Local Impact of Mining

Natural resource extraction is a disruptive business. For the communities surrounding extractive operations, everything from livelihood, health and job opportunities to the visual landscape are impacted. Experience from many countries shows that resource extraction can adversely impact health outcomes as well as the land, water, and soil people depend on for their livelihoods. For governments, the challenge is to transform revenue windfalls into sustainable development. For the mining company, costly business interruptions can occur when local populations take to the streets over disagreement with extractive outcomes. To achieve the goal of a sustainable and green economy worldwide, there is an urgent need to improve our understanding of development outcomes in resource rich areas that bear most of the environmental and social costs associated with resource extraction.

We study various aspects of the impact of mining and created the external page Resource Impact Dashboard (RID), a policy instrument that enables an evidence-based deliberation about local resource governance. We also study how mining companies — through their engagement with local communities and social investments — affect local institutions, political dynamics and social conflict. Lastly, we analyze the conditions under which impact assessments are an effective regulatory mechanism to mitigate negative externalities from natural resource extraction and contribute to the health-related targets.

Researchers: Fritz Brugger, Joschka J. Proksik, Felicitas Fischer