My Interest in Business Ethics

Region
Western ; Pacific

Sector
Academic - Faculty/Staff ; Private Sector - Corporation ; Voluntary Sector / NGO

Areas of Interest
Accountability - Certification ; Accountability - Reporting ; Climate Change ; Codes of Conduct ; Corporate Citizenship ; Corporate Governance ; Corporate Governance - Self-Regulation ; Corporate Governance - Transparency ; Corporate Social Responsibility ; Corruption ; Development ; Economic ; Economic - Environmental ; Education ; Environment & Business ; Globalization ; Human Rights ; Indigenous People ; Leadership ; Poverty ; Public Policy - Regulation ; Resource Extraction ; SRI/Responsible Investment ; Sustainability ; Theory ; Theory - Shareholder ; Theory - Stakeholder


Me in Brief

Jim Cooney is Adjunct Professor, Responsible Minerals Sector Initiative, Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University; and Adjunct Professor, Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering, University of British Columbia.

He retired as Vice President, International Government Affairs for Placer Dome Inc. on May 1, 2006, following that Company's acquisition by Barrick Gold. He held positions at Placer Dome from 1982 to 2006 in the areas of social and political risk management, government relations, sustainable development and strategic planning. With Placer Dome he was involved in exploration and mining projects in many countries in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia and Central Asia. He has lived and worked for extended periods in North Africa and South and East Asia. He is a past Director of the North South Institute, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Pacific Basin Economic Council.

Representing Placer Dome as a founding member of the United Nations Global Compact with Business, he worked with U.N. agencies and civil society organizations in a project on conflict-sensitive business practices. He was actively engaged in the World Bank's Extractive Industries Review from 2002 to 2004, during which he served in his personal capacity on the World Bank's External Advisory Panel for the internal evaluation of its oil, gas and mining projects. From 2004 to 2006, he was advisor on the development of IFC's Performance Standards on Social and Environmental Sustainability. He has been an interlocutor with the Special Representative of the U.N Secretary General on business and human rights. He has recently served on the Advisory Committee appointed by Foreign Affairs Canada on Corporate Social Responsibility in the Canadian Extractive Sector in Developing Countries, and on the Advisory Panel appointed by Natural Resources Canada on the Canadian government's sustainable development strategy for the Canadian Oil, Gas, Mining and Forestry sectors.

He is also an advisor to Natural Resources Canada in its role as Secretariat to the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development, in which capacity he has participated in the Forum meetings at the United Nations in Geneva as a member of the Canadian government delegation. He holds a BA in philosophy and political science from Georgetown University, an MA in East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto, and an M. T. S. from the Vancouver School of Theology, for which he wrote a thesis on Christian Ethics and Corporations. He is a frequent writer and speaker on the subjects of mining and sustainability, corporate ethics, and social and political risk management.