—that emerged from the available literature.

• Recognition of Sovereignty: A key feature of TBAs is recognition of tribes as sovereign nations, which means that an understanding of tribal law and cultural communication are critical elements of negotiating a TBA. Additionally, it is important to remember that no single tribe speaks for other tribes.
  
  • Conservation International’s Indigenous Negotiations Resource Guide reinforces the idea of sovereignty, stating that “a good agreement never gives up rights” and “rights should never be contingent upon the implementation of an agreement.”
  • Furthermore, another set of guidelines developed for Red Lake Nation and Indigenous Energy Initiative clarify that entering into a TBA does not indicate agreement regarding the development of a project. Furthermore, tribes must be allowed to exercise their right to oppose a project: “a decision to begin negotiations does not imply community consent to a proposed project or a decision to reach an agreement.”‍
• Compensation: Tribes often struggle with staffing and funding constraints. The Indigenous Negotiations Resource Guide suggests that TBAs should include compensation for the investment of staff time and other resources in the development of a TBA, regardless of whether the project ultimately proceeds. If a project falls through, it is important for tribes to be compensated to cover the costs (e.g., financial and staff capacity and associated wrap-around services) of having negotiated the TBA to date. To do otherwise could likely impact tribal interest in future clean energy development projects.
• ‍Legal Assistance: It is also important to enlist legal assistance to support negotiations as well as ensure that the TBA language is precise and clear when outlining obligations.  Parties negotiating a TBA should also take time to understand prior relevant agreements and use caution when defining terms of the agreement, as that can impact what the community can negotiate in the future.‍
• Consideration of Culturally Significant Sites: Another key consideration for TBAs is ensuring that projects avoid damage to culturally significant sites. Developers for the North Plains Connector transmission line project, for example, invested in tribal cultural specialists to “identify and document places of cultural importance”. Once these areas of cultural importance were identified, developers were able to incorporate them into their planning as to avoid damage.‍
• Engagement: The Red Lake Nation and Indigenous Energy Initiative toolkit emphasizes community engagement and recommends using existing methods of communication (e.g., town halls, local newspaper, and radio station),  meeting people where they are already consuming information rather than introducing a new method of communication.

Learn More

In addition to the resources listed at the end of Community Benefits Agreements: Opportunities, Barriers, and Best Practices, the following toolkits and resources provide additional detail on best practices for creating and implementing TBAs.

Community Benefits Agreement Guidelines for Renewable Energy Projects on Tribal Lands in the U.S. – Red Lake Nation and Indigenous Energy Initiative (2023)

Community Benefits and Protections Alongside Offshore Wind Development – COREHub

IBA Community Toolkit: Negotiation and Implementation of Impact and Benefit Agreements – The Gordon Foundation (2015)

Indigenous Negotiations Resource Guide – Conservation International (2021)

Tribal Benefit Agreements: Designing for Sovereignty – Tallgrass Institute (2025)¹‍

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Endnotes:

1. This resource was published after the literature review was conducted and therefore is not referenced in the body of the blog text.

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