Social Licensing and the Extractive Industry

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to make an approximation to the concept of social licensing; a figure that emerges from the multiple efforts of jurisprudence to agree on the economic interests of extractive companies and the collective fundamental rights of the inhabitants who reside in the jurisdiction of the municipality where a mining, oil or energy project is to be carried out.

The regulation of extractive projects has evolved towards the humanization of the normative content in order to harmonize the postulates of a market economy and the effective guarantee of the protected legal rights of the population. In this process and by mandate of jurisprudential pronouncements, a figure has been created that goes beyond the content of the special regulations and has been called: "Social license"; whose content has a relevant impact at the axiological and pragmatic level of law, since it is in itself to serve as a cornerstone in the new paradigm changes.

To understand this figure, the following methodological order will be addressed: i) initial approaches and constitutional development to the right of participation; ii) Social licensing as a tool for the effective application of the principles of coordination, concurrence and subsidiarity. iii) Reflections on popular consultations regarding ruling SU-095 of 2018. Finally, the bibliography that supports the statements in this article will be made available to the reader.