Assessing the effects of a Canadian-Mongolian capacity building program for health and environmental impact assessment in the mining sector

Mining, Colonial Legacies, and Neoliberalism: A Political Ecology of Health Knowledge Minerıa, legados coloniales y neoliberalismo: una ecologıa polıtica del conocimiento en salud

“…9 Mining-related HIAs also draw on existing scholarship on mining and health, including occupational epidemiology studies that dominate that literature but also more diverse evidence types covering ecosystem change and social determinants of health such as income inequality and social services. 3 Notwithstanding such holism, however, the use of HIA to address mining-induced harms in countries of the global South appears broadly consistent with mining-CSR's tendency to introduce a "stopping point" to critique and manage debate over mining's impacts. 50 HIA is typically focused at project or "local" scales, leaving global environmental change, neoliberal macroeconomic transformations, and other large-scale colonial legacies largely "off the table" as targets for change.…”

“…The 2015 Spring Institute was planned as an extension of this collaboration that would address policy and governance gaps with respect to Health Impact Assessment (HIA), a governance tool increasingly applied prior to new mining developments. 3 It responded to interest from Mongolian collaborators and addressed concerns over the neoliberal retreat of state control over the resource sector, in a context where the ongoing Canada-Mongolia partnership had managed some knowledge translation "wins" such as a legislated requirement to conduct HIA prior to new mines in Mongolia. 68 HIA draws on a balance of environmental health and social determinants of health scholarship.…”

“…between nation states" that may inhibit attempts to protect health, as in "investment agreements that benefit Canadian mining companies, in exchange for development aid." 3 The paper also discusses home-country (e.g. within-Canada) regulation of transnational mining companies and-citing radical Indigenous scholars-"certain structures" that maintain power imbalances involving mining-affected communities.…”

“…Despite the harmonious image suggested by such tweets, however, CCGHR members involved in organizing and running the Spring Institute would later report a variety of issues encountered in working with CIRDI, from seeing their Mongolian partners treated as employees, to CIRDI’s efforts to “claim” the initiative, as in a website statement that “CIRDI, in partnership with the CCGHR, delivered a pilot course in Mongolia in April/May 2015.” 78 And while CIRDI’s support was generally consistent with the Mongolia HIA program’s identity as capacity-building for governance in a mining “host country,” the eventual knowledge emerging from the Spring Institute displays marked dissonances with CIRDI’s (heterogeneous) extractive-led development model. In contrast with CIRDI’s attribution of blame for mining’s negative impacts to poor host-country governance, for example, a paper reporting on evaluation of the Spring Institute highlights “power imbalances … between nation states” that may inhibit attempts to protect health, as in “investment agreements that benefit Canadian mining companies, in exchange for development aid.” 3 The paper also discusses home-country (e.g. within-Canada) regulation of transnational mining companies and—citing radical Indigenous scholars—“certain structures” that maintain power imbalances involving mining-affected communities.…”

“…1 , 2 While occupational studies in global North a workplaces are plentiful, gaps include a relative neglect of nonoccupational communities affected by extraction; a tendency to dwell on direct toxic exposures and ignore social determinants and mental health pathways; still-preliminary attention to complex social-ecological system dynamics and cumulative impacts of overlapping land uses; and avoidance of the upstream power relations that drive health determinants. 2 – 6 Explanations offered for such patterns include broader neglect of ecological and social context in environmental and occupational health, linked to the field’s historical compromise with industry as a source of worker bodies to study 2 (cf. Sellers 7 ).…”