Impact mitigation or ecological restoration? Examining the environmental sustainability practices of multinational mining companies

Author(s):  
Prince Amoah ◽  
Gabriel Eweje

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Prince Amoah ◽  
Gabriel Eweje

Purpose This paper aims to examine the barriers to the environmental sustainability practices of large-scale mining companies throughout a mine lifecycle, analysed in the context of the plural and competing logics and tensions in the broader institutional environment. Design/methodology/approach The paper used a qualitative methodology based on multiple cases involving multinational mining companies, regulators and other major stakeholder groups, as it offers an opportunity for analytical generalisations where the empirical results are compared to previously established theories. Findings The empirical results indicate that the environmental sustainability barriers are embedded within gaps in Ghana’s natural resources governance framework. The gaps arise out of contradictory interests and values, which hinder the direction and practices of large-scale mining companies. Research limitations/implications The findings may only apply to the context of this study and is inadequate as the basis for assessing the effectiveness or otherwise of specific initiatives of large-scale mining firms in Ghana. Practical implications This paper has implications on how large-scale mining companies and their stakeholders define their values and goals, and engage in a dynamic process to accommodate the multiple and competing logics by implementing effective structures at the organisational and institutional levels. Originality/value This paper contributes to the sustainability and institutional complexity perspective by showing that plural logics are often contradictory, but may also be complementary in situations of complicit commonality, hindering sustainable outcomes. The authors argue that this is one of the few studies that have examined the barriers to environmental sustainability explicated in the context of institutional complexity.



2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anđela Ivic ◽  
Nína María Saviolidis ◽  
Lara Johannsdottir

AbstractMining activities cause negative environmental impacts and social conflicts but also provide economic benefits to communities and secure the minerals necessary for low-carbon technology. The aim of this multiple case study is to analyze, compare and critically evaluate sustainability reports of 10 European mining companies for the 2016–2018 period to determine the drivers for implementation of sustainability practices and their contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The findings suggest that European mining companies act under pressures from international initiatives and industry associations, the European Union, governments, stakeholders, and maintaining social license to operate. The companies report on the core subjects of corporate governance, employees, the environment, stakeholders’ engagement and occupational health and safety. Positive trends were observed in stakeholders’ engagement and health and safety, while air emissions and water and energy usage increased for most companies. Furthermore, there was an absence of improvement in gender diversity, utilization of renewable energy, and waste recycling. Even though all analyzed companies mentioned SDGs in the reports, the reports lacked a comprehensive explanation of mining activities’ contribution to the SDGs. This study addresses a gap in the existing literature on the European mining context of sustainable development and SDGs relevant for researchers, policymakers, and other impacted stakeholders and adds new theoretical knowledge on the external drivers of CSR activities based on institutional theory.



Agriculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 213
Author(s):  
Alicia Ramírez-Orellana ◽  
Daniel Ruiz-Palomo ◽  
Alfonso Rojo-Ramírez ◽  
John E. Burgos-Burgos

This article aims to explore the perceptions of banana farms managers towards environmental sustainability practices through the impact of innovation, adoption of information systems, and training employees through a case study in the province of El Oro (Ecuador). Furthermore, the paper assesses how farmers’ perceptions could guide public policy incentives. PLS-Structural Equation Modeling are used as the framework by which the constructs is represented within the model. The model explained 59% of the environmental sustainability practices of Ecuadorian banana farms. The results indicate that environmental sustainability practices were positively influenced mainly by training employees, innovation, and adoption of information systems. Additionally, both the adoption of information systems and training employees indirectly influenced sustainable practices through innovation as a mediator. We may conclude that in the Ecuadorian banana farms, changes in environmental practices are derived from innovation strategies as an axis of development of useful information and training employees in public policies.





2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Eugenio ◽  
Pedro Carreira ◽  
Nina Miettinen ◽  
Isabel Maria Estima Costa Lourenço

PurposeThe study investigates whether the level of sustainability concerns of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Malaysia and the Philippines is positively associated with accounting students' intentions to engage in sustainability accounting through its effect on students' attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control regarding environmental sustainability practices.Design/methodology/approachThis empirical study relies on a structural equation model computed using data collected through a questionnaire and data collected from the HEIs websites.FindingsThe findings show that the willingness to engage in sustainability accounting is determined by students' subjective norm and perceived behavioural control, but it is not determined by attitude regarding environmental sustainability practices. The authors also found that the greater the concern with sustainability of the HEI in which a student is enrolled, the greater his/her attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control towards environmental sustainability, and, indirectly, the greater his/her intention to engage in sustainability accounting.Originality/valueThese findings add to the literature on higher education and sustainability accounting by high-lighting the importance of the HEIs sector in promoting sustainability policies and practices, in acting as role models regarding sustainability issues, and in preparing students for building a sustainable society.



Author(s):  
Stephen Muecke

In our apparently postcolonial age, colonization is proceeding apace in Goolarabooloo country near Broome in Western Australia where sovereignty has never been ceded, and no treaty ratified. The colonial ‘settler’ economy was established in the late 19th century with the pearling and pastoral industries, but today it is multinational mining companies (‘extraction colonialism’) that are extending their reach with the urging of the State government and even some Aboriginal agencies. This ethnographic study describes two ‘worlds’: Those (the ‘Moderns’) who like to see themselves as ‘naturally’ extending the territory of a universalist modernity via their institutions of science and technology, governmental organisation, the law and the economy. Under scrutiny, this world turns out to be less robust institutionally and conceptually than it pretends to be; it operates with fantasies, blunders, poor planning, little negotiation and waste. Often it works, but in the instance of the four-year struggle between Woodside Energy and the Goolarabooloo, the latter was able to resist the former’s desire to build a liquefied gas plant on their traditional land. Woodside and its partners left with billions of dollars wasted in the effort. The ‘world’ of the Indigenous Goolarabooloo is the second group of institutions my extended ethnography will describe.



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