Dissertation: Local Community Benefit Agreements would bring multiple benefits to mineral management
Juha Kotilainen, an expert and associate in Akordi, was awarded a PhD from the University of Eastern Finland on 22 November 2024. The title of his dissertation is “Emerging forms of collaborative mineral governance – Analyzing preconditions for community benefit argeements in Finland”.
In his dissertation, Juha Kotilainen examines the possibilities and conditions of Community Benefit Agreements in Finnish mineral management.
“A Community Benefit Agreement is a locally negotiated arrangement designed to increase the local benefits of mining and mitigate its negative impacts through intensive collaboration and shared commitments.”
Community Benefit Ageements have not been tried in Finland before. However, interest in them has grown.
The needs in the green transition challenges the management of minerals at the local level, where the impacts of mining become tangible. For example, the recent regulation on critical raw materials aims to strengthen the European Union’s self-sufficiency in minerals. This will increase the pressure for new mines in Finland too.
At the same time, criticism towards the mining sector is growing. Local communities are interested in how the natural resources in their immediate environment are exploited and how the benefits and impacts are divided. Intersecting needs call for new tools at the local level to better reconcile different interests.
Better understanding and collaboration through a Community Benefit Agreement
The study shows that a Community Benefit Agreement enables collaboration in areas such as economic activities, reducing negative environmental impacts and building trust between local actors.
“In the Sodankylä case study, the municipality, mining companies and local stakeholders identified concrete measures in the Community Benefit Agreement that served individual and shared needs. Such a measure was, for example, collaborative water impact monitoring.”
Collaborative water impact monitoring can help build a better understanding of the overall impact of mines on their environment. The idea that emerged during the dissertation research was piloted in 2023 in Sodankylä and has been included in the municipality’s upcoming mining program.
In particular, Community Benefit Agreements can address challenges that are difficult to address through regulatory instruments. In Sodankylä, for example, there is a need for a forum that would bring together the major mining projects in the region and provide a shared platform for high quality interaction and a more holistic perspective on the cumulative impacts of mining activities.
On the other hand, the study suggests that a voluntarily negotiated Community Benefit Agreement does not seem to be suitable in Finland for serving one-sided economic interests similar to a mining tax. The voluntary introduction of Community Benefit Agreements may also be hampered by unclear incentives for mining companies and the lack of institutional support for such agreements at present.
The results are applicable to industrial projects in the green transition
Juha Kotilainen’s study analyses how the Community Benefit Agreement applies to local, Finnish and, to some extent, Nordic mining context. The dissertation provides a basis for the content and application of Community Benefit Agreements and a benchmark for future evaluation of the model. The study comprehensively describes the challenges, needs and realities of local mineral governance today.
“The results of this dissertation can be applied to the mining sector and other sectors where there is a similar need for locally negotiated preconditions. For example, in large industrial projects of the green transition, such as wind power and battery factories, division of benefits and impacts as well as interaction are key questions.”
Key research methods and data
In the first part of Juha Kotilainen’s dissertation, the idea of a Community Benefit Agreement was developed in action research taking place in Sodankylä in 2018 – 2021 together with representatives of the municipality and the local community. The second part of the study is based on a conceptual analysis, in which the concepts of collaborative governance and Community Benefit Agreement are discussed and adapted to the Finnish societal context.
The study involves interdisciplinary collaboration and combines several methods, such as analysis of interviews and observational data, collective reflection, function analysis and legal dogmatics. The majority of the dissertation research has been carried out as part of the CORE project (2017 – 2022) funded by the Strategic Research Council, which examined the potential of collaborative governance in Finnish environmental planning and decision-making on a broad scale.
The dissertation Emerging forms of collaborative mineral governance – Analysing preconditions for community benefit arrangements in Finland was examined at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Administration, Joensuu campus.
Akordi