Resource Exploitation: Corporations and Communities
Lead researchers: Dr. Natalia Yakovleva and Prof. Max Munday
Background
The oil and gas industries often significantly contribute to regional and national economies in terms of providing budget and export revenues, employment and infrastructure development. These industries can also provide spillovers to other sectors of industry and society. Inevitably such industries are connected with both positive and negative externalities in economic, social and cultural terms.
This project focuses on one part of the activity of the oil and gas sector examining the socio-economic community impacts connected to the pipeline transportation of oil and gas. This area has received limited attention in the literature but is expected to have some unique facets compared to more discrete oil and gas projects whose externalities (either positive or negative) can be spatially concentrated. Pipelines can cover huge distances potentially affecting a large number of different communities.
Multinational firms and state developers of oil and gas infrastructure are increasingly challenged to find ways of managing and structuring relationships with affected communities. Even relatively benign pipeline infrastructure developments carry risk in terms of disruption of landscapes and potential for rupture and explosion. More implicitly such infrastructures affect the flow of services deriving from the physical environment to local peoples, with ramifications for sense of identity and place. Corporations that are engaged in the development of such projects are now faced with challenges not only to improve the environmental performance of their operations, but to ensure that they consider broader issues of sustainability into their operations.
The project aims to explore local and indigenous community engagement with corporations in the context of infrastructure project developments linked to resource exploitation. The project will examine governance tools and models that promote sustainability and ensure productive involvement of communities residing in the area of infrastructure projects.
