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.
Highlights
This paper tackles the question: How can Minas Conga experience inform the application of new integrative approaches to development practice?
The Minas Conga experience offers an excellent example of the three development conundrums, and illustrates the advantages of using a collaborative, integrative approach to understand and address them
Mining is a logical “gateway sector” for sustainable development because it is so impactful, with major inequities in the distribution of positive and negative impacts, and it connects with so many others—energy, water, food, industry, health, climate change
Summary
Mining projects present some of the greatest challenges for sustainability Exemplifying this sector’s particular challenges, the Minas Conga experience illustrates the need for an alternative approach to business-as-usual (BAU) neoliberal economic development practice in Peru. It provides a compelling case study, and an opportunity to propose a fundamentally different process that reframes SD challenges in terms of strengthening adaptive capacity to respond to existing and projected needs, with corresponding integrative methods. The world’s 2nd largest gold miner, stopped development of Minas Conga in 2016. From 2011 to 2016, Minera Yanacocha S.R.L (MYSRL), a conglomerate of Newmont, tried in vain to win local support (ibid)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
