 Renewable energy, social disruption and formalising the social licence to operate in South AfricaBernard Mabele, Lochner Marais, Nazmiye Balta‐Ozkan, Pegah Mirzania, Babalwa Mbobo, Phia van der Watt, Jan Cloete and Anita Venter Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 2024, vol. 31, issue 1, 331-343 Abstract: A social licence to operate and corporate social responsibility are often applied voluntarily to ensure a positive relationship between businesses and communities. But South Africa's Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme makes investment in local socio‐economic development a contractual obligation. To assess the implications of this legalised approach to CSR and the social licence to operate, between September 2019 and January 2020 we conducted seven focus group discussions and 24 key informant interviews in two towns in South Africa's Northern Cape province. The data were analysed thematically and triangulated with data on crime, municipal finance and house prices. Our concerns about the legalised approach are that it does not require local consent; it reduces local development to a needs analysis; it does not require local collaborative planning, despite adverse consequences such as social disruption; it bypasses local organisation and accountability; it does not provide cheaper local electricity; and it offers no guidelines for decommissioning. Date: 2024 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:corsem:v:31:y:2024:i:1:p:331-343 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management from John Wiley & Sons |
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