Managing the “S” in ESG: The Case of Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries |
| |
| Authors: | Nick Pelosi Rebecca Adamson |
| |
| Affiliation: | 1. NICK PELOSI is Corporate Engagement Manager at First Peoples Worldwide. Nick was involved in developing the risk metrics used in First Peoples’ Indigenous Rights Risk Report, a tool designed to assess investment risks related to resource extraction on Indigenous lands. He has helped organize trainings for companies, shareholders, and community leaders on Indigenous Peoples’ rights, and assisted with Indigenous outreach and consultation for the UN Global Compact's Business Reference Guide to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He has a BA in Political Science from Hunter College.;2. REBECCA ADAMSON, an Indigenous economist, is Founder and President of First Peoples Worldwide, the first U.S. based global Indigenous Peoples NGO, which makes grants and provides technical assistance and advocacy directly to Indigenous‐led development projects. Ms. Adamson has worked directly with grassroots tribal communities, both domestically and internationally, as an advocate of local tribal issues since 1970. She established the premiere US development institute, First Nations Development Institute in 1980 and in 1997 she founded First Peoples Worldwide. Ms. Adamson's work established the first microenterprise loan fund in the United States;3. the first tribal investment model;4. and, a national movement for reservation land reform. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Bay and Paul Foundations and the Calvert Social Investment Fund. As a trustee of Calvert, Rebecca partnered with the Fund to create the first Indigenous Peoples’ rights investment screen in 1999, and led the creation of the Indigenous Rights Risk Report, the first quantitative assessment of corporate risk exposure to Indigenous Peoples’ rights, in 2014. In 2015 she launched the Shareholder Advocacy Leadership Training curriculum as a new strategy for Indigenous leaders in addressing extractive industry on Indigenous territories. |
| |
| Abstract: | Although a company's “social license to operate” is critical to its long‐run viability and success, the “social” component of corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) problems appears to be taking the longest to be integrated into the corporate business model. The authors make the case that corporate boards must assume a more direct and proactive role in identifying, measuring, and mitigating social risk. Board involvement in the management of social issues, although not a silver bullet by itself, is an important step that can help catalyze the changes needed within upper, middle, and lower management. The absence of board oversight of social performance means that the reporting chain is not reaching the highest level of management. And this in turn creates a lack of attention and accountability to social performance that is likely to permeate the rest of the company. Along with board oversight, companies need more and better information to understand the value that good social performance creates for business, and to equip them for building and maintaining positive relationships with communities. At the individual company level, this means more comprehensive and granular analysis of social risk, the full range of costs of conflicts with local communities, the benefits of having a social license, and quality baseline data for community engagement. At the macro level, these data points must be aggregated to understand their implications across industries. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
|
|
