Hello Douglas,

I have done some research on CSR in Latin America which I am attaching below. Although my work is not directly tackling your question I think it may be somewhat informative. Ciaran O´Faircheallaigh, Deana Kemp and other colleagues have worked on SLO from the side of community-corporate agreements in the mining sector in Australia and you can also find Anthony Bebbington's work on mining in the Andes useful.

From my direct experience with mining conflicts in Ecuador I would say that one necessary (perhaps not sufficient) factor is some perception of compatibility of the proposed project with existing-long term development plans in the area.

Another factor is the existence of intermediaries wiling to create or strengthen venues for dialogue in which power asymmetries can be dealt without polarizing the parties and pre-determining the outcomes.

Requirements do change over the lifetime of the mine. In Peru for instance, even tough some companies had achieved SLO to start with projects under certain conditions, once the prices rose again after the 2008 crisis, local populations demanded new conditions to maintain the SLO. One of such conditions was that the mine would not expand its projects in the same area due to perceived water scarcity due to use in mining and climate change. The company and the government rejected that condition and new conflicts arose leading to new negotiations over the Slo for the mine.

Best of luck!

Article The Democracy Deficit of Corporate Social Responsibility in ...

Greetings Douglas,

Further to Paúl's helpful response, you might find it useful to have a look at the work that I and my colleagues Kieren Moffat and Justine Lacey at CSIRO have done. You should be able to access some of our publications via this site, and I have attached one that might be especially relevant. See also the Dec 2014 special edition of Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal (32:4). http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tiap20/current#.VLXdTHtWdyE

And yes, SLO is best understood as a dynamic concept, typically evolving as stakeholders' expectations of a company change over the life of a project.

Best regards,

Richard

Hi Douglas,

we are currently working on a synthesis publication on water integrity, which includes an analysis on extractive industries. Some topics seem related.

Interesting insights on the SLO might be found in discussions of CSR in mining companies, more specifically in arguments that see CSR as an obligation for 'corporate citizens' under the SLO.

Regarding the social contract question, the SLO to me seems part of the social contract. But a more direct link might be found in studies assessing mining companies involvement in government functions such as the provision of public goods (e.g. water management). In such cases, company actions affect the social contract directly. Analysing positive and negative externalities created in such engagement might help clarify specific characteristics of the SLO.

For details, the social conflicts in Peru, already mentioned by Paúl, are untangled in a very interesting study in Arellano-Yanguas. It also highlights the role of perceived past injustices for negotiation positions over new mining concessions, addressing your question of change.

Sosa & Zwarteveen wrote studies on mining and water in Peru that provides the complement  re the social contract aspect.

Finally, analysing the arguments of advocacy initiatives under the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) might be a good road for understanding explicit and implicit social expectations mines face in various contexts.

Article Exploring the Politics of Water Grabbing: The Case of Large ...

Article Aggravating the Resource Curse: Decentralisation, Mining and...

Thank you all very much for the responses.  Paul and Ellen I have accessed your papers and will be going through them as well as taking into account the recommendations in your notes.

Richard I have accessed the Journal you referred to and have all those articles (in fact 3 of your from 2014 and one from 2012 that seem to be the most up to date).  I am also interested in the epistemology paper but will only venture into that space once my proposal has been accepted.  I also want to look at the social contract of Hobbes, Kant, Rawls, etc. to see how that differs from the SLO.

Thank you all so very much.  I am entering this PhD race with a fair amount of trepidation and your responses make the journey a little less lonely.

Kind regards

Douglas

Dear Douglas,

I might also recommend the following, which should be highly relevant to your research quest:

Justine Lacey & Julian Lamont, "Using social contract to inform social licence to operate: An application in the Australian coal seam gas industry, Journal of Cleaner Production. 12/2014; 84:831-839. DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.11.047

Enjoy!

Thanks Geert

I have just submitted my PhD proposal for approval and intend spending the next two years immersed in mining.  This will be helpful. I was going to say Je parle petit peu Francais, but I see you also provided a translated version - thank you.

Kind regards

Douglas

Dear Douglas,

I have been working with Justine Lacey on SLO in forestry; we will have a paper on SLO and procedural justice coming out in Forestry within the next few weeks (advance online access); I would be happy to send you a copy when it comes out. I have also done some work on SLO and agriculture if you are interested.

Best,

Peter

Dear Peter

Thank you - that is very kind.  While I am focusing on the extractive industries, and in particular fracking, I know that the SLO is everywhere and affects all businesses (nothing like hearing a commentator on the BBC saying that the banks have lost their social licence).  So any addition to my knowledge base would be more than welcome.  I guess, at the end of the day, that there is not much difference between industries as to the basis for all this.

So please do send me all your papers or, if you prefer, just the link via Research Gate as that will get your readership stats up (and we all need these things in this crazy academic world we inhabit).

Kind regards

Doug