Open AccessSocial Licence Comes to Greenland’s Mining Sector: Will Communities be Empowered?
Author(s) -
Paul Bowles,
Fiona MacPhail
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
arctic
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.503
H-Index - 59
eISSN - 1923-1245
pISSN - 0004-0843
DOI - 10.14430/arctic74038
Subject(s) - empowerment , legitimacy , corporate governance , agency (philosophy) , natural resource , resource (disambiguation) , political science , public relations , environmental resource management , environmental planning , sociology , geography , business , law , politics , social science , economics , computer network , finance , computer science
The social licence to operate is a concept that has been applied to the mining sector internationally for the past two decades. In 2017, it was raised by a number of actors as a way to reduce controversy over mining projects in Greenland. In this paper, we analyse why the concept of social licence appeared, and the legitimacy problems that it was intended to resolve despite numerous changes to Greenland’s mining approval processes. We argue that the concept was introduced primarily as a way of seeking to enhance the voices and agency of local communities in resource governance. We further ask whether, on the basis of Canadian experience where social licence has been used for much longer in natural resource governance discourse, introducing the concept into Greenland will likely lead to an empowerment of communities. We argue that the Canadian experience in this regard shows that the outcome is complex, that community empowerment can take different forms or may not occur at all. Such complexity is also likely in Greenland.