Stakeholders, Sustainable Development Policies and the Coal Mining Industry

Perspectives from Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States

Izabela Jonek-Kowalska, Radosław Wolniak, Oksana A. Marinina, Tatyana V. Ponomarenko

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000555486
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

This book identifies the impact of internal and external stakeholders on the implementation of sustainable development policies in the coal mining sector in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The book assesses what activities and conditions need to be improved so that sustainable development policies can be more effectively and efficiently implemented. With a specific focus on the hard coal and lignite mining sectors, it examines a broad range of case studies from Eastern European countries and the Commonwealth of Independent States, including Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Kazakhstan, Germany, Spain, France and the United Kingdom, among many more. Beginning with an introduction to sustainable development and stakeholder theory, Part II then examines internal stakeholders, including owners, managers, employees and trade unions. Part III examines external stakeholders, touching upon those directly related to the mining industry, such as customers and mining enterprises, and those not directly associated such as local and regional communities and environmental organisations. The book concludes by proposing a model approach to the management of stakeholders involved in mining enterprises, focusing on improving the process of implementing sustainable development in the mining sector and strengthening the effects of this process.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the extractive industries, natural resource management and policy and sustainable development.

Part I

Introduction to research and considerations

DOI: 10.4324/9781003091110-2

1 Sustainable development in mining enterprises

Fundamentals and main research results

DOI: 10.4324/9781003091110-3

Origins and essentials of sustainable development in enterprises’ management

The concept of sustainable development appeared for the first time in 1972 in the Stockholm Declaration. This definition was then adopted at the second session of the UNEP Governing Council (United Nations Environment Programme). The concept was introduced into world circulation in particular in 1987, when the so-called Brundtland Report was published. The essence of the Brundtland Report was the message that in order to ensure further existence of humankind on Earth and meet its needs in the long term, it is necessary to develop sustainability in all areas of human life and activity (Rogers et al., 2008; Idowu et al., 2019).

Brundtland defined sustainable development as that which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Brundtland, 1987). Brundtland’s concept was then adopted and developed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. One of the key declarations of this summit was that today’s development must not negatively affect the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

This concept emerged in response to the growing concern about the limited possibilities of the terrestrial ecosystem to lift the pressure of human activity. Its goal was to eliminate the imbalance that occurs between the socio-economic development of humanity and the natural environment. Humans have not taken responsibility for their actions for too long, which has led to a decrease in the quality of their own life and that of other living things.

In the following years, the concept of sustainable development has evolved into a more practical approach, focusing on economic development and environmental responsibility. At the Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002, three basic components of sustainable development were identified: economic development, social development and environmental protection.

The change in the area of awareness of human attitudes towards nature and the appearance of the concept of sustainable development can be presented in the form of a three-stage process:

• the first stage – natural technocratism – was the most aggressive towards resources, it consisted in an unrestricted use of natural resources;
• the second stage – the minimum ecological period – the importance of ecological problems began to be considered and selected ecological principles were implemented into business practice;
• the third stage – sustainable development – a period characterised by an equitable connection of the forces of nature with the socio-economic development of society.

(Trzepacz, 2012)

The idea of sustainable development has been shaping the policy of international organisations, countries, regions, as well as smaller territorial units for over twenty years. It exerts a growing impact on the functioning of economies, at both the macro- and micro-economic levels.

The application of the principles of sustainable development in business practice should take into account the following features:

• immaterialisation (tertiary economy) – qualitative growth consisting in increasing the share of intangible production in global production, increasing the importance of the service sector,
• dematerialisation – ecological efficiency, separating the relationship between environmental damage and tangible production,
• decarbonisation – separating the relationship between economic growth and the increase in CO₂ emissions,
• decoupling – separating the relationship between economic growth and the increase in transport needs,
• comprehensiveness – including many different variables into management,
• adaptive management – connecting natural systems into the management process, while taking into account their high level of uncertainty,
• legal issues – striving to introduce issues arising from the principles of sustainable development into legal legislation at the national and supranational level,
• sustainability indicators – determining the level of sustainable development by using various types of numerical indicators to measure the phenomenon of sustainable development.

(Kamaljit and Seidler, 2009; Sachs, 2015)

Implementing the concept of sustainable development allows the setting of new rules for the organisation’s functioning. It is very important, in this case, to recognise the limits of the functioning of the market mechanism. In this way, the classic concept of economic development can be modified, hitherto determined by economic indicators, such as GDP. In the case of sustainable development, it is important to combine moderate levels of consumption with strong social institutions and a healthy society. In this way, it will be possible to achieve long-term development that will not lead to depletion of our planet’s resources (Kamaljit and Seidler, 2009; Idowu et al., 2019).

In order to determine how individual entities are involved in sustainable development, various types of indicators should be used to measure this phenomenon. For EU countries, the type of indicator often used is SDI (Sustainable Development Index), as defined by Eurostat. The indicator is used to monitor the objectives of implementing the Sustainable Development Strategy (Hass et al., 2002; Ledoux et al., 2005; Hickel, 2020). The most important leading indicators used in the SDI index include (Sustainable Development Index, 2020): real GDP per capita, resource efficiency, risk of poverty or social exclusion, employment rate of older workers, life expectancy and healthy life years, greenhouse gas emissions, consumption of energy from renewable sources, energy consumption of transport relative to GDP, abundance of common birds, conservation of fish stocks, official development assistance.

The implementation of the principles of sustainable development in mining practice should involve the integration of activities in three key areas, which are illustrated in Figure 1.1:

• technical and economic, ensuring economic growth,
• ecological, guaranteeing the protection of raw materials and the natural environment,
• social, ensuring concern for an employee in the workplace and in the development of the local community in the vicinity of a given mining plant.

The basic feature of sustainable development is the fact that it is a continuous process, not just ad hoc. It should have clearly defined goals and the means to achieve them in each of the three areas. It can be assumed that the weight of each individual area is identical. A brief description of these individual areas is presented in Table 1.1.

Figure 1.1 Areas of sustainable development

Source: study based on Dubiński, 2013

The latest document presenting trends in sustainable development is the so-called 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the UN General Assembly on 25 September 2015. On this basis, the European Union has committed itself to striving towards an economically sustainable Europe, in which people live well within the limits of our planet. The 2030 Agenda is a programme of activities defining a model of sustainable development at the global level (Sachs et al., 2019). The initiator and spokesperson of the Agenda decree was the United Nations, at which a High-Level Panel on the Development Agenda was established. The Agenda consists of: preambles, declarations and 17 goals of sustainable development with their corresponding tasks (Arredondo et al., 2020; Juergensen et al., 2020; Walsh et al., 2020; Wiktor-Mach, 2020).

Table 1.1 Characteristics of sustainable development areas

Area	Characteristics
Economic growth	Achieving long-term stability by the mining plant both in terms of the planned production volume and meeting the needs of recipients, as well as achieving economic efficiency obtained from the sale of extracted raw material.
Protection of raw material resources and the natural environment	Care for the deposit manifests itself through rational sourcing and savings in extraction. This area also covers activities that minimise the negative impact of various processes related to the extraction of mineral resources on various forms of the geological environment and the natural environment on the surface.
Social responsibility	Ensuring safe working conditions, but also the care of mining entrepreneurs in the social aspects of this work, including mining families, the surroundings of the mining plant etc.

Source: study based on Dubiński et al., 2007, Dubiński, 2013

The most important goals of sustainable development resulting from the 2030 Agenda include:

• end poverty,
• no hunger,
• good health and quality of life,
• good quality of education,
• gender equality,
• clean water and sanitation,
• clean and available energy,
• economic growth and decent work,
• innovation, industry and infrastructure,
• less inequality,
• sustainable cities and communities,
• responsible consumption and production,
• action on the climate,
• life below water,
• life on land,
• peace, justice and strong institutions,
• partnership for goals.

(2030 Agenda, 2015)

Many of the activities listed are directly related to the mining industry and the mining industry must take measures to meet the goals of the 2030 Agenda (Monteiro et al., 2019; Moomen et al., 2019).

Sustainable development in extractive industries: difficult implementation or utopia?

The concept of sustainable development is particularly important in the case of mining. The basic principle of sustainable development in mining must be the rational and economical acquisition and use ...