210
A. Mallqui et al.
With its abundance and variety of minerals, Latin America attracts much of the
investment and exploitation worldwide. According to data from Mineral Commodity
Summaries (2019), Chile is the main copper producer, Brazil the second iron, Mexico
the largest producer of silver and Peru is among the first of silver, copper, gold, and
lead. Also, the region remains one of the main mining reserves in the world, with
outstanding participation in metallic minerals such as lithium (71.8%), known as
“white gold”, copper (36.5%), nickel (20.6%) and silver (34.8%). Only Brazil owns
about 80% of the world’s reserves of niobium, a mineral that is used to make the steel
stronger and lighter, while Chile and Argentina are two of the main global lithium
deposits.
Unquestionably, as commented by Escanciano et al. (2010), mining activities
have important economic, environmental, labor and social repercussions at local and
global levels and in the case of Latin America that has emblematic cases as Tía
María in Arequipa, Peru, where protests by farmers in the area ended with violent
clashes that left four dead and 300 injured in 2015. Another unfortunate case was
the worst tailings catastrophe recorded to date. The inactive tailings deposit of the
mining company Córrego do Feijão in Brumadinho, Brazil, collapsed releasing tons
of waste that caused 257 deaths and irreparable environmental damage in 2019,
just four years after a similar disaster occurred in the neighbor locality of Mariana
in Minas Gerais, Brazil. In Mexico, it must be added to the presence of organized
crime in the industry, especially in northern states, where there are alliances between
mining and drug trafficking groups.
Therefore, exploring the current state of implementation of corporate sustainability activities (CSA) in the Latin American mining industry is an activity that must
have constant academic attention. This type of study allows us to carry out an X-ray
of how the Latin American mining sector is currently regarding corporate sustainability activities and how the challenges related to the adoption of sustainability
management have evolved.
That said, the objective of this paper is identified and examine current dominant
practices in the mining industry in Latin America. To achieve this objective, a multidimensional framework is applied to analyze and classify the implementation of
these activities in three different angles: the types of corporate sustainability activities, the issues addressed, and the step of the value chain concerned. The research
adopts a content analysis of sustainability reports from the main mining companies
in Latin America. While one can argue that self-reported and most often voluntarily
disclosed corporate sustainability activities cannot be equated with actual corporate
sustainability activities, self-reported CSA can act as a proxy to determine corporate
priorities and attitudes (Ihlen and Roper 2014; Sharma and Henriques 2005). Finally,
it describes sustainability based on the projects that these companies are developing
to build a sustainable operations strategic vision. The contribution of this study
is to collect and identify the current situation of the implementation of Corporate
Sustainability Activities in the main mining companies in Latin America. The paper
is structured in five sections, in addition to this introduction. Section 1 corresponds
to the theoretical foundations and Sect. 2 covers the methodological procedures
A. Mallqui et al.
With its abundance and variety of minerals, Latin America attracts much of the
investment and exploitation worldwide. According to data from Mineral Commodity
Summaries (2019), Chile is the main copper producer, Brazil the second iron, Mexico
the largest producer of silver and Peru is among the first of silver, copper, gold, and
lead. Also, the region remains one of the main mining reserves in the world, with
outstanding participation in metallic minerals such as lithium (71.8%), known as
“white gold”, copper (36.5%), nickel (20.6%) and silver (34.8%). Only Brazil owns
about 80% of the world’s reserves of niobium, a mineral that is used to make the steel
stronger and lighter, while Chile and Argentina are two of the main global lithium
deposits.
Unquestionably, as commented by Escanciano et al. (2010), mining activities
have important economic, environmental, labor and social repercussions at local and
global levels and in the case of Latin America that has emblematic cases as Tía
María in Arequipa, Peru, where protests by farmers in the area ended with violent
clashes that left four dead and 300 injured in 2015. Another unfortunate case was
the worst tailings catastrophe recorded to date. The inactive tailings deposit of the
mining company Córrego do Feijão in Brumadinho, Brazil, collapsed releasing tons
of waste that caused 257 deaths and irreparable environmental damage in 2019,
just four years after a similar disaster occurred in the neighbor locality of Mariana
in Minas Gerais, Brazil. In Mexico, it must be added to the presence of organized
crime in the industry, especially in northern states, where there are alliances between
mining and drug trafficking groups.
Therefore, exploring the current state of implementation of corporate sustainability activities (CSA) in the Latin American mining industry is an activity that must
have constant academic attention. This type of study allows us to carry out an X-ray
of how the Latin American mining sector is currently regarding corporate sustainability activities and how the challenges related to the adoption of sustainability
management have evolved.
That said, the objective of this paper is identified and examine current dominant
practices in the mining industry in Latin America. To achieve this objective, a multidimensional framework is applied to analyze and classify the implementation of
these activities in three different angles: the types of corporate sustainability activities, the issues addressed, and the step of the value chain concerned. The research
adopts a content analysis of sustainability reports from the main mining companies
in Latin America. While one can argue that self-reported and most often voluntarily
disclosed corporate sustainability activities cannot be equated with actual corporate
sustainability activities, self-reported CSA can act as a proxy to determine corporate
priorities and attitudes (Ihlen and Roper 2014; Sharma and Henriques 2005). Finally,
it describes sustainability based on the projects that these companies are developing
to build a sustainable operations strategic vision. The contribution of this study
is to collect and identify the current situation of the implementation of Corporate
Sustainability Activities in the main mining companies in Latin America. The paper
is structured in five sections, in addition to this introduction. Section 1 corresponds
to the theoretical foundations and Sect. 2 covers the methodological procedures