Imaginaries of a sustainable Greenland: A study of situated and political CSR among Greenlandic organizations.

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Research project 2014-2018. In collaboration with the Copenhagen Business School Centre for CSR, and co-authored with associate professor Steen Vallentin, CBS.

 

Background

Over the last 10 years or so, the Arctic has become a hotbed of geopolitical interests and conflict. The melting of the Polar ice cap caused by warmer temperatures has meant easier access to extractive resources, as reflected in prospects of offshore drilling in Arctic waters or mining of rare earth minerals in previously inaccessible geological sites, while also opening up opportunities for mass tourism and seasonal sailing (commercial shipping) through the Northwest and Northeast Passages. Sustainability is one of the main concerns raised over such developments. The use of vivid images of melting glaciers and polar bears adrift on blocks of ice is, however, symptomatic of a outside-in view of sustainability in this region as an environmental concern that grants less attention to the locally situated, human and social side of sustainable development and responsibility.

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Greenland is an Arctic country currently portrayed as a place that “is moving from the periphery into the center of global attention” (Rosing, 2012, p. 8). This shift is caused by the described climatic and subsequent geopolitical changes, with Greenland often serving “as a ‘climate witness’ or showcase for climate change” (Ren, 2016, p. 444) and perceived as a place of nature (Ren, 2016). The country is also a modern and postcolonial society addressing sustainability problems from and for its own perspective and needs. These perspectives involve more than the Inuit hunters and fishermen so often depicted in external descriptions as victims of climate change – they involve the economy, culture, welfare structure and natural resources in which local actors create and imagine sustainable development.

 

Research aims

In our research project we turn to the organizations of Greenlandic society and explore how they relate to sustainability as a locally situated practice in a globally changing world. Organizations and companies have received limited attention in studies of Greenland, which are broadly speaking driven by either natural scientists or anthropological/cultural scholars. Yet in the realm of sustainability practice, organizations are pivotal actors actively engaging with their surrounding environment. In Greenland, institutionalization and governance of sustainable development is very much in the making and surrounded by considerable uncertainty as to future trajectories, developments, outcomes, impacts, role definitions. In this uncertainty, the last few years have seen an emerging agenda for social and environmental responsibility under the general headline of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) in which companies, non-profits and state-driven organizations collaborate to develop solutions to Greenland’s specific social and environmental problems.

 

Based on interviews with company leaders and other key opinion leaders in Greenland, as well as newspaper articles and scientific reports from 2007-2017, we investigate how CSR is becoming a tool for organizational engagement in social change.

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We use CSR as a prism to explore the social and economic as well as the environmental aspects of sustainability in Greenland – thus venturing beyond the narrative of Arctic sustainability as a solely environmental matter. We approach CSR as socially situated practice as well as a temporal construct with which actors think about the future for Greenland.