An analysis of factors leading to the establishment of a social licence to operate in the mining industry

Communities around the world have increasingly come to demand more involvement in decision making for local mining projects, a greater share of benefits from them if they are to proceed, and assurances that mineral development will be conducted safely and responsibly. At the same time, Bridge (2004) notes full legal compliance with state environmental regulations has become an increasingly insufficient means of satisfying society's expectations with regards to mining issues. There is now a recognised need for mineral developers to gain an additional ‘social licence to operate’ (SLO) in order to avoid potentially costly conflict and exposure to business risks. However, there is a correspondingly limited amount of scholarship specifically focused on SLO. More particularly, there is a need for research that uncovers those factors that lead to the issuance (or non-issuance) of a SLO in the complex and changeable environments that often characterise mineral development. In an effort to identify key determinants of SLO outcomes in the mining industry, this paper presents a comparative case study analysis of four international mining operations: Red Dog Mine in Alaska, USA; Minto Mine in Yukon, Canada; the proposed Tambogrande Mine in Peru; and the Ok Tedi Mine in Papua New Guinea. The analysis that is presented also makes use of insights from supplementary key informant interviews conducted by the author and the emerging literature on mining and communities. Five lessons for earning a SLO emerged from this analysis: (1) context is key; (2) a social licence to operate is built on relationships; (3) sustainability is a dominant concern for communities; (4) local benefits provision and public participation play a crucial role; and (5) adaptability is needed to confront complexity.     

A tool for building community resilience? A case study of the Lewes Pound

In the last decade, “resilience” has gained increasing recognition as a theoretical framework for understanding and managing change in complex social–ecological systems. Resilience assessments are increasingly used to inform sustainability initiatives, strategies, and policies. The Lewes Pound represents a new complementary currency model in the UK, aiming to build community resilience. However, there have been no empirical studies to date assessing the socio-economic impacts of this model. This article addresses the need to understand how such currencies function by measuring whether the Lewes Pound is capable of building resilience. This is done by developing a novel framework for estimating economic, social, and environmental outcomes, which uses a mixed-methods approach. Findings suggest that complementary currencies can enhance social-ecological resilience through awareness-raising and changes in consumption. Although economic localisation – a key indicator – is lacking, there is evidence that the Lewes Pound has developed social interactions and changed consumption patterns of its users.     

Mining Communities from a Resilience Perspective: Managing Disturbance and Vulnerability in Itabira,Brazil

This paper applies the resilience lens to a social–ecological system characterized by the presence of large-scale mineral extraction operations. The system in question is the Brazilian community of Itabira, Minas Gerais, host to an iron ore operation of Vale, the world’s second largest mining corporation. Utilizing a resilience assessment framework, this study describes the various components of the Itabira social–ecological system revealing the challenges brought about by mining’s dominance. Data collection included literature reviews and semi-structured interviews with 29 individuals representing different stakeholder groups. Findings revealed that, despite recent efforts by government to regulate the industry, the mine continues to generate press and pulse disturbances that impact the resilience of the community. Operating from the standpoint that resilience depends largely upon the management capacity of stakeholders, the research identifies three ways to improve mining governance in Itabira. First, there is a need for local government to have more power in dealings with the corporation. Concurrent with this power, however, the municipality must demonstrate ownership over its fate, ideally through the creation of a sustainability plan. Finally, all key parties must demonstrate commitment to cooperating to resolve outstanding disturbances, even when these fall outside the regulatory approval process. While Itabira will remain a mining town for the foreseeable future, actions taken now to address challenges will only strengthen community well-being and sustainability moving forward.     

Exploring the origins of ‘social license to operate’ in the mining sector: Perspectives from governance and sustainability theories

In the mining sector, local communities have emerged as particularly important governance actors. Conventional approaches to mineral development no longer suffice for these communities, which have demanded a greater share of benefits and increased involvement in decision making. These trends have been spurred by the growth of the sustainable development paradigm and governance shifts that have increasingly transferred governing authority towards non-state actors. Accordingly, there is now widespread recognition that mineral developers need to gain a ‘social license to operate’ (SLO) from local communities in order to avoid potentially costly conflict and exposure to social risks. A social license can be considered to exist when a mining project is seen as having the ongoing approval and broad acceptance of society to conduct its activities. Due to the concept's relatively recent emergence, however, only a limited body of scholarship has developed around SLO. Drawing on examples from northern Canada, this paper uses governance and sustainability theories to conceptualize the origins of SLO in the mining sector and describe some of the associated implications. Further research is needed to determine governance arrangements which help facilitate establishment of SLO in different mineral development contexts.     

Understanding Human–Landscape Interactions in the “Anthropocene”

This article summarizes the primary outcomes of an interdisciplinary workshop in 2010, sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation, focused on developing key questions and integrative themes for advancing the science of human–landscape systems. The workshop was a response to a grand challenge identified recently by the U.S. National Research Council (2010a)—“How will Earth’s surface evolve in the “Anthropocene?”—suggesting that new theories and methodological approaches are needed to tackle increasingly complex human–landscape interactions in the new era. A new science of human–landscape systems recognizes the interdependence of hydro-geomorphological, ecological, and human processes and functions. Advances within a range of disciplines spanning the physical, biological, and social sciences are therefore needed to contribute toward interdisciplinary research that lies at the heart of the science. Four integrative research themes were identified—thresholds/tipping points, time scales and time lags, spatial scales and boundaries, and feedback loops—serving as potential focal points around which theory can be built for human–landscape systems. Implementing the integrative themes requires that the research communities: (1) establish common metrics to describe and quantify human, biological, and geomorphological systems; (2) develop new ways to integrate diverse data and methods; and (3) focus on synthesis, generalization, and meta-analyses, as individual case studies continue to accumulate. Challenges to meeting these needs center on effective communication and collaboration across diverse disciplines spanning the natural and social scientific divide. Creating venues and mechanisms for sustained focused interdisciplinary collaborations, such as synthesis centers, becomes extraordinarily important for advancing the science.     

Engineering meets institutions: an interdisciplinary approach to the management of resilience

Resilience management stretches across the decoupled domains of community, corporate, and public governance. As a result, fostering resilience needs a governance structure that supports collective actions and integrates fragmented fields with different institutional frameworks. In this study, we carry out a review of three different perspectives on resilience -engineering, social, and organizational- in order to explore resilience management in the context of governance of infrastructure systems. We discuss the common practices to address resilience of engineering systems, the need and current trend for integration of institutions into these practices through formal (e.g., policies and regulations) as well as informal mechanisms (e.g., trust, norms, and shared cognitive structures). To illustrate our theorizing, we provide three illustrative case studies. The cases highlight the barriers and enablers across the three perspectives and highlight the inter-organizational context of management of resilience. We uncovered organizational dynamics such as the necessity of establishing critical functionality through organizational capacity for stakeholder engagement, the need for diverse organizations to address institutional complexity in management of resilience, and the importance of decoupling in aligning the outcomes of resilience management practices with policies. We suggest an agenda for future research on managing practices associated with management of resilience.     

Bicycle-sharing systems in an alternative/diverse economy perspective: a sympathetic critique

ABSTRACT

This contribution puts bicycle-sharing systems (BSSs) as a rather recent, environmentally friendly form of urban mobility in the context of broader societal changes. More specifically, we discuss to what extent BSS and their various modes of organisation can be regarded as an “alternative” consumption practice, explicitly designed to deliver more social just outcomes, taking the diverse economy framework of Gibson-Graham as a key tool of analysis. Our examination unfolds a range of limitations of BSSs for (strong) sustainable development, but also a number of obvious and less obvious prospects and opportunities.     

A Framework to Evaluate Ecological and Social Outcomes of Collaborative Management: Lessons from Implementation with a Northern Arizona Collaborative Group

As collaborative groups gain popularity as an alternative means for addressing conflict over management of public lands, the need for methods to evaluate their effectiveness in achieving ecological and social goals increases. However, frameworks that examine both effectiveness of the collaborative process and its outcomes are poorly developed or altogether lacking. This paper presents and evaluates the utility of the holistic ecosystem health indicator (HEHI), a framework that integrates multiple ecological and socioeconomic criteria to evaluate management effectiveness of collaborative processes. Through the development and application of the HEHI to a collaborative in northern Arizona, the Diablo Trust, we present the opportunities and challenges in using this framework to evaluate the ecological and social outcomes of collaborative adaptive management. Baseline results from the first application of the HEHI are presented as an illustration of its potential as a co-adaptive management tool. We discuss lessons learned from the process of selecting indicators and potential issues to their long-term implementation. Finally, we provide recommendations for applying this framework to monitoring and adaptive management in the context of collaborative management.     

Advancing Sustainable Bioenergy: Evolving Stakeholder Interests and the Relevance of Research

The sustainability of future bioenergy production rests on more than continual improvements in its environmental, economic, and social impacts. The emergence of new biomass feedstocks, an expanding array of conversion pathways, and expected increases in overall bioenergy production are connecting diverse technical, social, and policy communities. These stakeholder groups have different—and potentially conflicting—values and cultures, and therefore different goals and decision making processes. Our aim is to discuss the implications of this diversity for bioenergy researchers. The paper begins with a discussion of bioenergy stakeholder groups and their varied interests, and illustrates how this diversity complicates efforts to define and promote “sustainable” bioenergy production. We then discuss what this diversity means for research practice. Researchers, we note, should be aware of stakeholder values, information needs, and the factors affecting stakeholder decision making if the knowledge they generate is to reach its widest potential use. We point out how stakeholder participation in research can increase the relevance of its products, and argue that stakeholder values should inform research questions and the choice of analytical assumptions. Finally, we make the case that additional natural science and technical research alone will not advance sustainable bioenergy production, and that important research gaps relate to understanding stakeholder decision making and the need, from a broader social science perspective, to develop processes to identify and accommodate different value systems. While sustainability requires more than improved scientific and technical understanding, the need to understand stakeholder values and manage diversity presents important research opportunities.     

Institutional innovation in urban governance: The case of climate change adaptation

Urban governance systems need to be adaptive to deal with emerging uncertainties and pressures, including those related to climate change. Realising adaptive urban governance systems requires attention to institutions, and in particular, processes of institutional innovation. Interestingly, understanding of how institutional innovation and change occurs remains a key conceptual weakness in urban climate change governance. This paper explores how institutional innovation in urban climate change governance can be conceptualised and analysed. We develop a heuristic involving three levels: (1) “visible” changes in institutional arrangements, (2) changes in underlying “rules-in-use”, and (3) the relationship to broader “governance dilemmas”. We then explore the utility of this heuristic through an exploratory case study of urban water governance in Santiago, Chile. The approach presented opens up novel possibilities for studying institutional innovation and evaluating changes in governance systems. The paper contributes to debates on innovation and its effects in urban governance, particularly under climate change.     

Community resilience,land degradation and endogenous lock-in effects: evidence from the Alento region,Campania, Italy

This study analyses social, economic and political “lock-ins” for understanding community resilience and land degradation. The study focuses on lock-ins from within communities, using four case study communities in Italy affected by land degradation. The analysis highlights the complex interrelationships between various lock-ins, and suggests that the communities are on declining resilience pathways that may lead to increasing difficulties in addressing land degradation issues in future.     

Monitoring and evaluation in UK low-carbon community groups: benefits,barriers and the politics of the local

In the UK, there now exist hundreds of low-carbon community groups (LCCGs) that aim to decrease collective resource consumption and/or generate renewable energy through diverse social and environmental interventions. These groups have in recent years become the subject of political attention and funding schemes, underpinned by beliefs that LCCGs are key to fostering resilience to climate change and meeting national-level greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. While previous research into LCCGs has focused on drivers, barriers and outcomes of LCCG action, there is now growing policy and academic interest in groups' capacities for, and uses of, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) processes and tools. However, little is known about the experiences, opportunities and potential challenges for LCCGs undertaking M&E. In response, this paper draws on a Knowledge Exchange project that explored M&E processes and tools with a sample of UK LCCGs. It outlines the benefits and drawbacks of groups' attempts to achieve change and to account for their outcomes and/or impacts, individually, and as part of a wider movement. It argues that, while M&E could be one way for groups to “scale up” their impact without losing their grounding in place and community, issues of capacity, resources and utility remain paramount.     

Panarchy use in environmental science for risk and resilience planning

Environmental sciences have an important role in informing sustainable management of built environments by providing insights about the drivers and potentially negative impacts of global environmental change. Here, we discuss panarchy theory, a multi-scale hierarchical concept that accounts for the dynamism of complex socio-ecological systems, especially for those systems with strong cross-scale feedbacks. The idea of panarchy underlies much of system resilience, focusing on how systems respond to known and unknown threats. Panarchy theory can provide a framework for qualitative and quantitative research and application in the environmental sciences, which can in turn inform the ongoing efforts in socio-technical resilience thinking and adaptive and transformative approaches to management.     

WATER RESOURCES AND SOCIAL CHOICES1

ABSTRACT The problem of water resources management can be viewed as one requiring the existence and application of some type of “collective decision” mechanism. Currently, the general water resource decision problem is solved using an “individual decision” format without explicit consideration of the dominant social decision system. This paper demonstrates the need for blending technical planning activities with organized societal processes and then proposes a specific public decision framework to satisfy this requirement. The key element in this planning framework is a generalized “bargaining arena” which serves to link technical activities with the social system. Using this bargaining device we can (1) specify policy at a local level, (2) incorporate “social decision” rules into the planning process, and (3) provide local access to the decision process. A simple case of regional water quality management is used to describe the application of this planning procedure and to offer encouragement for successful use in more complex real-world cases.     

Agrarian Ideals, Sustainability Ethics, and US Policy: A Critique for Practitioners

If tacit ethical ideals shape policy and practice, even when practitioners are not fully aware of underlying philosophical assumptions, then philosophical frameworks that support diagnostic, evaluative, and adaptive capacity in the sphere of action are critical to sustainability. Thompson’s agrarian-influenced sustainability framework substantially advances beyond the prevailing triple bottom line approach, as experimental evaluation of biofuels sustainability illustrates. By suggesting that governance of complex social-natural systems lies at the core of contemporary sustainability challenges, Thompson illuminates the critical importance of social capacity for deliberation and choice—a powerful and somewhat unexpected theme requiring more development by philosophers and practitioners alike going forward.     

Barriers and Opportunities for Integrating Social Science into Natural Resource Management: Lessons from National Estuarine Research Reserves

The need for cross-disciplinary scientific inquiries that facilitate improved natural resource management outcomes through increased understanding of both the biophysical and human dimensions of management issues has been widely recognized. Despite this broad recognition, a number of obstacles and barriers still sometimes challenge the successful implementation of cross-disciplinary approaches. Improving understanding of these challenges and barriers will help address them and thereby foster appropriate and effective utilization of cross-disciplinary approaches to solve natural resource management challenges. This research uses a case study analysis of the United States National Estuarine Research Reserve System to improve understanding of the critical factors that influence practitioners’ decisions related to incorporating social science into their natural resource management work. The case study research is analyzed and evaluated within a Theory of Planned Behavior framework to (1) determine and describe the factors that predict practitioners’ intent to incorporate social science into their natural resource related activities and (2) recommend potential strategies for encouraging and enabling cross-disciplinary approaches to natural resource management. The results indicate that National Estuarine Research Reserve practitioners’ decisions related to incorporating social science are primarily influenced by (1) confidence in their own capability to incorporate social science into their work and (2) beliefs about whether the outcomes of incorporating social science into their work would be valuable or beneficial.     

Towards metrics of sustainable food systems: a review of the resilience and vulnerability literature

Food and nutrition security is a persisting global issue and, in addition, food systems are now facing a new set of intersecting economic, social and environmental challenges. Recurrent socio-economic and biophysical changes put the sustainability of food systems at risk. There is an urgent need to develop knowledge-based tools to assess and monitor food sustainability and to identify pathways for food security and resource conservation. The systemic nature of these interactions calls for multidimensional approaches and integrated assessments for decision-making to guide change. This paper reviews social–ecological system frameworks with the view to conceptualize the sustainability issues that affect the food systems. It is argued that the understanding of the food systems as social–ecological systems, and inputs from the theories of vulnerability and resilience in particular, can provide the concepts necessary to understand and model the complex system dynamics involved in the multiple interactions between human and natural components.     

Environmental Harm: Political not Biological

In their fine paper, Evans et al. (2009) discuss the proposition that invasive non-native species (INS) are harmful. The question to ask is, “Harmful to whom?” Pathogens that make people sick and pests that damage their property—crops, for example—cause harms of kinds long understood in common law and recognized by public agencies. The concept of “harm to the environment,” in contrast, has no standing in common law or legislation, no meaning for any empirical science, and no basis in a political consensus other than might be drawn from the Endangered Species Act. As a generalization, the proposition that INS cause “environmental harm”—since this concept is empty of legal, scientific, and political meaning—must rest on definition, diktat, or diatribe. As Evans et al. suggest, however, the idea of “harm to the environment” is not always and certainly need not be arbitrary; it might gather significance in the context of a particular place through a political process that weighs economic concerns with cultural, religious, aesthetic, and other relevant beliefs, practices, and commitments that people who care about that place present. It is not clear, however, that adaptive management, which Evens et al. propose, will provide that democratic political process.     

Transitions of municipal solid waste management. Part I: Scenarios of Swiss waste glass-packaging disposal

All municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems—even “high quality systems” or those employing “best practices”—face multiple challenges, e.g., decreasing prices of secondary raw materials recovered by municipalities, increasing complexity of waste composition, technological lock-ins. Policy-making involves translating these challenges into goals that are generic in nature and implementing them on MSW fractions thanks to tailor-made policy tools, e.g., anticipated disposal fees. Anticipating the impacts of policies can provide valuable insights into the adequacy of policy tools with respect to economic, political, and social contexts of MSW. The goal of this paper is to construct consistent, future scenarios of Swiss waste glass-packaging disposal based on literature and stakeholder knowledge, including the allocation of waste to different disposal routes. These scenarios are future states to which the current system could transit to due to alternative policies in line with waste policy goals and varying societal constraints (e.g., commodity prices). Results of scenario construction show that policy has a limited effect on waste glass-packaging disposal because of economic constraints, preventing goals from consistently being achieved. For instance, increases in energy prices can impede a policy favoring recycling over downcycling to foam glass, an energy-saving product. The procedure applied to construct possible scenarios suits well the ambition of considering uncertain future developments affecting MSW management as it integrates qualitative and quantitative knowledge of various sources and disciplines.     

Real-time irrigation diversion data delivery can benefit adaptive capacity in communal irrigation systems

There is a need to support applied, community-relevant hydrologic research within changing climate, population, and socioeconomic conditions to better inform water policy and management. We hypothesized that providing a rural agricultural community in a semiarid valley with the necessary monitoring tool to meet local water management needs would increase adaptive capacity within the context of long-term drought. Through a community science approach, researchers installed a telemetry monitoring system at participating acequia irrigation diversions that remotely sent water data to a web interface every 15 min. Two surveys distributed before and after web interface access targeted seven adaptive capacity indicators. After the first season of improved data accessibility, the following adaptive capacity indicators significantly increased: information diversity, cognitive social capital, leadership, and proactivity. Rather than focusing on the water savings aspect of real-time monitoring, this paper summarizes a novel water resources study that assessed the social impact of real-time irrigation water delivery monitoring on adaptive capacity. This study suggests that bridging the gap between community need and hydrologic research through community science, sociologic analysis, and stakeholder engagement provides significant benefits for communities facing water management challenges, further supporting problem-driven water resources research.