Greenlandic regulations require oil companies to conduct a Social Impact Assessment before undertaking exploration drilling. A key part of this assessment is a Social Baseline Study (SBS), which provides descriptions of existing social conditions and development trends and goals in communities that could potentially be affected by exploration drilling in the area. Four oil and gas companies operating in Baffin Bay, offshore of Northwest Greenland, Cairn Energy plc, Cono-coPhillips, Maersk Oil Kalaallit Nunaat A/S and Shell Greenland A/S, will potentially all be active in the same sphere of operations in the coming years and therefore agreed to undertake a collaborative SBS in 2013. The overall objective of the SBS was to build a strong base for preventing, mitigating and managing potential negative impact and enhancing the potential positive impact of the activities to be undertaken in the area. The main aim of the collaborative approach to the SBS was to achieve coherent and coordinated community engagement and to limit the risk of stakeholder fatigue. An inter-company collaboration, such as the one described, is the first of its type in Greenland. This article presents the process of conducting the SBS and reflects on the drivers behind the new collaborative approach from a 'social license to operate' perspective. It concludes that three triggers can be used to explain the motivation behind the collaborative company approach. It further concludes that collaborative approaches to local engagement can be the key to success in remote and sparsely populated areas, such as in the case presented.

BCS Director of Education, Julia Adamson CITP MBCS, opens the Lifelong Learning issue of ITNOW with a reflection on 2020; how the unusual circumstances have highlighted the importance of embracing change and BCS’ commitment to support and lead the way.

The oil and gas industry operates in some of the most challenging places in the world and faces complex human rights related issues both at home and abroad. These issues include dealing with local conflict, corruption, indigenous rights, labour rights and managing relationships with governments and a range of external stakeholders.In 2006, the International Petroleum Industry Conservation Association (IPIECA) produced the Human Rights Training Toolkit, a collaborative effort by members of the Social Responsibility Working Group in sharing expertise and practices to develop an industry-wide training template. It was created to promote human rights awareness within the petroleum industry, focusing on awareness and education, identification of risks and opportunities, and practical actions related to implementation. The training template is comprised of a presentation, workbook, trainer's manual and a resource guide. This paper will describe the content of the training materials and initial learnings gained by individual companies who have begun integrating the Toolkit into their human rights awareness activities.The Toolkit draws on existing public materials where possible and includes an overview of core international human rights treaties and instruments, a discussion on the role of business, as well as an overview of the "stakeholder" concept. The Toolkit is accessible to the public free of charge at the IPIECA website www.ipieca.org in both English and French. The Toolkit will also be available in Spanish from 2008.The target audience for the Toolkit is company business managers that have requested assistance to better understand human rights issues in their operations, raise awareness in their workforce, anticipate human rights issues and manage them effectively.A preliminary survey of companies using the Toolkit has generated positive feedback. The main strength of the Toolkit is its versatility and companies' ability to customize the Toolkit template to include their own human rights policies and regional or operation-specific materials. The Toolkit is being used by many companies to complement human rights training sessions, and the global audience ranges from security personnel, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) managers and newly-appointed Directors to human resources staff and employees in high-risk countries.

The Saskatoon afforestation areas feature 17 acres of wetlands amid the naturalized and native woodlands and provide important habitat for a number of species.

Laurence Bedford Potter: Pioneer Ornithologist of Southwestern Saskatchewan