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This book chapter examines the social and environmental costs resulting from natural gas exploitation in the Peruvian Amazon basin with a special focus on the case of the ‘Camisea Natural Gas Project Block 88’ in the Peruvian Amazon basin.

This research drew from a comprehensive source of secondary literature data on the Camisea Project Block 88, complemented by an ethnographic research approach based upon observation, conversation and semi-structure interviews with native community members of the indigenous communities of Shivancoreni and Shimmaa in Cusco-Peru.

The study’s findings illustrate that it is evident that the threats from hydrocarbon development endangers the habitat of indigenous communities and accelerate the destruction of the Peruvian Amazon basin. A business commitment towards a sustainable investment approach coupled with reinforcing and adopting appropriate laws and regulations concerning the environmental protection of the Amazon basin are required in order to preserve one of the most diverse and threatened biological place in the world – the Amazon.

The Amazon is the largest natural biodiversity reserve in South America. Yet, it has experienced habitat degradation and displacement of various indigenous tribes of Amazon. As a result, the legacy of indigenous knowledge and the sustenance of indigenous peoples’ habitat are at stake.

This study provides historical context for the hydrocarbon sector of Peru, particularly in the Peruvian Amazon basin. It also provides insights into the Peruvian hydrocarbon law and regulations and the implications, roles and responsibilities of multinational natural gas companies and their environmental impacts of their business operations in Peru.

This paper aims to summarise the scope, methodology and main findings of a doctoral thesis about business transformation in Latin America taken from a project management (PM) and communities of practice (CoP) perspective.

The project adopted a case study approach in which the candidate was a consultant, embedded as a member of the business transformation entity. Data were gathered using public and private documentation, unstructured interview data, and observation and were validated through review of evidence with participants.

The concept of the strategic CoP is supported as a useful means to help facilitate trust and commitment as well as knowledge sharing and how this facilitated greater understanding trust and commitment building mechanisms through effective leadership. The trigger to allow willingness of former rivals to cooperate through this entity is acknowledged as being a set of external pressures in the Latin American region coupled with deregulation at the regional level. This provided the necessary stimulus and the mechanism for effective business transformation is the strategic CoP.

This model could be more broadly useful and suggest that it could be adapted to other geopolitical contexts. The research project also has implications as opening up a program and PM perspective on business transformation.

There has been little focus on business transformation from a joint PM and CoP perspective so this thesis provides a useful vanguard research project.

This chapter introduces this book’s topics, purpose, and key themes. It summarizes the main objective of this book which is to examine the trends in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability in developing and emerging economies.

This chapter reviews the extant literature and chapters and offers conceptual development.

Discussion on CSR and sustainability concepts is growing in developing countries, and many stakeholders including businesses, governments, and universities are working toward achieving sustainability. In addition, it is well documented that multinational enterprises (MNEs) operating in developing economies contribute significantly to job creation, growth and development, and poverty alleviation. However, when compared to developed countries there is a general perception that companies, in particular MNEs, do not pay much attention to CSR and sustainability issues. The lack of sophisticated institutional developments and capability in many developing economies compound the situation. Thus, business CSR and sustainability practices play a major role in improving stakeholder relationships.

This chapter suggests that in order for developing and emerging economies to move forward and achieve the gains from globalization; businesses, governments, and other stakeholders should work together to benefit from the various initiatives on CSR and sustainability jointly put together for the betterment of the citizens and a prosperous economy.

This chapter contributes to the debate on trends in CSR and sustainability in developing/emerging economies by critically examines what the notions really mean in developing and emerging economies. It emphasizes that CSR and sustainability mean contributing to the well-being of citizens and respond positively to various stakeholder demands by improving the host countries and communities through participation in economic progress, social well-being, improvement in environmental practices, and involvement in citizens’ empowerment and institutional building.

The Latin American Energy Organisation is an international agency aimed at promoting the development, conservation and rational use of energy resources in Latin America and the Caribbean. In 1997, the University of Calgary began offering a Masters of Science degree programme in energy and the environment in Quito, Ecuador, to train professionals to assist OLADE with fulfilling its mandate. The University Library believes that distance students should have the same access to electronic databases, research materials and document delivery as on‐campus students. Technology and the Internet have enabled these services for off‐continent distant learners. Through direct Web connections and instruction using innovative CD‐ROM presentations, access to full‐text and index databases, e‐mail, research resources and document delivery requests were effectively provided to the students.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether Shell Nigeria’s Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU) promotes corporate-community accountability as a basis for fostering sustainable community development in the Niger Delta.

Shell Nigeria’s GMoU stand-alone reports were analysed through the lenses of accountability and transparency theoretical frameworks to explore the extent to which GMoU, as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative, is dialogically embedded and practised. Meaning-oriented content analysis was deductively used to isolate pertinent themes and generate findings from the background theoretical literature.

The authors find that Shell discursively appropriates the meaning of accountability and transparency in a manner that allows it to maintain its social legitimacy and the asymmetric power relations between itself and host communities whilst restricting communities’ agency to hold it accountable. Shell does this by interpreting the notion of participation restrictively, selectively deploying the concept of transparency and accountability and subtly exerting excessive control over the GMoU. Thus, the GMoU’s potential to contribute to sustainable community development and positive corporate-community relation is unlikely tenable.

Accountability and transparency are core and critical to corporate-community relations and for achieving community development CSR objectives, but are often taken for granted or ignored in the CSR literature on the Niger Delta of Nigeria. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by using accountability and transparency lenses to unpick GMoU model and contribute to studies on CSR practices by oil multinational corporations (MNCs) in developing countries. Indeed, the use of these lenses to explore CSR process offers new insights as to why CSR practices have failed to contribute to sustainable community development despite increased community spending by oil MNCs.

The paper seeks to offer an evaluation of the energy sector's contribution to sustainable development in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) in the last 30 years.

Sustainable development indicators proposed by Latin American Energy Organization/Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean/German Technical Cooperation are used, in conjunction with indicators proposed by IAEA, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, IEA, EUROSTAT and the EEA. They are based on objectives, priorities and available information and their values are analyzed in a period of significant changes in LAC energy policies.

State and evolution of sustainability in LAC are presented at a country and sub‐regional levels. Some important remarks are drawn about energy policies' contribution to sustainable development and some key areas to improve are identified.

This research intends to highlight implicit deficiencies in energy policies that could suggest new priority guidelines for future policy decisions, in order to improve their contribution to sustainable development.

The purpose of this short paper is to comment on the powerful contribution researchers have made to the emerging field of Indigenous O&M scholarship.

The paper reviews the work in the field of Indigenous O&M.

Indigenous O&M research, first, has been driven by the effects of colonization and the attempts to reclaim traditional ways of researching, organizing and managing, second; has sought asylum in established critical and alternative fields of scholarship to create research legitimacy in the mainstream, and; third, produced novel methodological processes.

Several observations of the field will be made and some considerations are put forward to promote research within the tight – almost impenetrable – boundaries of the academy and its institutions.