Stakeholder Engagement That Doesn’t Suck: Who Gets a Say—and Who Benefits—from the AI Buildout?

The infrastructure behind AI is rapidly reshaping communities around the world. From cobalt extraction and energy generation to transmission networks and data centers, the AI supply chain requires enormous amounts of land, water, energy, minerals, labor, and public infrastructure. The benefits can be significant. So can the costs, and those costs are not shared equally. Too often, communities are engaged after the consequential decisions have already been made. By then, “stakeholder engagement” can become an exercise in getting people on board, while opposition is treated as a barrier to overcome rather than useful information about what decision-makers may have missed. We've seen versions of this story before. Extractive industries have arrived promising jobs and prosperity, generated wealth far beyond the places where they operated, and sometimes left communities to manage the consequences when industries changed or departed. As AI infrastructure expands, how do we prevent its buildout from repeating that pattern? This working session will ask what changes when affected communities are treated as a source of intelligence before a plan is finalized. If a community is being asked to host the infrastructure powering the AI economy, what should it get in return? What decisions should local people actually be able to influence? And who gets to define what counts as a “community benefit”? Using six nodes of the AI supply chain, participants will trace where environmental, social, and human rights impacts emerge, who bears them, and who captures the benefits. The conversation will move beyond the principle that engagement is important and into the harder questions of timing, power, and decision-making: how early is early enough, and what does meaningful engagement look like when it can still change the outcome? What to expect A hands-on working session combining mapping, discussion, and a real-world data center case study. Participants will map risks across the AI supply chain, pressure-test the difference between extractive, performative, and genuinely useful engagement, and work through the decisions involved in an infrastructure buildout. Small groups will examine who needs to be at the table, what decision-makers need to understand about a place, what trade-offs communities are being asked to make, and what they should be able to influence. The group will then compare approaches and identify practices that companies, investors, infrastructure partners, and communities can take back into their work. Who this is for This session is for people influencing where, how, and for whom AI infrastructure gets built, including technology companies, philanthropists, investors, utilities, infrastructure and construction partners, community engagement leaders, and human rights, sustainability, and climate practitioners. It is particularly relevant for people who don't want to wait until a project is facing community opposition to start listening. What you will get out of it A clearer picture of where social, environmental, and human rights impacts appear across the AI infrastructure supply chain A practical way to distinguish meaningful community engagement from consultation that happens too late to influence decisions Experience applying a community-centered approach to a real data center buildout scenario New perspectives on what communities hosting AI infrastructure should be able to influence and receive in return Practical ideas for building community knowledge and long-term local value into infrastructure decisions from the beginning Hosted by Carly Ferro, Climate, Community + Policy Strategist, qb.consulting Maha Khan, Senior Human Rights Advisor, qb.consulting and Stakeholder Engagement and Convening Strategist Sam Hartsock, Co-founder and Strategy Lead, qb. consulting