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Accepted Paper:
The Dirty Fuel: Declared Goals and Real Practices of Corporate Social Responsibility in Russian Coal-Mining Industry
Vladimir Poddubikov
(Kemerovo State University)
This paper is a review of contemporary Russian coal-mining companies’ attempts to apply CSR standards, which can make it possible to start a new practice of environmental hazards prevention.
Paper long abstract:
This paper contains a review of contemporary Russian coal-mining companies’ attempts to apply CSR standards, which can make it possible to start a dialogue with local communities of Indigenous peoples and other locals and to start a practice of environmental hazards prevention (co-management). The highly important precedent is being created at this time in Russian coal mining regions and especially in the Kuznetsk Coal Basin (co-called Kuzbass). Coal-mining companies faced a lot of cases of local communities’ resistance are trying to elaborate new technologies of corporate management directed to improve corporations-locals interactions and to prevent in this way any conflicts over the coal mining negative consequences such as local communities' lands grabbing, technogenic pollution and destruction of the environment. In 2016 the biggest coal-mining companies of Kuzbass have accepted significant guidance documents concerning main principles of corporate policies towards local communities and environment. All of these measures sound as a significant milestone on the way of Russian extractivism liberalisation according to world-wide experience. But on the other hand, real practices of coal-mining companies’ operation in Kuzbass don’t comply with the declared principles and indicates the systematic violation of local communities’ rights and environment pollution. The cases of locals’ land grabbing and forced displacement as the result of coal mining are not uncommon for Kuzbass in particular and for Russia in general. This paper discusses the real goals of Russian coal-mining companies’ CSR policies by comparing them with the world-wide corresponding practices.