PREDICT: Principles of Good Mining Checklist

CONTEXT: Social Licence to Operate (SLO) encompasses the broad socio-political understanding on the part of multiple stakeholders that a mining operation’s social and environmental impacts and measures are legitimate and acceptable. The multiple and variously interacting stakeholder groups— local communities, environmental actors, Indigenous communities, regulators, local governments, industry peak bodies, financiers, affiliated businesses—have the proven capacity to confer and/or disrupt a mining operation’s SLO. The presence or absence of a SLO can have significant consequences not only for stakeholder groups, including the mining operation, but also for the shared development of a good mining future. Conceptualisation of what is ‘good mining’ is central to future planning and decisions around development, adoption and reception of new technologies and sustainable mining futures. CHECKLIST PURPOSE This first of its kind tool seeks to facilitate genuine multistakeholder interactions and development of a dynamic shared SLO to advance good mining.

Transnational universities, host communities and local residents: social impacts, university social responsibility and campus sustainability

Purpose This paper aims to discuss how transnational universities create negative and positive social impacts on their host communities and what this means for campus sustainability and the expectation that universities contribute to sustainable development and to their local communities. Design/methodology/approach Using mixed methods, a multiple case study approach and qualitative meta-analysis, this study considers six transnational university campuses in China in terms of their relationship with local communities. Findings Because of the good reputation of universities generally, local residents tended to accord a social licence to operate (i.e. approval) to new university campuses. However, universities generally do not manage their social impacts, as well as many other industries and generally fail to consider the corporate social responsibility issues and the environmental, social and governance aspects of their activities. To improve their social licence to operate and grow and to meet expectations around “university social responsibility”, campus developments should observe key international principles and human rights standards: full disclosure of information; effective community engagement; appropriate resettlement and livelihood restoration; effective harm reduction procedures; provision of local benefits (benefit sharing); monitoring and adaptive management and implement a grievance redress mechanism. Originality/value This paper encourages broader thinking about sustainability in a higher education context and about what university social responsibility entails. Specifically, this study argues that the relationship between universities and their host communities also needs to be considered, especially during campus construction.

The road to societal trust: implementation of Towards Sustainable Mining in Finland and Spain

In government, industry and academia, there is a convergence of three trends: (1) the belief that responsible exploration and mining should increase across Europe, (2) industry should follow and ‘Europeanise’ international good practices and (3) a social licence to operate exists not only between a community and a company but also between society and industry. There are two examples in Europe where these trends are converging—Finland and Spain have both adopted the Canadian Toward Sustainable Mining (TSM) program, but the method of implementation is very different. As a result of Talvivaara, Finland took a network governance approach incorporating trust-building measures from the beginning by bringing diverse stakeholders together to create the Finnish Network for Sustainable Mining. Spain chose to integrate the TSM into their national standards, a more traditional and hierarchical approach but one that also relies on a trustworthy entity with clear longevity. Although implementation is in the early stages in both countries, and therefore this paper provides insights only on preliminary outcomes, results indicate that the network approach may not be better at achieving societal SLO suggesting that other factors such as narrative, dialoguing directly with society, implementing trust-building measures in a timely fashion and proven longevity may have more influence than early trust-building measures between network participants.