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MINING FOR CLOSURE 31
This section of the report is intended to provide a
brief outline of who mining stakeholders might be,
and how differing types of stakeholders can have
salience to a mining development or abandoned
or orphaned site. Further, it aims to provide some
introduction to why multi-stakeholder dialogue
(consultation) is considered desirable and to high-
light the importance of the capacities held by actor
groups. It cannot be ignored that certain levels of
capacity are required – both on the side of industry
and on the side of other stakeholders such as af-
fected communities – before communication and
engagement can even take place (Gibson, 2001).60
In order to build institutional frameworks promot-
ing good mining practice it is important to rec-
ognise that different groups of social actors each
have their own special interaction with mining
activities. Moreover, it is not uncommon that un-
der certain circumstances stakeholders from “un-
expected positions” can obtain, or seek to obtain,
the means to dictate the course that an industrial
development might take. This, particularly in situ-
ations where they consider that the activities or the
environmental or social legacies they generate af-
fect their interests (or lives) negatively.61 As such,
it is important to obtain insights into how actors
might obtain such leverage, how situations can be
defused and turned to the better, and why commu-
nication (or “engagement”) should be undertaken
with such groups.
In particular communities are a special form of
stakeholder. Not least because of distributive justice
issues where a considerable literature holds that
adjacent communities may bear the greatest costs
and receive the least benefits of mining projects
(see for example Amundson (2005), Evans, Good-
man & Lansbury (2000), Gaventa (1980), Klub-
nock (1998), Low and Gleeson (1998), Scheyvens
& Lagisa (1998) as well as the Oxfam material at
publications/index.html as examples). Important-
ly, and as intimated above, communities may not
have the capacity to negotiate effectively at first and
investment in capacity building to support com-
munication may be a prerequisite for meaningful
dialogue. Further, communities may be interested
in more than just the jobs supplied by a mining
development, and may also seek to maintain their
ways of life, local cultures, and so forth, as well as
have a more diversified economic future. In the
context of this document, disagreement or conflicts
between mining organizations and authorities and
communities can spiral out of control – at times
such events take place on the national stage, at
times they escalate to involve organizations such
as transnational NGOs. Such events can cost the
mining industry (and even host countries) dearly
in terms of time, money and reputation (personal
communication: Central European University,
2005, 24 July).
Understanding of stakeholders is particularly im-
portant in the context of this document as it is
intended to help delineate sound policy goals sur-
rounding mining – and the manner in which pol-
icy goal might be achieved via legislative (or other
institutional) frameworks. As indicated in the in-
troduction section of this document, such frame-
works can help clarify what various actors should
be allowed to do or not to do, and how certain activ-
ities should be conducted; they can introduce eco-
nomic or utilitarian instruments seeking a steering
effect towards a planned goal; or they can involve
the use of informative instruments designed to en-
able people to adopt alternative behaviour. Further,
it was related that the influencing of prevailing
social norms or imperatives might also contribute
in reaching goals. However, in the context of this
document, one of the most important steps may
be to initiate the process of talking and listening
to stakeholders – particularly communities – grant-
ing them legitimacy and actively involving them
in planning for closure (and development as ap-
propriate). This said, such actions require properly
trained and clearly assigned personnel resources
in order to carry out such activities appropriately
and to develop trusting relationships with all play-
mining stakeholders 3.
60. CoDevelopment Canada has taken the position that com-
munities rarely have the negotiating skill to effectively engage
mining companies or other proponents. They support capacity
building in communities to prepare them for negotiations. The
reader is referred to the report by Gibson (2001) available at:
61. See also Antypas (2005).