Mining Boom Research Articles

The governance of mining regions in Australia (2000–2012)

Abstract This article explores forms of public administration and public policy associated with the governance of mining regions in Australia, many of which experienced unprecedented levels of resource-based development during the country's most recent mining boom. Drawing on data from a two-year investigation into the governance challenges associated with the resources boom, the authors document the different approaches adopted by State government authorities to deliver public infrastructure and services to mining-affected regions. This paper introduces a typology that classifies State government action by the extent to which it enables, influences, or harnesses private sector action to deliver public services. Analysis reveals that a range of environmental variables affect the prevailing governance model. Adopting a contingency approach, it is argued that governance arrangements should be viewed as dynamic, with State governments engaging in different approaches to policy implementation in response to location-specific environmental factors.

Beyond Dutch Disease: Are there mediators of the mining–tourism nexus?

In recent years, significant work has emerged exploring the relationship between tourism and mining. Generally, the relationship is considered to be negative, the result of crowding out of tourism during mining booms. However, the relationship is likely to be more complicated with mining affecting tourism both directly and indirectly. The indirect effects arise from the mediation role played by foreign direct investment (FDI), governance quality, trade and the real exchange rate. To verify this hypothesis, this article uses an unbalanced panel data set that covers 190 countries over the 2002–2017 period. A structural equation model is used to account for the mediating relationships. The results show a direct negative relationship between natural resource intensity and international tourist arrivals, as well as indirect positive relationship mediated by FDI partially offset by an indirect negative relationship mediated by governance.

The Early Islamic Mining Boom

AbstractThe present article shows that, according to archaeological and literary evidence, an expansion in mining occurred in the early Islamic world as a result of changes in mining technology at the end of Late Antiquity. The production of gold, silver, copper, iron, and other minerals is shown to have peaked in the eighth and ninth centuries and then to have declined during the tenth and eleventh centuries due to insecurity and/or exhaustion of the mines. Mining development was financed privately, and mines were usually private property.

Unemployment, service delivery and practices of waiting in South Africa’s informal settlements

Informal mining settlements in Rustenburg, South Africa, grew exponentially due to the removal of apartheid-era spatial controls in the late 1980s and the boom in platinum mining in the early 2000s. These informal settlements lack official recognition, and this generates collective uncertainty and engenders different forms of waiting. Residents wait for employment, services, and ultimately official recognition of their settlement and its integration into the Rustenburg Local Municipality. As residents wait, they also fashion various strategies to alleviate their situation. Drawing on ethnographic data collected from the Ikemeleng informal settlement on the outskirts of Rustenburg town, this article combines an analysis of experiences of waiting with the conditions and structures that generate waiting. It argues that waiting in informal settlements is not characterized by passive acquiesce but is an engaged activity that is informed by residents’ reflexive responses to the different structures and regimes of waiting. The article argues that informal settlements should be viewed as zones of waiting, not only because they are spaces that generate waiting, but most importantly because residents engage in active waiting.

The mining sector boom in Mongolia: did it cause the Dutch disease?

ABSTRACT The mining sector has become one of the main pillars in the Mongolian economy. Although the sector is the main driver of better export performance, it may also have a negative effect on traditional tradeable sectors and worsen their competitiveness. The study focuses on whether the Dutch disease symptoms have appeared in the Mongolian economy. A time series model is developed using quarterly data from the period of 2004 to 2012, the so-called mining boom years in Mongolia. Econometric results are derived from the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach and suggest that the Dutch disease symptoms, the spending effect as well as the resource movement effect, have appeared during the researched period in Mongolia.

Fake News and Non-Corporate Players during a Mining Boom - Justice Denied?

Fake News and Non-Corporate Players during a Mining Boom - Justice Denied?

Impacts of mineral resources: Evidence from county economies in China

the literature proposes that a booming minerals sector leads to a development curse. The mineral markets in China experienced a prolonged boom over the period of 2000–2010. We empirically examine the effects of mineral resources on employment in county economies during the boom. We consider the endogeneity of the resource measure and employ an instrumental variables approach to resolve the problem. We find the mining boom exerts a significant “crowding out” effect on the manufacturing employment in mineral-resource-dependent counties, but benefits the employment in services. Because the increase in mining employment is sizeable in a mining boom, the overall employment in the resource-dependent counties has shown a small growth. These results are robust to alternative samples. Our findings confirm the argument that resource booms undermine manufacturing sectors through deindustrialization effects, though little evidence shows the existence of a resource curse in overall employment. We conclude that for a developing economy with rich mineral resources and a large population, it would be hard to following the road of industrialization relying on manufacturing.

Path Correction of the Boom Road-Header in Coal Mining Based on State Estimation

Trajectory planning and tracking control algorithm based on a position and orientation deviation model are proposed to achieve path correction for the mining boom road-header working underground. The proposed strategy is assessed to be feasible and potentially practicable by simulations, from which the following statements are summarized. Firstly, trajectory planning is necessary since different trajectories correspond to different scenarios about undesirable excavation space, slipping level, and power consumption. Secondly, using the proposed tracking control algorithm, the road-header is guided back onto the expected path in limited adjusting steps, with smoothly varying rotation speeds of the driving wheels and regularly reducing pose errors. Lastly, it shows that by implying the SVD-unscented Kalman filtering in the tracking control, the adverse impacts of process and measurement noises are appeased obviously. This research provides an advisable modeling and valuable simulation for the road-header to achieve robotic operation underground.

Citizen of Empire: A Transnational Archaeology of James William Robertson

Transnational mobility of people, goods, ideas, and capital was a key feature of the British Empire in the long nineteenth century, as millions of migrants created new colonial societies at the expense of Indigenous peoples. Archaeological biographies of individuals provide crucial insight into these wider processes of social, material and environmental transformation. James William Robertson (1823–76) was an agent of change in this imperial-colonial domain. In 1852 he migrated from his birthplace of New Brunswick, Canada to the gold rush colony of Victoria, Australia where he developed interests in mining, water control and sawmilling. A decade later Robertson departed for the mining boom in Otago, New Zealand, where he expanded his business interests and entered public service as mayor of Queenstown and a provincial legislator. This paper uses the archaeology and history of Robertson’s life to trace his role as an agent of change at local, regional and international scales. His story links distant corners of the British Empire into a global story of colonialism, capitalism, and environmental change.

Convergence in Income Inequality Across Australian States and Territories

This paper investigates stochastic convergence in income inequality across Australian states and territories since the end of World War II by utilising the LM and RALS-LM unit root tests that allow for endogenously determined structural breaks. We find that income inequality for Australia’s capital city—the Australain Capital Territoy—converges to a stable steady-state when we account for endogenously determined trend-breaks. The null hypothesis of a unit root is rejected when utilising the two-break unit root test for New South Wales, Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia indicating that income inequalities in these states converge to a stable steady-state when accounting for multiple structural breaks. In contrast, the state of Victoria consistently shows evidence of divergence regardless of the number of endogenously determined structural breaks. Structural changes in income inequality across states and territories may be linked to the mining boom, the transition from manufacturing to a service-based economy, changes in government welfare, and favourable changes in tax policies and superannuation.

Boom and bust in Bronze Age Britain: major copper production from the Great Orme mine and European trade, c. 1600–1400 BC

Abstract

Notes on the Trip to the Great Savannah

In July 1947, the Cuban Author Alejo Carpentier traveled from his home in caracas to the sparsely inhabited interior of venezuela, visiting the country's tropical forests and its great plains. At the time, Carpentier was known principally as a music critic and newspaper columnist for El Nacional in Venezuela and Carteles in Cuba; he had yet to publish El reino de este mundo (The Kingdom of This World; 1949), which would launch his career as a novelist and earn him international renown. Carpentier later wrote a novel about a trip much like the one he took in 1947. In the now-canonical Los pasos perdidos (The Lost Steps; 1953), a failed composer finds inspiration by traveling from a cosmopolitan city to the tropical forests of South America. Carpentier's creativity was similarly sparked by his trip to the Venezuelan wilderness, as his travel diary Notas del viaje a la Gran Sabana (Notes on the Trip to the Great Savannah) makes clear. Notas is the only contemporary account of the journey written by Carpentier, who later made contradictory statements about the details and even the number of trips he took. Beyond its documentary value, the travel diary reveals that Carpentier's experience was deeply enmeshed with his readings, a characteristic that also marks the narrator-protagonist of Los pasos perdidos. Moreover, Notas is of broad ecocritical and historical significance because it makes clear the extent to which the forests and plains of South America were changing during Venezuela's boom in oil drilling and gold mining in the 1940s. Inspired by what he witnessed in Venezuela, Carpentier created the central drama of Los pasos perdidos out of his protagonist's desire to inhabit what the author called the “mundo del Genesis” (“world of Genesis”) at a time when extractive industries were rapidly transforming the economies, ecologies, and societies of the region (“La Gran Sabana” 32).

Drilling and bolting rigs operator support using FGS (Feeder Guiding System) and remote control

Abstract The article presents the assumptions and main functionalities of two operator support systems – the FGS (Feeder Guiding System) and the remote control system of a drilling or bolting rig. Both of these systems greatly facilitate the work of an operator of a self-propelled mining vehicle in the conditions of an underground metal ore mine. The first of the described system allows for real-time control of the current position of the mining boom and facilitates the drilling of blast holes according to a predetermined drilling pattern. The second of the systems – a remote control system – is used especially in conditions of unstable rock mass or in the case of work in particularly difficult operating conditions, where it is advisable to limit the presence of the crew from the face-up to the necessary minimum. The intensity of these vibrations was related to the conditions of the cutting process.

Not normal, not just: protest against large-scale mining from a moral economy perspective

ABSTRACT This article investigates conflicts over large-scale mining through the lens of E. P. Thompson’s concept of the moral economy. The concept proves fruitful for an analysis of the local impacts of fundamental political-economic transformations, notably how people are affected by, and react to, structural changes. The recent global “commodity boom” and the related expansion of large-scale mining is a case in point. I refer to the moral economy to analyse conflicts around two gold mines in Burkina Faso. I argue that protests against mining are far from being irrational and instinct led, just as Thompson demonstrated for the food riots. Rather, the protests are driven by the notion that the way in which the “mining boom” has proceeded is profoundly unjust. Behind the conflict are different basic assumptions regarding what is considered legitimate and “normal,” namely the right to food and to live in dignity, as opposed to profit-making.

On the contribution of international shocks in Australian business cycle fluctuations

What proportion of Australian business cycle fluctuations are caused by international shocks? We address this question by estimating a panel VAR model that has time-varying parameters and a common stochastic volatility factor. The time-varying parameters capture the inter-temporal nature of Australia’s various bilateral trade relationships, while the common stochastic volatility factor captures various episodes of volatility clustering among macroeconomic shocks, e.g., the 1997/98 Asian Financial Crisis and the 2007/08 Global Financial Crisis. Our main result is that international shocks from Australia’s five largest trading partners: China, Japan, the EU, the USA and the Republic of Korea, have caused around half of all Australian business cycle fluctuations over the past two decades. We also find important changes in the relative importance of each country’s economic impact. For instance, China’s positive contribution increased throughout the mining boom of the 2000s, while the overall US influence has almost halved since the 1990s.

The social impact management plan as a tool for local planning: Case study: Mining in Northern Finland

The paper discusses social impact management plan (SIMP) as a planning tool for communities to continuously and adaptively manage and address the diverse social changes caused by mining developments. It introduces an empirical case study, where the SIMP is applied to deal with the possibilities and problems that the mining boom has created in a rural, sparsely populated municipality in Northern Europe. The making of the SIMP n the Sodankylä Municipality was the first community-led policy programme focused on mining in Finland. After collaborative planning with relevant stakeholders and political decision-making process, a SIMP laying out shared visions and mutually agreed actions was given the status of an official policy programme in 2018. However, there are several uncertainties related to the realization of the SIMP. From the viewpoint of governance dependencies, there are still differing opinions among the local stakeholders, including the mining companies, about what socially sustainable mining actually means and demands. Also, communities are often left with no other choice than to adapt to the interdependencies inherent in local governance, national legislation and politics. They also have to get used to international economic fluctuations and to the uncertainties intrinsic to the global production and consumption of metals. Nevertheless, the SIMP is a worthwhile effort to achieve the best local solutions related to mining in the northernmost parts of Europe.

Mining towns and urban sprawl in South Africa

South Africa’s mining towns were established by mining companies mostly after World War II. The workforce lived in company-owned or privately-owned houses, or high-density compounds. Since the demise of apartheid, South African government policy for these towns has promoted integrated mining communities and homeownership. The government’s urban policy aims to densify the country’s urban areas, which have some of the lowest urban densities. This paper compares the changes in urban density and the unintended land-use implications of mining in settlements around five types of mines: iron ore, manganese, coal, gold and platinum, and in a combination of towns during periods of mining boom and bust. We ask how the South African legal framework addresses land issues that are associated with mining settlements, how urban density has evolved in the five case studies; and how this evolution should be explained. We argue that the sprawl is associated with historical path dependencies and interdependencies. Contributing factors are the need to house miners, the unintended consequences of policies designed to minimise compound living, changing labour regimes, the continuation of migrant labour and the presence of traditional-authority land. This sprawl is evident in market-driven housing, government-subsidised housing and informal settlement development.

Western Australia's Royalties for Regions program: a policy response to growth, regional neglect, and perceived disempowerment

AbstractUnder the right conditions, compounding socio‐political and economic change can dramatically alter government policy. From 2000, Western Australia, a resource‐rich jurisdiction, experienced significant change owing to a once‐in‐a‐generation resources boom, which forced a break with earlier development approaches. In 2008, regional interventionism returned to the State via the State Government's Royalties for Regions program. Departing from the neo‐liberal tradition, the program allocated 25 per cent of the State's royalty income to non‐metropolitan regions, over and above existing regional allocations, and its success remains disputed. While it is easy to question the program retrospectively, the socio‐economic and political circumstances from 2000 to 2008 reveal a “perfect storm” of conditions enabling the transition from neo‐liberalism to interventionism in regional development. This paper sets out to understand the multi‐faceted conditions that enabled the dramatic paradigm shift embodied by the program. To this end, it examines the State's rural–urban settlement dichotomy, its staples economy, and the policy context leading up to the program. Following that, the paper proposes a causal framework mapping out the factors driving and rationalising the program. These factors are then examined in detail and include perceived rural voter disenchantment, ineffectual regional development policy, the State's mining boom, inadequate regional development funding, the contrasting fortunes of two regions (illustrative of the impact of growth, and the lack thereof), and the political manoeuvring during the 2008 election. Finally, the paper concludes by considering how the conversion of these conditions resulted in the State's most significant regional policy redirection in decades.

Mining Boom, Labour Market Segmentation and Social Inequality in the Congolese Copperbelt.

ABSTRACTThe study of the impacts of new mining projects in Africa is generally set in a normative debate about their possible contribution to development, which leads to a representation of African societies as divided between beneficiaries and victims of foreign investments. Based on research in the Congolese copperbelt, this article aims to examine in more detail the inequalities generated by the recent mining boom by taking the processes of labour market segmentation as a starting point. It shows that the labour market in the mining sector has progressively been organized along three intersecting lines that divide it: the first is between employment in industrial and artisanal mining companies, the second is between jobs for mining or subcontracting companies and the third is between jobs for expatriates, Congolese skilled workers and local unskilled workers. Far from simply reflecting existing social inequalities, the labour market has been actively involved in their creation, and its control has caused growing tensions in the Congolese copperbelt region. Although largely neglected in the literature on extractive industries, processes of labour market segmentation are key to making sense of the impacts of mining investments on the shape of societies in the global South.

The precarious political economy of cobalt: Balancing prosperity, poverty, and brutality in artisanal and industrial mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

This study examines the political economy of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There, a veritable mining boom for cobalt is underway, driven by rising global demand needed for batteries and other modern digital devices. Based on extensive and original field research—including expert interviews, community interviews with miners and traders, and naturalistic observation at 21 mines and 9 affiliated mining sites—this study asks: How is cobalt currently extracted? What benefits has cobalt mining brought communities? What risks has it created? And, critically, what policies need implemented to make mining there more equitable and sustainable? It documents six interrelated benefits to cobalt mining, including poverty reduction, community development, and regional stability, alongside six serious challenges, including accidents and occupational hazards, environmental pollution and degraded community health, and violent conflict and death. It then proposes seven policy recommendations for different stakeholder groups such as local and national government, industrial (and often foreign) mining companies, miners and their communities, and the manufacturers of electronic products using cobalt. The study primarily seeks to humanize the lived experiences of Congolese cobalt mining, and to reveal the tensions and tradeoffs associated with the recent mining boom.