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Benefit Sharing in Russia’s Resource Extractive Industries: When Global Standards Meet Local Communities

Liikejuridiikka 2/2019 s. 137–167
25.9.2019
Asiantuntija-artikkeli

The development of corporate social responsibility policies, international codes of conduct, rules from international financial institutions, and product certification schemes increasingly shape the behavior of companies engaged in natural resource extraction. As part of this trend, natural resource companies pay greater attention to relations with local communities near sites of extraction. Benefit sharing has arisen as a more holistic approach than mere compensation to ensure that these communities share in the profits accrued by extractive industries. This paper examines the development of benefit sharing in two communities in Irkutsk, Russia, a Siberian region where both oil and timber companies are active. In comparing the behavior of the Irkutsk Oil Company and the Trans-Siberian Logging Company, we see the influence of the global rules codified by international bodies such as the EBRD and the Forest Stewardship Council. We also seen how attention to indigenous rights shapes benefit sharing in a village populated by members of the Evenk people and how the legacy of past environmental degradation remains unaddressed in a village profoundly impacted by the oil industry.

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