Mining conflicts in the European Union: environmental and political perspectives

Abstract

Comprehensive knowledge on the issues contributing to mining conflicts is crucial in balancing between the exploitation of mineral deposits and local claims. We explore recent mining conflicts in the European Union using information derived from the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice to improve the understanding of the potential impacts of the intensification of mining activities by the new minerals policies. The variety of causes of conflict is wide and ranges from environmental impacts to socio-economic and health concerns of the populations residing in the vicinity of the mines. While mining conflicts have arisen during all the phases of the life cycle of a mine, new mining projects have been well presented amongst the conflicts. Policy makers should increasingly pay attention to the multiple impacts that mining has had on the environment and socially, in order to be able to put the plans for increasing minerals extraction in Europe into practice.

Bauxite Mining Conflicts in Guinea: Causes Identification, Analysis, and Countermeasures

“…Therefore, the ability of the mining company to contribute to the sustainable development of communities mainly depends on the system of the compensation and its management [64]. Because, the experiences have always shown that monetary compensation has had its boundaries and maintained latent conflicts that, in the end, often violence resurged [12,46,63].…”

“…Nevertheless, mineral resource developments also induce many environmental, political, and social problems that can only be prevented through cooperation and commitment to sustainable practices [1,[4][5][6][7]. Most researchers also have argued that the main upstream of these mining conflicts between communities and companies on contextual and local scale lie in various aspects, ranging from the governance policy of mining resources related to the mining policy and income distribution [6,[8][9][10][11]; environmental damage of mining activities to communities such as disruption of cultivable land and water pollution, deforestation, etc., considered for a long time as conflict triggering events between foreign companies and local communities [12][13][14][15]; and the social framework which concerns the failure to respect the local content, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) towards local communities, and concerns about the scarcity of traditional means of subsistence [16][17][18].…”

The Role of Mineral Raw Materials Education in a Social License to Operate—A Case of Poland

“…The lack of social acceptance for mining activities unquestionably affects the possibility of satisfying the demand of a country's economy for mineral raw materials from primary domestic sources (mineral deposits). Social conflicts are described both in Poland and other EU countries [25,26]. In 2021, gaining public acceptance and meeting local community and stakeholder expectations was rated as the fourth largest risk to the mining industry [27].…”

The Energy Landscape versus the Farming Landscape: The Immortal Era of Coal?

“…Perhaps no single industry has precipitated more disputes over land use than mining [17,18]. Mining activity changes entire landscapes [19,20], produces temporary land use (which usually transforms farming to mining land use), and finally creates post-mining landscapes [21]. Opencast coal mining, compared with underground coal mining, has a greater scale and degree of landscape degradation [18].…”

“…In addition, large-scale opencast mining triggers conflicts because of enforced displacement, land dispossession and patrimony deprivation [35], food insecurity [6], loss of (current) livelihood, and higher costs of living [18]. Most of all, however, opencast lignite mining is in contradiction to the existing use of natural resources and land ownership [20].…”