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

sites will also interact with a broad range of social actors. Thus, it is clear that some insight into which stakeholders are most important is required – as is a consistent framework within which to categorise them. This is held to be particularly true if this document is to address regional decision-mak- ers, policy makers, and leading industrial actors. Similarly, we must have some understanding of the manner in which such actors can affect miner- als related activities (or the making safe of mining legacies), how they can productively contribute to a improvement of the current situation, why they are motivated to be involved (and so forth). The groupings of stakeholders used here will be based around such the mining operations that they have a “stake” in and thus (in this part of the dis- cussion) the “operative organizations” that conduct the mining operations. As such, the prime audi- ence for this document will be classified as a stake- holder to the activities of such operative organiza- tions. As this discussion will outline, policy makers and regulators are dominant stakeholders but are not the only stakeholders of marked salience to an organization engaged in mining activities. Mitchell et al (1997), propose that classes of stake- holders can be identified by their possession of key attributes, or the nature of their key attributes. These attributes include: the power to influence an organization, the legitimacy of their relationship with the organization, or the urgency of the stakeholder’s claim on the firm. In simplistic terms, the most important stakehold- ers for an organization involved in carrying out some activity, are those who combine all three such attributes. Power is simplified to a definition following where it is held to be “a relationship among social actors in which one social actor, A, can get another social actor, B, to do something that B would not otherwise have done” (Pfeffer, 1981). Stakeholders with power in such relationships have access to coercive, utilitari- an (generally material rewards as goods or services, including money) or normative means to impose their own will in a relationship. It is important to recognise that there are some stakeholders with the power to influence whether they have legitimate claims or not. 1. 2. 3.

ers (as best as can be done). This is dynamic and an evolving area where trained people are in short supply. 62

3.1

who and what are mining stakeholders?

In order to support this discussion of stakeholders, a framework and approach developed by Mitchell, Agle and Wood (1997) will be utilised. 63

If we commence with a broad definition of stake- holder as proposed by Freeman (1984) as:

any group or individual who can affect or is af- fected by the achievement of an organization’s objectives, then it is clear that there are many actors and indi- vidual for whom the conduct of mining operations affects in relevant ways, or can affect the conduct of minerals related activities. Further examination reveals that such interactions are relevant within all levels of the sustainable development debate – en- vironmental, social, developmental and economic. 62. In this vein, Alexios Antypas of the Department of Environ- mental Sciences and Policy at the Central European University (personal communication: Central European University, 2005, 24 July) indicates that negotiated agreements with communities offer both sides an opportunity to develop a win-win situation, or at least to minimize the harm and maximize the benefits to com- munities by focusing proactively on community rights and inter- ests. He indicates that many communities in the world have actu- ally been made poorer by mining projects rather than enriched, and that communities can bear by far the greatest environmental and social burden that such projects entail – both during opera- tion and in the post-closure phase. Further, he notes that now that mining communities are increasingly linked to international NGO networks that have the capacity to disrupt projects, the min- ing industry has practical as well as moral interests in making sure that communities are brought into the development process and benefit from their projects. He also indicates that negotiated agreements between communities and mining companies can take many forms and include any number of issues important to both parties. They can be reached at any time, but the best time to make this is while the project is still being developed so that communities can help shape the project so it imposes the least burdens and brings the greatest benefits to them. 63. Mitchell, R.K., Agle B. A. and Wood D.J., Toward a Theory of Stakeholder Identification and Salience: Defining the Principle of Who and What Really Counts. The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Oct., 1997), 853-886 Moreover, it can be seen that the presence of min- ing legacies in the form of abandoned or orphaned

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MINING FOR CLOSURE