Different Drivers Behind Corporate Environmental Policies: The Case of the Swedish and Chilean Copper Industry

This chapter represents a comparative study of the emergence of environmental policies in the Chilean and Swedish copper industry. The chapter identifies a number of key factors which helps to explain dissimilar characteristics of actions to protect the environment in both countries as well as the timing for these actions. One key difference identified—besides obvious factors such as income levels, political systems and dependency of foreign direct investments—concerns the very drivers behind the greening of the industry. While governmental regulation developing from the 1960s represented the primary driver behind the green transformation of Swedish copper industry, it took until the 1990s before the Chilean copper companies started to adopt their first environmental policies ahead of regulation, and called for the Chilean government to act. We suggest that this happened as globalisation took hold from the early 1990s, and foreign companies operating in Chile demanded environmental standards that harmonised with those in the Western world, at the same time as the Chilean industry needed to enhance an environmental reputation in the global market. Thus, while the Swedish industry was much driven by national regulation to invest in cleaner technologies, it was the pressure from globalisation that drove the Chilean industry to clean up their acts.