Social innovation, ecological crises and creating mining host community resilience in Southern Africa

Mining firms in emerging markets succeed when they also overcome several urgent global issues. For example, they confront environmental impacts, social inequalities and economic uncertainties in regions with limited infrastructure. Mining firms grapple with addressing two urgent ecological crises, climate change and biodiversity loss, in the current Anthropocene era. This is especially so because of the devastating environmental impacts of mining processes. In developed countries, managing disasters resulting from global warming, including heat waves, droughts, floods, and pandemics is largely the responsibility of governments. However, in emerging markets the mining industry plays a more critical role in addressing these challenges, such that it has become an expectation even from the governments, communities and other stakeholders. It has, therefore, become crucial for the industry to actively build resilient host communities that are better prepared to handle the dual crises. Despite social innovation bearing promise as a mechanism for creating community resilience, few studies have analysed how ecological challenges and monitoring of community needs shape social innovation processes. We critically examine how mining companies design interventions to build community resilience and encourage social learning. Our analysis synthesises findings from both resilience studies and social innovation research. We argue that local resources and capabilities, governance and networks, and process dynamism are crucial elements in social innovation processes. They are important in creating resilient communities to deal with ecological shocks and stresses. We further examine how monitoring, evaluation and social learning, together with community attributes, shape social innovation processes and strengthen resilience. We conducted a systematic literature review to develop a framework of social innovation for building resilient mining communities in emerging markets. We end by proposing opportunities for future research to refine our knowledge further and strengthen the ability of mining operations to build resilient communities.