Tracing Social Licence to Operate in the Mining Sector of Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan

by Gokce Mete, Marina Yamamoto and Gulzhan Kozhabayeva.

Abstract

SLO is an integral and powerful lens of framing trust between the industries and the public. This informal license is critical in acknowledging the active role of the people and communities towards offering acceptance and approval of how industries conduct their business. In recent years, there have been improvements in companies' awareness and mitigation of social and environmental impacts. There are examples of better engagement between companies, governments and civil society to ensure extractive activities contribute to national and local development objectives. There are ample studies covering Africa and Latin America, but little has been written on SLO in Central Asia. As SLO goes beyond the strictly legal requirements of a license, it is not always difficult to trace its implementation in practice. This paper is an attempt to trace SLO in Central Asia using the mining sector in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia as a case study. In this paper, we identify SLO principles as sustainable development, corporate social responsibility and environmental, social and governance, and use them to trace SLO practices in the mining sector of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia.

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