Suchergebnisse

Discusses employment of private military companies (PMCs) by governments and Western mining and petroleum companies in developing countries, and assesses their role and influence in securing, stabilizing, or destabilizing security worldwide, and possible regulation of their activities.

Mining Sector in Kosovo is of crucial importance for the economic development of the country. Since 1999 it has been considered as one of the main areas that would attract foreign investments and thus improve the economy of a young country emerging from the conflict of 1998-1999. The regulation of the mining sector began with the UNMIK Regulation 2005/3 on Mines and Minerals and 2005/2 on Establishment of Independent Commission for Mines and Minerals. Mining regulations and regulatory arrangement in Kosovo were designed in line with James Otto's ideology and with regard to investors' confidence established an independent agency as the Regulator. The principles used in designing the mining regulatory arrangement were to find the best way of attracting foreign investors. Different laws and papers amended, including "Mineral Title Management and Regulatory Procedures". Since 2005, the mining legislation has been amended and supplemented several times in order to follow the needs of the sector, private entities as well as to preserve the public interest. Parallel with its crucial importance the mining sector is one of the most complex sectors. Its complex nature involves many different legislations and institutions followed by few challenges in this sector since 1999. The purpose of this paper is to outline the existing legal and institutional framework of the mining sector. Furthermore, this paper aims at addressing main legal and institutional challenges that the mining sector is facing. Finally, the paper includes the conclusions and few recommendations for improving the legal and institutional framework governing the mining sector.

With the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market going through the Trilogue stage of the legislative process, there is a very real chance of an EU wide text and data mining exception coming into force in the next few years. The precise nature and nuance of the exception are still subject to debate but the prospect of an exception, even one limited to research institutions and non-commercial research purposes, is exciting. It offers huge potential for EU lead developments in 21st century technologies, and opens up new and tantalising research opportunities. Many e-resource licences agreed by libraries allow institutions to archive and preserve content licensed during subscription periods. Services such as Portico, Lockss and Clockss all contain a huge wealth of journal, and similar content, structured, organised and ready should suppliers and publishers withdraw from the market place, or face technological issues. There are some differences but it seems that the UK exception is very similar to the one being discussed by the EU. It is likely that researchers engaged in non-commercial research will have the ability extract knowledge from data sources without the need to license the content from owners. This ability will apply to any source of data that the researcher has legal access to including online sources openly available, and content available under licence via an institutional library for example. The prospect of an EU wide exception for text and data mining combined with the opening up of access to 'dark' archives and/ or institutional repositories represents a fantastic opportunity for researchers. Being able to access and acquire content from across the EU without the need for extensive complex licensing and legal support, offers a competitive advantage for EU researchers and institutions over and above many of their international peers. A combined platform with data, knowledge and information from across the archives and repositories could lead to more world leading research arising from EU ...

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to understand how the context in mining projects influences the corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy to earn a social licence to operate (SLO). This paper also presents a comparative case study analysis of four mining operations in Peru. This analysis was qualitative in nature and is complemented with insights from supplementary key informant interviews and the emerging literature on SLO and CSR. The findings show that mining projects with a complex‐unstable context take considerable effort and a longer process to earn an SLO. In this situation, it is not recommended that companies use either a defensive strategy or compliance. Instead, the company must use strategic and managerial strategies to reduce social conflicts. Also, when the context is low or of moderate uncertainty, it is preferable to use strategic and managerial strategies in order to gain an SLO. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Energy cropping is well established in many countries, from Brazilian sugarcane to US corn ethanol to woody crops like poplar in Europe. Australia offers significant potential for energy crop expansion, especially as advances are made around cellulosic biofuels from woody biomass. A potential threat to this expansion is the criticism energy cropping has attracted, from the food vs fuel debate to the clearing of tropical rainforests for oil palm. One response has been the development of sustainability criteria and standards to ensure that governments do not promote forms of bioenergy that pose such threats. However, this alone may not be enough to ensure that energy cropping systems are able to earn and maintain a 'social licence to operate' from affected communities. The phrase 'social licence to operate' first emerged in the mining sector in the 1990s to describe the extent to which society is prepared to accept the resource use practices of private companies. It has since been applied to activities such as windfarms and agriculture. Energy cropping are well suited to analysis using the social licence concept because it presents not only environmental risks (which may threaten its social licence), but also potential benefits such as climate change mitigation and landscape protection, which may strengthen its social licence. This paper considers not only which energy crops currently have a social licence to operate, but also how resilient this social licence is likely to be in response to unexpected shocks and controversies. It will draw on lessons from overseas, where certain energy crops have shown signs of losing their social licence (e.g. first-generation biofuel crops in the EU) and other sectors, such as pulpwood plantations in southern Australia. The fact that a particular innovation offers an environmental benefit is no guarantee that it will obtain a social licence from affected communities, with a prominent example being opposition to wind farms in parts of Australia (Hall et al. 2015). However, if environmentally-beneficial practices are unable to earn and maintain a social licence, there is a risk that they may fail before their potential benefits are realised.

chapter 1 Introduction: Countervailing forces and the industrial ethic -- chapter 2 An interlude on social licence and countervailing power: From metaphor to realism -- chapter 3 Social licence and mining: A critical perspective -- chapter 4 An interlude on community relations: A dual proposition on the exercising of countervailing power? -- chapter 5 Community relations and mining: Core to business but not "core business" -- chapter 6 An interlude on voluntary obligation and involuntary displacement -- chapter 7 Mining-induced displacement and resettlement: A critical appraisal -- chapter 8 An interlude on the confluence of countervailing pressures: Power and force in the context of FPIC -- chapter 9 "Free, prior and informed consent", social complexity and the mining industry: Establishing a knowledge base -- chapter 10 An interlude on remedy systems and the dangers of monopoly capital -- chapter 11 Grievance handling and mining in Southeast Asia: A case of procedural fiction? -- chapter 12 Shared authority and the ethics of concurrent interference.