Collaborative community development in mining regions: The Calama Plus and Creo Antofagasta programs in Chile

Abstract

The mining industry is widely criticized for its corporate community development strategies, which led to accusations of greenwash and low social legitimacy. This problem identified led to the following research question: What model of community relations allows companies to generate shared value, in a broad sense, and create long-term relationships with communities? In order to answer the question posed, this paper explores the innovative experiences of the Calama Plus and Creo Antofagasta programs in the Antofagasta region of Chile. Calama Plus is an ongoing public-private program (2012–2025) established to combat declining standards of living in the city. Creo Antofagasta is also an ongoing public-private program (2013–2035), which is designed to confront the challenges of rapid growth in the city. Based on these two case studies, their underlying model (i.e., the collaborative community development model) was systematized for this study. The main innovative aspects of the model are its focus on the long-term, its concentration on territory- oriented projects, and its multi-stakeholder governance structure. The latter characteristic implies a collaboration between several companies and even between competitors. Drawing on a collaborative governance framework, the aim of this paper is to extensively describe the companies’ perspective on the following: the innovative aspects of the model, the drivers required for companies to participate, how companies can specifically contribute to these programs, and its critical management issues. New drivers and critical management issues are identified and discussed in this research, which represent a contribution to the collaborative governance framework.Since the Calama Plus and Creo Antofagasta programs’ focus is long-term, ending in 2025 and 2035 respectively, their impact has not been evaluated. For this reason, we include a discussion on the cumulative impact assessment perspective needed for these collaborative community development programs, placing particular attention on the controversial relationship between mining and local development. This approach is based on the assessment of cross-sector partnership results, its impact on the balance of social, environmental and economic capitals, and on the creation of broadly shared value in terms of long-term socio-economic capability building. Finally, policy implications and the potential for applying this model to other contexts are also discussed.