The Routledge Handbook on Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement

Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement (MSE) is both a concept and a management approach, drawing on a combination of theoretical and applied knowledge areas (e.g., impact assessment, business and human rights, and stakeholder theory). MSE has become a key element of corporate sustainability risk-based due diligence as a process that responsible business enterprises are expected to apply to identify and manage harmful impacts on the environment and society.

Despite the obvious and growing relevance of meaningful stakeholder engagement, few publications have tried to synthesize the knowledge, academic literature, and practical experience within and around the concept and practices. This volume responds to that knowledge gap through the provision of comprehensive interdisciplinary perspectives. Embodying a rights-holder orientation, The Routledge Handbook on Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement emphasizes the importance of MSE for stakeholders who are or can be affected by activities driven by external actors, such as natural resource extraction or processing; infrastructure; development proposals, planning and implementation; and production for industry or consumption.

This handbook offers four thematic sections, all interdisciplinary in character, seeking to explore the multiple aspects of MSE. Moreover, a comprehensive Introduction explains key elements of the concept and causes for the current surge in expectations of MSE, including a rise in demands of risk-based due diligence. More than 40 international contributors combine theory and practice in chapters that discuss and elaborate the theory and practice of MSE. Uniquely, each section includes short practice notes based on experiences or dilemmas lived by practitioners or affected people, placing real-life situations into theoretical context. The concluding chapter draws up key insights from the chapters and practice notes, and casts a path for the future of MSE integrating values, norms and practice.

Cutting across multiple disciplines including stakeholder theory, natural resource management, impact assessment, project management, ESG, responsible business, and global value chains, The Routledge Handbook on Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement will be an essential resource for scholars, researchers, developers, investors, affected people, civil society organisations, students and others.

Karin Buhmann is Professor of Business & Human Rights at Copenhagen Business School (CBS); and Professor and Director of the Centre for Law, Sustainability & Justice at the University of Southern Denmark. Buhmann’s expertise covers business responsibilities for human rights, including risk-based (corporate sustainability) due diligence and its elements, in particular meaningful stakeholder engagement and what this entails from the perspective of rights-holders; ideals and practice of ’smart-mix regulation’; human rights and related social issues in regard to climate change and a fair and just transition; regulatory strategies to advance responsible business conduct (RBC), including and non-financial reporting as a potential driver of organizational change. Buhmann has published widely in international journals, edited volumes, and monographs. She leads collaborative and international research projects and networks on sustainability governance and meaningful stakeholder engagement, connecting scholars in the Global South and the High North (Arctic).

Alberto Fonseca is an Associate Professor at the Federal University of Ouro Preto, Brazil. He is a former president and scientific director of the Brazilian Association for Impact Assessment. He held positions in the private and public sectors working with EIA, licensing, and auditing in dozens of projects and industrial sites. His current consulting and research interests are centered on policy evaluation, EIA policy-making, sustainability assessment, spatial analysis, and territorial planning. Alberto is also an Associate Editor for the journal Environmental Impact Assessment Review.

Nathan Andrews is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at McMaster University. A key aspect of Dr. Andrews’ research focuses on the global political economy/ecology of natural resource extraction and development. His peer-reviewed publications on this topic have appeared in journals such as International Affairs, Resources Policy, World Development, among others. Dr. Andrews’ latest books include a monograph, Gold Mining and the Discourses of Corporate Social Responsibility in Ghana (Palgrave, 2019), a co-authored monograph, Oil and Development in Ghana: Beyond the Resource Curse (Routledge, 2021), and co-edited volumes, NaturalResource-Based Development in Africa: Panacea or Pandora’s Box? (University of Toronto Press, 2022) and Extractive Bargains: Natural Resources and the State-Society Nexus (Palgrave, 2023). Dr. Andrews serves as co-editor in chief of African Security.

Giuseppe Amatulli is a postdoctoral fellow in the Rebuilding First Nations Governance (RFNG) Research Project, whose main goal is to enhance the capacity building of those First Nations who want to transition from the Indian Act to self-governance. Giuseppe has been doing research with and for Doig River First Nation since 2019; his research methodology, anchored in a strong community-based approach, allows him to perform cutting-edge qualitative research (using various methods such as ethnography, participatory observation, interviews, and discourse analysis) at the intersection of socio-legal and environmental anthropology, intertwined with Human Rights Law, Indigenous Governance, and Public Policy. Giuseppe obtained his PhD in Anthropology from Durham University (2023).