The civic virtue of developmentalism: on the mining industry's political licence to develop Western Australia

Abstract

This paper examines the social licence to operate (SLO) of Western Australia's (WA's) mining industry in the context of the state's 'developmentalist' agenda. We draw on the findings of a multi-disciplinary body of new research on the risks and challenges posed byWA's mining industry for environmental, social and economic sustainability. We synthesise the findings of this work against the backdrop of the broader debates on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and resource governance. In light of the data presented, this paper takes issue with the mining sector's SLO and its assessment of social and environmental impacts in WA for three inter-related reasons. A state government ideologically wedded to resource-led growth is seen to offer the resource sector a political licence to operate and to give insufficient attention to its potential social and environmental impacts. As a result, the resource sector can adopt a self-serving CSR agenda built on a limited win -win logic and operate with a 'quasi social licence' that is restricted to mere economic legitimacy. Overall, this paper problematises the politicalcum-commercial construction and neoliberalisation of the SLO and raises questions about the impact of mining in WA.

Social license and the fear of Mineras Interruptus

“…What makes this exertion extraordinary is the extent (read: intellectual strain) to which consultants and academics have gone to ensure the commercial and scholastic viability of the expression; some providing metrics (Boutilier and Thomson, 2011;Moffat and Zhang, 2014), some with definitional character (Wilburn and Wilburn, 2011;Prno and Slocombe, 2012;Moffat et al, 2015), and others with the elevated status of a pseudo-permitting instrument (Gunningham et al, 2004;Brueckner et al, 2014;Tarras-Wahlberg, 2014;Eberhard Falck, 2016). This is supported by an exponential growth in social policies, standards and guidelines in the global mining industry, many of which use, or indirectly refer to the term 'social license'.…”

Advances and challenges of incorporating ecosystem services into impact assessment

“…In Brazil, a possible trend was identified in the IA of mining projects by which more recent assessments feature more issues scoped in and more detail in baseline (Landim and S anchez, 2012), but social impacts are not dealt with similar detail as biophysical impacts (S anchez, 2013), a characteristic observed in other countries (Brueckner et al, 2014) and recurrent internationally (Esteves et al, 2012). In the reviewed case, poor scoping is reflected in the insufficient attention paid to the characterization of local communities and their use of local resources (Table S1).…”

Social impact assessment, social development programmes and social licence to operate: tensions and contradictions in intent and practice in the extractive sector

“…Such a 'cost -benefit' approach to community relations has been critiqued elsewhere (e.g. Owen & Kemp 2012), including in this issue (see Brueckner et al, 2014). Suffice to say, there are major flaws in this thinking.…”