Performing transparency, embracing regulations: corporate framing to mitigate environmental conflicts

ABSTRACT

This paper compares two cases of contested mining proposals in the Upper Midwest region of the U.S. to examine how mining companies attempt to respond to opposition and secure regulatory approval . Combining analysis of company documents, regulatory reports, media coverage, and interviews about proposed copper-nickel mining in Minnesota and iron mining in Wisconsin, this paper assesses the discursive framing used by company elites as they seek to mitigate public concerns about environmental risks. We demonstrate how companies use environmental regulations and the scientific information needed for regulatory compliance to circumnavigate environmental conflicts. Specifically, we show how companies characterize their role within the institutional contexts of site fights as that of good corporate citizens, embracing the rigor of the regulatory processes, proposing new technologies to manage environmental risks, and managing the dissemination of scientific knowledge with stakeholders. Rather than taking the bottom-up perspective common to research on site fights, we advance research on elite framing, corporate social responsibility, and expertise by highlighting how companies embrace regulations and perform transparent expertise in attempts to assert legitimacy in contested mining contexts. This paper offers a critical analysis of how elites of capitalism use regulations and voluntary information disclosure, two factors often viewed as antithetical to natural resource development, to attempt to circumnavigate on-the-ground contestation of new projects. 

KEYWORDS:

• Framing
• environmental conflicts
• legitimization
• resource extraction
• elites
• science

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Polling by the Minnesota Environmental Partnership showed increasing public awareness and opposition to copper-nickel mining – 66% of Minnesotans supported copper-nickel mining in 2009 which dropped to 35% in 2017, while opposition rose from 19% in 2009 to 52% in 2017 (Myers 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Erik Kojola

Erik Kojola is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Texas Christian University. His research focuses on issues of environmental conflict, political economy and ecology, and labor and work.

Amanda McMillan Lequieu

Amanda McMillan Lequieu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Drexel University. Her research centers on environmental sociology, working class livelihoods, place, and economics.