The Case for Integrative Sustainable Development Practice Based on the Minas Conga Gold-Mining Experience in Peru

Abstract

Mining projects are among the most impactful development projects, and the most controversial. The Conga Mining Project, proposed by the U.S. based Newmont Mining Corporation, in partnership with Minas Buenaventura, was slated for the Cajamarca region of Peru. Since the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was completed in 2010, controversy has escalated: public protests have precipitated a political crisis for President Humala, with several ministers resigning. The proposed project would have been made located approximately 73 km northeast of the city of Cajamarca, in the northern Peruvian Andes, in the district of Sorochuco, within an area defined by four major lakes, headwaters of rivers, and wetlands. Despite findings of "no significant impact" by the 2010 EIA, the project is currently postponed indefinitely due to the public backlash, international attention, and questions of integrity surrounding environmental and social concerns. We use the Conga Mining case to interrogate business-as-usual (BAU) design, assessment, planning, implementation and monitoring practices for extractive development in Peru, and suggest alternatives. Our analysis is based on an integrative framework that is empirically based (previously developed by the authors), one with a greater likelihood of improving sustainable development and the equity of positive and negative impacts among stakeholders. Suggestions are tailored to the setting: we pay special attention to the climate-change and socio-political contexts of Peru. We seek to exploit a shifting political landscape that is resisting BAU and countering the systematic disenfranchisement of vulnerable populations by extractive resource industries. These appear to be enabling conditions to promote the adoption of a capacity building, socio-technical enterprise approach to framing and designing sustainable development projects in Peru, with implications beyond.

Water and energy integration towards post-mine transition

“…For example, Minas Conga in Peru built water storage infrastructure to improve supply for communities in order to mitigate the removal of four lakes for mining activities. But the lack of stakeholder engagement and increased perception of water damage led to the suspension of mining operations (Downs et al, 2020). Likewise, the sudden closure of the Mhangura mine in Zimbabwe caused a significant water shortfall for communities, given their inability to pay for the maintenance of mining-related supply infrastructure (Toledano & Roorda, 2014).…”

Mineral Resource Governance in the 21st Century and a sustainable European Union

“…It can ruin a project or even translate into bloody conflict. Examples of such situations are the civil war that developed on Bougainville Island (Papua New Guinea) further to the development of the giant Panguna copper mine (May 1996 ; Hammond 2012 ; Zorn 2018 ), the failure of the large-scale Minas Conga gold project in Peru (Downs et al 2020 ). Not only large-scale industrial projects are exposed to conflicts.…”