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Arctic Yearbook 2014
Asymmetries and Adaptive Capacity
In economic theory on agency, emphasis is put on the distribution of knowledge between economic
agents including the eventual regulators of economic exchanges. While typified ideal economic
models at large build on the idea of distributed and available knowledge, more sociological based
approaches emphasize the unequal – or asymmetrical – distribution of knowledge making providing
the involved economic and regulatory agents with very different capacities to negotiate and
intervene.
Typically, producers have a much larger knowledge of the technologies and market conditions of
relevance for the products produced. In contrast, the knowledge of environmental conditions
resides with regulatory authorities and not least local people. Experiences concerning social
structures also reside within the local communities. Besides the uneven distribution of knowledge
and experiences a big challenge is whether these different forms of knowledge are at all made
relevant and useful for e.g. negotiations of what could be called the ‘social license to operate’ when it
comes to large- scale projects with potential large social and environmental impacts.
This also emphasizes the importance of the interplay between the periphery and political and
economic centres that may create new challenges for the local population that they may have limited
capacity to handle (Keskiltalo et al. 2011; Keskitalo & Kulyasova 2009). Not only is the local
knowledge of importance, but the ability of the local population to organize and respond to policies
and knowledge derived from the outside, be it the central government or impacts from large-scale
projects and economic globalization. The local community draws on its experience, sometimes
defined as ‘social capital’, and its ability to form collective action and respond to the different
adaptation arenas at play (Hovelsrud & Smith 2010).
When it comes to mining activities and the political and regulatory actions needed, such experience
is lacking in Greenland. This requires the administration to build rather independent competence
units dependent on knowledge and principles brought in from the outside, but lacking the local
competences for building a countering perspective. This asymmetric knowledge originates from the
limited capacity of the administration when it comes to understanding the detailed technical and
market-based conditions for mining. This is contrasted by the involved companies that typically
operate globally and have a lot of established knowledge and skills and also have access to
international networks of knowledge institutions, consultants, etc.
The argument from the Greenland central administration has generally been that it was possible to
include and use expertise from international legal advisors and consultant companies who were
working with similar problems on a global scale. This is a necessary and fundamentally sound
strategy as international experience and references are crucial for regulators in this field. It does not
however remove the need for basic competence in asking the right questions and being able to
assess the advice and solutions proposed. This to avoid the government receiving the same advice
from the same experts that provide advice to the mining industry. The expert strategy also does not
secure the societal capacity for handling the meeting and exchange of different forms of knowledge
Mineral Exploitation & Development in Greenland