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Across the Global South, corporations and governments are displacing Indigenous and Afro-descendant groups in the name of development and economic advancement. International norms guarantee these communities the right to consultation over extractive projects that impact their traditional territories. Ethnic rights laws create spaces for communities to hold corporations accountable for their suffering; the same laws can also allow corporations to co-opt the process. Using a case study from Colombia, I argue that two Black communities filed a petition to seek reparations for a wide range of harms caused by mining yet found themselves on trial over whether they were really a community at all. Corporate officials positioned themselves as the experts on community identity and history and used the communities' lack of collectivity to discredit the communities' ethnic rights claims. This article brings together anthropological literature on the social life of corporations and scholarly critiques of ethnic rights laws to illustrate that when communities engage ethnic rights laws, they also undergo new processes of community formation in their interactions with corporations, courts, and international institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While some governments use natural resources for immediate political gain, others create transparent institutions that promote sustainable development. What explains this variation? Using novel data for Latin America between 1990 and 2019, I show that executive incumbents are more likely to restrict their discretion over natural resource revenue when public approval is high and legislative opposition is strong. When rulers are safe in their seats, they can use public funds for long-run developmental strategies, rather than short-term political survival. When there is a strong legislative opposition, rulers can signal a desire to compromise by relinquishing control over resource revenue. These findings, illustrated by the case of Mexico, suggest that a combination of high support and strong opposition provides space to create long-term fiscal policy frameworks while generating short-term incentives to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A development imperative emphasising the economic benefits of mineral extraction has led researchers to speculate about whether minerals inflate citizens' economic expectations and, due to an upward shift in aspirations, cause a degree of dissatisfaction. Using survey data from 18 Latin American countries, this study finds evidence of the 'euphoric effect' of minerals materialising among household expectations concerning future changes in the economic situation of their country. Similarly, it also finds a positive and significant relationship with expectations concerning future changes in respondents' personal economic situation. However, it does not detect a significant relationship between minerals and citizens' life satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering ethics calls the attention of engineers to professional codes of ethical responsibility and personal values, but the practice of ethics in corporate settings can be more complex than either of these. Corporations too have cultures that often include corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and policies, but few discussions of engineering ethics make any explicit reference to CSR. This article proposes critical attention to CSR and role ethics as an opportunity to help prepare engineers to think through the ethics of their professional practice. After a brief overview of the evolution of social responsibility within engineering ethics in the United States, this article shares empirical research with practicing engineers in the mining and energy industries to explore how their formal ethics training did and did not prepare them to grapple with the ethical dimensions of their professional practice. It then illustrates the ways in which these dilemmas and the strategies employed for navigating them are framed within CSR policies and practices and resonate more strongly with role ethics rather than ethical theory as currently taught in most US engineering programs. The article concludes that engineering ethics teaching and learning would benefit from explicitly incorporating critical discussions of role ethics and CSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Host governments and communities commonly expect that the extractive industries provide jobs and contribute to skills development, especially in Sub-Saharan African countries where many young people join local labour markets in record numbers every year. This article reviews the literature and offers an empirically informed situation analysis on the demand and supply characteristics of the jobs and skills associated with the sector. Against this background, it discusses some challenges and implications for skills development interventions and offers some insights from the E4D/SOGA programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extractive industries are often challenged by nearby communities due to their environmental and social impacts. If proximity to resource extraction sites represents a disamenity to households, the opening of new mines should lead to a decrease in housing prices. Using evidence from more than 6000 new extraction sites in Chile, this study addresses whether the heavy environmental and social impacts of digging activities outweigh their local economic benefits to the housing market in emerging economies. Findings from a spatial difference-in-difference nearest-neighbor matching estimator reveal that households near mining activity get compensated with lower rental prices, mostly in places with high perceptions of exposure to environmental pollution. Further analysis suggests that this compensation is lower among new residents of mining towns, which constitutes evidence of a taste-based sorting across space. Results in this study bring to light the need of incorporating welfare effects of potential social and environmental disruptions in future studies addressing the economic impact of new mining operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In several low- and middle-income countries rich in non-fuel mineral resources, mining makes significant contributions to national economic development as measured by the revised Mining Contribution Index (MCI-Wr). Ten countries among the 20 countries where mining contributes most (highest MCI-Wr score) have moved up one or two steps in the World Bank's country classification between 1996 and 2016. In particular, African countries have benefitted. Socio-economic development indicators also show signs of progress for African mineral-rich countries. This paper provides an update and expansion of an earlier study within the framework of the United Nations University (UNU) World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) initiative Extractives for Development. Based on the detailed data available for the sector, such as production, export, prices, mineral rents, exploration expenditure and government revenues, an analysis is carried out of the current situation for 2016, and trends in mining's contribution to economic development for the years 1996–2016. The contribution of minerals and mining to GDP and exports reached a maximum at the peak of the mining boom in 2011. Naturally, the figures for mining's contribution had declined for most countries by 2016, but importantly the levels were still considerably higher than in 1996. The results of this survey contradict the widespread view that mineral resources create a dependency that might not be conducive to economic and social development. In addition, this paper presents an attempt to use already available socio-economic indicators for African mineral-rich countries to measure socio-economic developments. One preliminary conclusion of this survey is that mining countries perform better than oil-producing countries and non-mineral countries in Africa as measured by these indices of human development and governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how to balance bilaterally negotiated mining contracts with mining legislation that applies to all companies. Its backdrop is the perception that mining contracts have become more widely used, especially in less-developed countries. Experiences have been mixed, prompting the questions of whether too much emphasis has been placed on them and whether this has come at the expense of strengthening sector legislation and the wider governance context for attracting investment. Drawing on a roundtable discussion convened for the 2017 Mining Seminar at the University of Dundee's Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP), the paper lays open the ambiguous discussion on mining contracts and legislation. It first reviews the rationale for the use of mining contracts and then discusses their impact on the stability of investment conditions, the risk of corruption, the administrative burden on governments and on the development of generally applicable mining legislation and regulations, before going on to explore some underlying issues at stake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extractive industries sector is considered to be one of the most prone to illicit financial flows. To date, numerous instruments at the national, regional and international level have been adopted targeting the extractive industries sector or specifically combating illicit financial flows but the effectiveness of these instruments remains uncertain as highlighted with the recent scandals that tarnished this sector. In fact some stakeholders, in particular extractive companies and government officials, are being creative and innovative in order to play with legislations combating these illicit practices and perpetuate illicit financial flows. Playing with the rules of the game is made possible not only through the support of intermediaries but also the availability of legal tools. This article provides a glance at how these actors use the law to abuse and manipulate legal frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of external and internal conditions on firms’ investment in CEE countries, applying a panel data analysis, over the time-span 2008-2014. We use AMADEUS statistics for 412 companies and we focus on the extractive industry. The external conditions are associated with the macroeconomic uncertainty related to the economic growth and price level, while for the internal conditions we have retained as explanatory variables the leverage and liquidity ratios. The firms’ investment dynamics is computed as the growth rate of fixed assets. Our results obtained using static and dynamic estimators, show that both external and internal conditions influence the firms’ investment decision. The inflation uncertainty has a positive and significant impact on investment, providing evidence in the favor of the growth-option theory. The liquidity has a positive and significant influence, while the impact of the leverage and economic growth uncertainty is significant only under the dynamic specification. Our results are robust under different specifications of macroeconomic uncertainty and sample structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical data shows that large natural resource endowments have not translated into better quality of life in Sub-Saharan Africa ('Africa' for short). The problem is becoming more urgent, as new exploration technologies are rapidly expanding the number of countries whose fiscal revenues will grow, in many cases massively, with new oil, gas and mineral discoveries. A search is on for innovative approaches in managing this commodity bonanza. This paper focuses on the distribution of resource rents as cash transfers to citizens, so-called 'Direct Dividend Payments' (DDPs). It expands on recent related literature by calculating such transfers, whether universal or targeted, for every African country for which data is available, and compares them to measures of poverty depth under both national and global definitions. Furthermore, it extends the analysis to a different kind of resource flow enjoyed by most African countries-foreign aid. We found that DDPs can account for a large proportion of the income Africa's poor need to step over the poverty line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past three years (2012-2015), the North Dakota Man Camp Project has documented the archaeology of home in over 50 contemporary, short-term, workforce-housing sites in the Bakken oil patch in western North Dakota. This article integrates recent scholarship in global urbanism, archaeology of the contemporary past, and domesticity to argue that the expansion of temporary-workforce housing in the Bakken reflects a global periphery that lacks infrastructure or capital to respond rapidly to the pressures of an increasingly fluid movement of global capital and labor. The position of the Bakken produced short-term housing strategies that embrace both traditions of American domesticity and global trends in informal urbanism. A series of practical acts of architectural intervention straddle the line between the ideals of fixity characteristic of the American suburb and the mobility of recreational vehicles. The archaeological and architectural analysis of the Bakken man camps documents new forms of informal housing and offers a glimpse of the city yet to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple use livelihoods and recreational activities provide important economic opportunities for communities throughout the American west, especially in rural areas where public lands are the primary income generator. Federal lands also provide incentives for mining development as the 'highest and best use' of the land. This tension between civil society, the mining corporation, and the state as dual regulator/facilitator of natural resource development is most apparent during the public comment period of the environmental assessment process. Such is the case with the Bearlodge mine in the Black Hills National Forest of Wyoming, which has the potential to be the only domestic producer of critical rare earth elements. Therefore, I ask: How do perspectives about control of and access to common property resources and the role of humans as part or separate from an ecological system converge or diverge between community, state, and market stakeholders? To answer this, a Q method survey was carried out from groups representative of the different economic and environmental perspectives related to mining development: environmentalists, the mining/energy sector, state/federal regulators, foresters, local land holders, and recreationalists. Results show that stakeholders fall into two categories: anthropocentrists who desire economic development from the mine for human benefit, even given the potential for environmental harm and curtailed access to multiple use activities; and biocentrists who continue to push for a no development alternative where nature is preserved for nature's sake and existing livelihoods that help to maintain an already altered environment are able to remain and sustain rural economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Set against the background of struggles for territory, livelihood, and dignified existence in Latin America's neoliberal conjuncture, this paper examines contemporary Andean Indigenous claims for water access and control rights based on historical arguments. In the case of the Acequia Tabacundo irrigation system in the north-Ecuadorian Highlands, the rights claims deployed in peasant-Indigenous struggles are cultural and social hybrids. They are rooted in Indigenous history, but also spawned by centuries of interaction with and defense against colonial and post-colonial frames imposed by the Spanish Empire, modern Ecuadorian State structures and influences of transnational capital. Through these conflicts over Indigenous water rights, authority, and identity, this article illustrates and examines the role of Indigenous accounts of their water histories, striving to reclaim, and govern their water territories in times of booming export-flower water extraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores masculinities and changes in men's lives in the rural oil fields of Chad during the period of an oil and pipeline project described by the World Bank as a 'model' for oil-as-development. In many parts of Africa, private sector investment is concentrated in the extractive industries, especially oil and gas projects. Africa's emerging oil economies entail new institutional configurations, or what Michael Watts called an 'oil complex,' that challenge antecedent norms and forms of identity. In this article, I describe the expectations, desires, and experiences of three distinct groups of men-those who found temporary employment on the project, those who continued to make a living from farming while contending with land expropriation, and those who migrated to oil field towns in search of work-to make three general points about the oil complex and masculinities in Chad. The structure of the global oil industry meant that local men who found jobs on the project could act as breadwinners and patriarchs, but only temporarily; local workers struggled post-employment with their exclusion from the possibilities associated with the project. Men who never found jobs continued to eke out a living from the land, but state-of-the-art policies governing land expropriation led simultaneously to conflict in families and greater economic interdependence among family members. Finally, in the low-media environment of the oil field region, ideas and images about sex, sexuality, and love emanating from the transient and hyper-masculine global oil industry workforce served as models for landless young men who migrated to oil field towns and who, in the absence of work, sought to transform themselves into objects of desire through the mediation of pharmaceuticals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a growing awareness of the association between extractive industries, the nature of work in remote locations, population mobility and health status, there is a need to advance an evidence-based approach to ensuring the health of migrant and mobile populations, and the home and host communities with whom they interact. Through a narrative synthesis of peer-reviewed and grey literature, this review examines what is known, and the nature of research activity concerning the range of health impacts determined by the social conditions inherent with population mobility alongside mining and extractive industries; and the extent to which health outcomes impact on workers, and home and host communities. While much of the literature reviewed in the study considered health in a traditional disease or illness based approach, it is clear that many risk factors for the health of mobile workers in the sector reflect broader social determinants. To support the mitigation of individual and population vulnerability to infectious disease endemics, consideration of both the etiology and the social conditions that give rise to adverse health outcomes is required, including an improvement to workers' living conditions, the expansion of diagnostic and medical services, and an approach that ensures the right to health for mobile populations. To further improve upon the rich body of research, resources are required to implement robust data collection including epidemiological surveillance, outbreak monitoring and investigation, and the long term tracking of standardized health information at both origin locations and destination communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interests of governments and mining companies are pitted against each other. Labour migration restrictions prevent mining companies from accessing the right skills needed for their operations. With persistent skill shortages, the mining sector labour productivity declines at the same time as they fuel wage inflation throughout the economy. A broader policy approach on labour market development could relax restrictions for mining companies to access the skills they need at the same time it could go a long way in meeting governments' long-term priorities. The case was put forward at the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD; ). The GFMD gathers approximately 150 governments from developed, developing and newly industrialized nations to deliberate, exchange ideas and identify how collaboration between states can contribute to social and economic development in countries of origin and destinations and not least for migrants themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1990s, the extractive industries have increasingly valued corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the communities where they operate. More recently, these industries have begun to recognize the importance of adapting CSR efforts to unique local contexts rather than applying a one-size-fits-all model. However, firms understand local context to mean culture and treat the physical properties of the host region-topography, geology, hydrology, and climate-as the exclusive purview of mineral geologists and engineers. In this article, we examine the organization of CSR at two industrial-scale gold mines in Guatemala, owned by the same firm, which yielded starkly distinct levels of support among host community residents. We develop the idea of social terrain to convey the way in which the biophysical environment informs local social relations and imbues phenomena with particular social meanings. We argue that firms must account for social terrain in organizing for CSR. The literature struggles to provide guidelines for identifying and understanding stakeholders. Social terrain, we argue, can begin to bridge this gap between theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does corruption attract or deter foreign investment in the extractive sectors? This article presents an econometric analysis of extractive industry foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to 81 countries in the period 1996-2009. The results suggest that increased corruption within a country is associated with increased extractive industry FDI, but at a diminishing rate as corruption increases grow larger. For realistic changes in corruption, however, more corruption is associated with more extractive industry investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Severe earthquakes can be triggered by dewatering and flooding of mines, as these activities alter the loading of the Earth’s crust and tectonic stresses in its interior. Worldwide, more than 200 studies have noted sites where human-induced stresses could have reactivated preexisting faults, triggering earthquakes with seismic moment magnitudes of up to M = 7 on the Richter scale. This can only occur where faults are already under high tectonic stresses that have built up over many years. Stable continental regions are seismically less active than unstable regions (e.g. California, Japan, and Turkey). Consequently, faults in stable continental regions can be more earthquake-trigger sensitive, since accumulated stresses have not reached failure conditions. This paper provides an overview of officially recognized mining-triggered earthquakes with magnitudes M ≥ 5.0. The article illuminates that these earthquakes can cause serious socio-economic losses with negative implications for the long-term sustainable development of countries abundant in natural resources and of mining regions, in particular. Historic data suggest that regional geological conditions (e.g. structural geology and tectonic in-situ stress states) are more important in forecasting the potential of earthquake triggering than the scale of the mining activities. Overall, such forecasts should be made to estimate and mitigate potential socio-economic earthquake risks associated with geoengineering operations of extractive industries such as mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]