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This case study has shown that neither the officials and politicians of the Kirovsk and Apatity
municipalities, nor the representatives of the two mining companies described here are familiar
with the concept of social licensing. On the corporate side, obtaining and maintaining a high
level of social license from the local communities has not been explicitly declared as one of the
companies’ goals. This is typical for companies in Russia, however, where the SLO concept is
quite new even in the scientific discourse.
By contrast, the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) – one of the pillars for the social
licensing concept – is widely used. The main motives for the mining companies’ social activities include
the wish to demonstrate good image of the company to the authorities at all levels (federal, regional and
local) and to the local community; the desire to establish a good reputation in the domestic and
international business arenas; the wish to support the town which is home for the company’s
employees (as the case of “Apatit” company demonstrates); and the long-lasting tradition, going back
to the Soviet-era, of CSR. Furthermore, demands for CSR can also be laid down within the state
mining permit (as it was in the case of the new company NWCP in our study). Additionally, the
companies can be motivated by requests from different levels of governmental or political bodies and
by international requirements for corporate codes of conduct. Also, an important motive, as our study
has shown, is basing the company’s decision-making locally and, especially, a strong personal
attachment of the top managerial staff to the towns where the companies operate.
Building relations with communities on the concept of corporate social responsibility, and being
motivated by internal (corporate, such as considerations of image, tradition or, in the case of strong
attachment of top management to the place, a desire to support the local community) and external
(institutional requirements, e.g. the state mining permit) factors, the companies do not prioritize the
attitudes from the local population which, we believe, is the essence of the SLO concept. At the same
time, drawing on the CSR concept, the companies possess certain levels of social license, and themes
which are central to the SLO concept such as trust, acceptance, and compensation are present in the
local mining discourse, though sometimes implicitly.
Institutionally in Russia, relations between the municipalities and large resource-based companies often
are framed by bilateral, trilateral or multilateral agreements on socio-economic partnerships between
the company, municipality and/or regional government. However, so far, as a rule, the local population
plays a minor role in determining their content. The study has shown that on the community side,
instruments such as public hearings were not used for decisions on the content of the agreements in
any of the cases studied, a quite typical situation. Moreover, changes in federal legislation related to
environmental impact assessment introduced in 2006 cancelled the norm to conduct public
hearings for most of the mining projects, with an exception for projects occurring on the
territories of protected areas.
Such factors as generally weak development of institutions of public participation and
organizational weakness of civil society, typical for many of the post-communist societies, as well
as often low levels of cross-community social capital do not allow strong local communities’
participation to influence mining companies’ activities.
However, even under such conditions there are instruments that make it possible to voice out
and to meet the local demands for socially responsible behavior of the companies. As the case of
the conflict of NWPC and local plan