Mining & Community

Large scale mining can have significant economic, social and environmental impacts at the local, regional and national level. In recent years companies, NGOs, governments and the communities themselves are being challenged to ensure that the benefits accruing from mining, are maximized in a sustainable way and that the negative impacts of the mine are mitigated to the extent that the communities both during and after the life of the mine, are better advantaged by the presence of a mining investment. At a local level, a mine has the potential to significantly benefit the local population through the creation of direct and indirect employment, skills transfer, enhancing the capacity of health and education services, improved infrastructure, and small and medium business opportunities. However, the advent of mining and the inevitable closure of a mine, can also cause significant adverse effects on the local population, infringing on certain rights, and affecting their traditional means to livelihood. This can be manifest in many ways, impacting on land rights and the rights of indigenous people, induced inflation, influx of newcomers to the area, disruption of traditional social structures and social jealousy.

Sharing Experiences

The impact of mines on local communities has been an area of growing concern and attention, and one that mining companies, NGOs and governments are grappling with. The World Bank has used its convening power and neutral position to bring together a number of different agencies to pursue discussion in this area, share experiences and enable diverse agencies to work more cooperatively together, with the view to resolving some of the problems affecting this area. Recent work in the Department sets out to explore more specifically the linkages that exist between mining operations and the four dimensions of poverty – economic opportunity, capability, security, and empowerment – in the context of two generically different forms: (i) large scale mining; and (ii) small scale and artisanal mining. The convening of conferences, meetings, analytical research and the dissemination of good practice are among the number of ways in which the Mining Department has been working to gain a better understanding of these issues, develop mechanisms for resolution and propagate good practice. The progression of thinking in this area can be mapped through the series of conferences and workshops that the Mining group has had in this area culminating in 1997. More information on the results of the above conferences/workshops

Further research on costs and benefits

The Mining staff are also managing an depth research project, that analyses the cost and benefits of mines on local communities. This study is based on research being conducted on 5 medium-scale mines, in three of the most important Latin American mining countries – Bolivia, Chile and Peru. These studies will be complemented by a case study of a mine in Spain and a more general study on the experience of mining and the community in Canada. In this project researchers in 5 countries are undertaking an environmental, cultural, health and socio-economic analysis of benefits and costs of the operation and development of mines in established communities. It is hoped that the empirical analysis of this study will help to develop solutions on one of the important problems confronting many developing and transition economies, on how a country can ensure that the opening of large mines is beneficial rather than detrimental to the needs and goals of the local community. The study has four main tasks.

The results of this project will be published on this site.

For more on Community Development see:

Local Economic Development & Mining Reference.

The toolkit supports government, industry, and community efforts to realize more sustainable community development around mining and mineral processing operations. For hard copies, please write to: ogmc@worldbank.org.

Community Development Website--The over-riding objective of the Oil, Gas, and Mining Sustainable Community Development Fund (CommDev) is to help ensure that local communities benefit in a sustainable way from extractive industry projects.