Evaluating Ethical Guidelines
Resource extraction has the potential to be highly beneficial in terms of jobs, education, healthcare, and a share of profits but it can also have damaging local consequences if poorly managed. This project has looked systematically at how indigenous peoples and industrial projects can, and do, in fact co-exist across the Norwegian and Russian North, exploring both positive and negative impacts and potential.
The project ran from 1 October 2013 to 1 March 2017. It originally arose out of paragraph 7.3 of the Norwegian Government’s 2009 strategy document New building blocks in the North and develops this with special reference to the 2011 United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UN Guiding Principles). In addition we have analysed and evaluated a large number of ethical guidelines applicable to extractive industries operating in territories where indigenous peoples live, in northern regions of Norway and Russia.
The project has produced an in-depth analysis of international instruments and a ranking of oil, gas and mining companies operating north of the Arctic Circle. In addition, we have developed briefing papers analysing a range of background issues and supplemented these with a series of case studies from specific sites right across the study area, based on the local knowledge and fieldwork of the project researchers and their local research partners.
While there are tensions between indigenous peoples and resource extraction, we have pointed to ways in which indigenous peoples and resource extraction companies may find common ground. However, our research shows that even where a relatively comprehensive and satisfactory framework has been elaborated into guidelines, these are often not implemented satisfactorily. Indigenous people’s interests are frequently not recognized adequately in decision-making or within wider political and institutional structures and policy processes. Here, we have made recommendations for improvement, which apply variously to government, industry, civil society organizations and indigenous communities. We hope that our papers will make a contribution to all stakeholders in their attempts to manage their roles effectively – and ethically.