How to Account for Public Opinion in the Commercial Exploitation of the Arctic

Abstract

The article deals with the issues of taking into account the opinion of the local population when justifying and implementing projects for industrial development of the Arctic. The mechanism and procedures for assessing and taking into account the opinion of the population at all stages of the life cycle of a project for exploration and extraction of minerals from its initiation to completion are proposed by informing the population about the project of planned activities, holding public hearings, ethnological expertise, as well as ethnological audit and ethnosocial monitoring. The model of interaction of stakeholders (mining companies, local authorities and indigenous peoples of the North) is based on the concept of sharing joint benefits from the industrial development of the Arctic, which is based on the cooperation of the parties and corporate social responsibility of business in the area of planned activities. It is proposed to protect the interests of indigenous peoples by signing agreements on the socio-economic development of the territory, creating compensation funds and implementing compensation projects of socio-economic, environmental orientation and projects to preserve the culture and ethnos of indigenous peoples, which are formed on the basis of population surveys. The algorithm of multi-criteria evaluation, ranking and selection of compensation projects, taking into account priorities for various groups of the population, as well as economic regulators for supporting compensation projects, including direct action tools (compensation fund, etc.), and indirect action tools (tax incentives, subsidies to support traditional crafts, etc.) is proposed.