Mining and Sustainability in the Circumpolar North: The Role of Government in Advancing Corporate Social Responsibility

• Published in: Environmental Management
• Main Authors: Jackson, Sarah, Poelzer, Gregory, Poelzer, Greg, Noble, Bram
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Nature 2022
• Subjects: Government; Artic; Mining; CSR; Indigenous; Natural resources; Canada; Lulea; Finnmark; Troms
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10388/14937; https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-022-01680-1

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Vinnova project “What’s in a Social License to Mine? Indigenous, Industry and Government Best Practices for Social Innovation” (project No. 2017-02226), which is part of the national Swedish Strategic Innovation Programme STRIM, a collaborative effort by Vinnova, Formas and the Swedish Energy Agency. Open access funding provided by Lulea University of Technology. Peer Reviewed Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is recognized as important to fostering sustainable natural resource development in the Circumpolar North. Governments are playing an increasingly active role in promoting and shaping CSR initiatives, often in collaboration with Indigenous communities and industry. This paper explores the role of CSR in mining for improving socio-economic and environmental management practice. The article argues that government instituted regulations can lead to the development and implementation of CSR practices by mining companies. To examine the relationship between government requirements and CSR, we use two Northern case studies: Cameco Corporation’s uranium mining operations located in Saskatchewan, Canada and Northern Iron’s iron mining operation located in Troms and Finnmark county, ...