Mining in Africa: Are Local Communities Better Off?

Abstract

This work is a product of the staff of The World Bank with external contributions. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this work do not necessarily reflect the views of The World Bank, its Board of Executive Directors, or the governments they represent, or the Agence Française de Développement. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply any judgment on the part of The World Bank concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. Nothing herein shall constitute or be considered to be a limitation upon or waiver of the privileges and immunities of The World Bank, all of which are specifically reserved.

Mining and Local Economies: Dilemma between Environmental Protection and Job Opportunities

“…Chuhan-Pole at al. [11], in a recent literature review, identified three main channels through which the abundance of mineral resources affects local areas. First, the market mechanism refers to the impact on demand for jobs or other local inputs and their multiplier effect on nonmining sectors through backward and forward linkages or other spillovers.…”

“…Empirical research has made greater progress in the study of the three channels, but there is still less of an advance in our understanding of how the environmental and channels interact with each other. Indeed, many studies have investigated a large spectrum of the local socioeconomic impact of the mining sector: local economic growth, agglomeration economies, demand shock, and multiplier effects on other sectors [11,[33][34][35][36], local output and employment composition ( [11,37]), local corruption and violence ( [38][39][40][41]), living standards, poverty, and inequality, [11,35,[42][43][44], and local public spending and services [45]. At the same time, a literature stream on the impact of mining on the local environment is emerging.…”

“…First, we applied the tools of optimization economic modeling to understand how environmental factors influence the development paths of mining and other environmentally dependent activities, and their resulting local-welfare outcomes. The bulk of science research on mining consists of empirical-or conceptual-framework [10,11] analysis. This is sensible, as most mining communities experience a complex set of interactions between a number of private and public stakeholders (see, for instance, [12]) that do not adapt very well to model simplification.…”

Fool’s Gold: Understanding Social, Economic and Environmental Impacts from Gold Mining in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam

“…Research on mining and development has typically focused on three areas: the impact of mining on governance, national economics and growth (e.g., [3,[6][7][8]); the relationship between mining and community-level social, economic and environmental change (e.g., [9][10][11]); and the development of socioeconomic indicators measuring mining impacts (e.g., [12][13][14]). However, over the past two decades or so, there has been an increasing focus amongst mining companies and governments concerning the notion of a "social licence to operate" (SLO) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in response to impacts on local communities in developing nations.…”

“…While early research in mining and development, particularly on CSR, focused on African and Latin American communities (e.g., [8,17,18]), over the past several decades the approach has also become increasingly common in South East Asia (e.g., [19,20]). While the discourse of CSR has become increasingly common within South East Asia, there has been relatively little research on the subject, particularly in Vietnam (e.g., [15,21,22]) despite the nation having a long history of resource extraction.…”