RESUMO
This Special Section explores the interplay between Indigenous peoples, industry, and the state in five proposed and active mining projects in Canada and Sweden. The overall aim is to identify factors shaping the quality of Indigenous community-industry-state interactions in mining and mine development. An ambition underlying the research is to develop knowledge to help manage mining related land-use conflicts in Sweden by drawing on Canadian comparisons and experience. This paper synthesizes the comparative research that has been conducted across jurisdictions in three Canadian provinces and Sweden. It focuses on the interplay between the properties of the governance system, the quality of interaction and governance outcomes. We combine institutional and interactive governance theory and use the concept of governability to assess how and why specific outcomes, such as mutually beneficial interaction, collaboration, or opposition, occurred. The analysis suggests there are measures that can be taken by the Swedish Government to improve the governability of mining related issues, by developing alternative, and more effective, avenues to recognize, and protect, Sámi rights and culture, to broaden the scope and increase the legitimacy and transparency of the EIAs, to raise the quality of interaction and consultation, and to develop tools to actively stimulate and support collaboration and partnerships on equal terms. Generally, we argue that Indigenous community responses to mining must be understood within a larger framework of Indigenous self-determination, in particular the communities' own assessments of their opportunities to achieve their long-term objectives using alternative governing modes and types of interactions.
Assuntos
Governo , Mineração , Canadá , Suécia , ConhecimentoRESUMO
Mining has proven to be a controversial form of resource development throughout the circumpolar north. This article compares two mining projects-the proposed Prosperity gold and copper mine in central British Columbia, Canada and the proposed Kallak iron ore mine in Norrbotten County in northern Sweden-that have endured long and protracted approval processes that have caused tensions and disputes between mining companies, Indigenous peoples, communities and state actors. In an effort understand the particular development paths taken by these two mining projects, this article examines the institutional determinants that structure relationships between industry, Indigenous communities and the state in Canada and Sweden. Using an historical institutionalist theoretical approach, the article focuses on the manner in which the structural features of the political systems and the environmental assessment and permitting processes in both countries have shaped the mine approval process. It also identifies particular critical junctures-important events and decisions that influenced the trajectory of the approval processes in profound and consequential ways. The article finds that institutional determinants, both historical and contemporary, have played a critical role in determining outcomes in both cases. In particular, it demonstrates the ways in which the structures of the Canadian and Swedish political systems have historically excluded Indigenous peoples from the decision-making process for resource development projects such as mines. It also shows how broader institutional contexts, as well as specific events and decisions, have complicated and politicized the mine approval processes, a situation that has heightened tensions on all sides.
