Mining for Closure: Policies, practises and guidelines for sustainable mining and closure of mines

3.

mining stakeholders

in more than just the jobs supplied by a mining development, and may also seek to maintain their ways of life, local cultures, and so forth, as well as have a more diversified economic future. In the context of this document, disagreement or conflicts between mining organizations and authorities and communities can spiral out of control – at times such events take place on the national stage, at times they escalate to involve organizations such as transnational NGOs. Such events can cost the mining industry (and even host countries) dearly in terms of time, money and reputation (personal communication: Central European University, 2005, 24 July). Understanding of stakeholders is particularly im- portant in the context of this document as it is intended to help delineate sound policy goals sur- rounding mining – and the manner in which pol- icy goal might be achieved via legislative (or other institutional) frameworks. As indicated in the in- troduction section of this document, such frame- works can help clarify what various actors should be allowed to do or not to do, and how certain activ- ities should be conducted; they can introduce eco- nomic or utilitarian instruments seeking a steering effect towards a planned goal; or they can involve the use of informative instruments designed to en- able people to adopt alternative behaviour. Further, it was related that the influencing of prevailing social norms or imperatives might also contribute in reaching goals. However, in the context of this document, one of the most important steps may be to initiate the process of talking and listening to stakeholders – particularly communities – grant- ing them legitimacy and actively involving them in planning for closure (and development as ap- propriate). This said, such actions require properly trained and clearly assigned personnel resources in order to carry out such activities appropriately and to develop trusting relationships with all play- 60. CoDevelopment Canada has taken the position that com- munities rarely have the negotiating skill to effectively engage mining companies or other proponents. They support capacity building in communities to prepare them for negotiations. The reader is referred to the report by Gibson (2001) available at: www.iied.org/mmsd/mmsd_pdfs/033_gibson.pdf. 61. See also Antypas (2005).

This section of the report is intended to provide a brief outline of who mining stakeholders might be, and how differing types of stakeholders can have salience to a mining development or abandoned or orphaned site. Further, it aims to provide some introduction to why multi-stakeholder dialogue (consultation) is considered desirable and to high- light the importance of the capacities held by actor groups. It cannot be ignored that certain levels of capacity are required – both on the side of industry and on the side of other stakeholders such as af- fected communities – before communication and engagement can even take place (Gibson, 2001). 60 In order to build institutional frameworks promot- ing good mining practice it is important to rec- ognise that different groups of social actors each have their own special interaction with mining activities. Moreover, it is not uncommon that un- der certain circumstances stakeholders from “un- expected positions” can obtain, or seek to obtain, the means to dictate the course that an industrial development might take. This, particularly in situ- ations where they consider that the activities or the environmental or social legacies they generate af- fect their interests (or lives) negatively. 61 As such, it is important to obtain insights into how actors might obtain such leverage, how situations can be defused and turned to the better, and why commu- nication (or “engagement”) should be undertaken with such groups. In particular communities are a special form of stakeholder. Not least because of distributive justice issues where a considerable literature holds that adjacent communities may bear the greatest costs and receive the least benefits of mining projects (see for example Amundson (2005), Evans, Good- man & Lansbury (2000), Gaventa (1980), Klub- nock (1998), Low and Gleeson (1998), Scheyvens & Lagisa (1998) as well as the Oxfam material at http://www.oxfam.org.au/campaigns/mining/ publications/index.html as examples). Important- ly, and as intimated above, communities may not have the capacity to negotiate effectively at first and investment in capacity building to support com- munication may be a prerequisite for meaningful dialogue. Further, communities may be interested

31

MINING FOR CLOSURE