Long distance commuting: A tool to mitigate the impacts of the resources industries boom and bust cycle?

Western Australia experienced a prolonged resources boom for more than a decade commencing in 2001. The majority of mining industry employees commute long distances from their homes, living onsite in company accommodation and working compressed rosters for a prescribed period before commuting home again for furlough and recommencing the work and commute cycle. Many community leaders, politicians and businesses complain that company policies and industrial relations arrangements, which enabled long distance commuting (LDC), undermine regional economic development. They argue that the host communities closest to mining operations bear the brunt of globally driven boom and bust markets and experience many of the disadvantages but few of the opportunities associated with booms or busts, while source communities, particularly large cities, reap the benefits from repatriated salaries, increased populations and investment derived from mining activities in the host communities.This paper examines the role of long distance commuting as a tool for mitigating the impacts of the boom and bust cycles in the resources industries of Western Australia, focusing on the resources-rich region of the Pilbara. The paper will also speculate the social and economic impact on the mining communities and the state more broadly if government had capitulated and restricted long distance commuting.     

Assessing the trade‐offs of increased mining activity in the Surat Basin,Queensland: preferences of Brisbane residents using nonmarket valuation techniques

The mining boom in Australia since 2003 has produced significant economic benefits for regional, State and National economies, creating new job opportunities and revenue flows. Despite the contribution of the resources sector to economic growth, questions are frequently raised about the concomitant negative social, economic and environmental impacts. The Surat Basin in southern Queensland is a traditional agricultural region with a small but growing coal mining sector and a rapidly developing liquefied natural gas industry (mainly associated with extracting coal seam gas). In this paper, the preferences of residents in Brisbane, the State capital, are explored in relation to the relative importance of social, economic and environmental impacts of the resource boom in the Surat Basin. A choice modelling experiment was conducted to assess the trade‐offs Brisbane residents would make (in monetary terms) between the economic benefits and the associated costs of increased mining activity on local communities. The results identify the strength of concerns about community and environmental impacts and can potentially be used to help evaluate the net benefits of resource development.     

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.     

明天的矿业——全球矿业勘探开发新趋势

2012年,全球矿业进入了冷暖未知的＂初冬＂季节,其发展将面临更加复杂的形势,在资源、技术和资本等多重因素影响下,全球矿业勘探开发将呈现新的变化：投资热点区域偏好更加分化、未来勘探开发热点矿种发生变化、未来勘探开发新技术将得到深度应用、新一轮并购重组热潮或再现、新兴经济体勘探开发资本市场将快速发展。     

Local economic impacts of an unconventional energy boom: the coal seam gas industry in Australia

Complementing the scarce economic literature about local impacts of energy extraction booms, this paper empirically investigates economic outcomes related to the new coal seam gas (CSG) industry located across southern Queensland. This Australian state has seen an unprecedented inflow of investments into the extraction of this previously unexploited unconventional natural gas over the last decade. We analyse census data to study income and employment effects associated with the CSG boom, exploiting the quasi‐experimental conditions provided by CSG extraction areas (treatment regions) and regions without this development (control regions). Findings show that treatment regions have higher income growth than control areas during 2001–2011 for families residing locally and for individuals present on census night. Employment in the mining sector also shows higher growth as has non‐mining employment in some areas. We include comparisons between CSG areas with no major mining history (the Surat basin) and CSG areas where mining was important before the CSG boom (the Bowen basin), to better understand boom effects in areas with different initial mining industry importance in their economies. Local job multipliers are also analysed for Surat basin CSG areas, where positive impacts (job spillovers) are restricted to construction and professional services jobs, while agricultural jobs have decreased.     

Mining booms and the exchange rate

The balance of payments identity linking the current account to net domestic investment and foreign capital inflows is used as a framework to assess the effects of a mining boom on the exchange rate. The exchange rate response is found to vary with whether the boom is generated by an increase in global demand or an increase in domestic supply, and the response varies over time as the boom moves through investment and production stages. Also, the exchange rate response depends on the mix of resident and nonresident investment funds, the share of the investment domestically sourced and the distribution of windfall income and its expenditure. A key result is the absence of a simple relationship between the terms of trade and the exchange rate.     

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.     

Agrarian change through speculation: Rural elites as land brokers for mining in Colombia

This paper studies the connections between the expansion of mining capital, speculative forms of land grabbing and agrarian transformation. It is argued that in periods of commodity boom, the landowning rural elite benefits from mining through speculative land deals with mining companies. They act as ‘land brokers’ for the mining firms, helping them to overcome a significant barrier to land accumulation through the de facto abolition of landed property. The analysis is based on a qualitative case study on the expansion of coal mining in central Cesar in northern Colombia. To develop my arguments, I refer to the concept of accumulation by dispossession as defined by Michael Levien, and historical materialist approaches on rent, and speculative land dispossession. In addition, I use concepts developed for studying coercive land grabbing and agrarian elite participation in armed conflicts to analyse the mechanisms applied to (coercively) acquire rights to land. It is concluded that with high global prices for minerals, metals and fossil fuels, the expansion of mining in the countryside fosters a process of agrarian change through land speculation that is articulated in a reconcentration of landed property, a re-strengthening of the rural landowning elite and the dissolution of peasant agriculture.     

中国矿业权体制的演变——变迁模型与改革取向

基于对矿产资源产权制度演变的研究,我国矿业权体制的演变动因主要是矿业活动中,政府与企业双方各自利益的变化以及相互的利益冲突。当前我们要注意进一步明晰矿业产权,规范政府行为;放宽矿业权流转的限制,建立完善矿业权市场,促进矿业权的合理配置与高效运行;进一步规范矿业税费制度,平衡政府与企业利益;消除矿业权人资质认证上的歧视性。     

Forestry conflict in Spain: Rethinking peasant protest and resistance

This article examines forestry conflict in the Spanish province of León and the struggle between village communities and the state over the control of common lands and forests. One of this article's conclusions is that forestry conflict reflected, on the one hand, the struggle for economic control not only between the peasants and the state but also between the peasants themselves and, on the other hand, the clash between the market economy championed by the state and the traditional arrangements, values, and solidarities defended by the peasants. Another conclusion is that widely used concepts such as “weapons of the weak” or “environmentalism of the poor” are deemed inadequate regarding the peasant protest and resistance analysed here, which in turn calls for a definition of these new forms of rural resistance or a reformulation of those already in use.     

Neoliberalism and the revival of agricultural cooperatives: The case of the coffee sector in Uganda

Agricultural cooperatives have seen a comeback in sub‐Saharan Africa. After the collapse of many weakly performing monopolist organizations during the 1980s and 1990s, strengthened cooperatives have emerged since the 2000s. Scholarly knowledge about the state–cooperative relations in which this “revival” takes place remains poor. Based on new evidence from Uganda's coffee sector, this paper discusses the political economy of Africa's cooperative revival. The authors argue that donors' and African governments' renewed support is framed in largely apolitical terms, which obscures the contested political and economic nature of the revival. In the context of neoliberal restructuring processes, state and non‐state institutional support to democratic economic organizations with substantial redistributional agendas remains insufficient. The political–economic context in Uganda—and potentially elsewhere in Africa—contributes to poor terms of trade for agricultural cooperatives while maintaining significant state control over some cooperative activities to protect the status quo interests of big capital and state elites. These conditions are unlikely to produce a conflict‐free, substantial, and sustained revival of cooperatives, which the new promoters of cooperatives suggest is under way.     

Factors of vulnerability: How large-scale land acquisitions take advantage of local and national weaknesses in Sierra Leone

Enticing economic benefits for host nations and the notion of large areas of land considered available are often put forward as the main reasons for large-scale land acquisition in many areas of sub-Saharan Africa. However, country-level datasets of land acquisitions seem to indicate a clear divide between a majority of countries engaged in land acquisitions as investors and those involved as targets. We posit that there are socio-economic and governance factors that make the engagement between targets of land acquisitions and investors both unequal and attractive to large-scale investments. We then ask the question: what are the factors that make communities vulnerable to an unequal engagement with large-scale land-investing interests in Sierra Leone? We explore this question using local-level socio-economic data of households and communities in two settings where land acquisitions have occurred in Sierra Leone. We find that socio-economic characteristics of local populations, such as levels of education, the powerful role of traditional chiefs and corruption, make these areas easier targets for such land investments. Investors also exploit the poor economic situation of local areas by making alluring promises of development opportunities. The vulnerability of local people to land investors is further undermined by poor governance at the national level and external politico-financial interest in favor of such investments. Local populations are vulnerable to organized campaigns of land acquisitions by multi-national companies. Proper legal and institutional frameworks are required to protect local interests in these land deals.     

Multifactor productivity growth and the Australian mining sector

A commonly used, but unadjusted, measure of Australian mining multifactor productivity (MFP) fell by about one‐third over the first decade of the mining boom, coinciding with very large increases in resource prices. Using growth accounting methods and our own adjustments, based on energy use and capital‐output lags to account for depletion effects we find (i) the Australian annual average MFP growth in mining was 2.5 per cent a year between 1985–1986 and 2009–2010 compared to ?0.65 per cent for the unadjusted measure and (ii) productivity growth was positive in the 2000s, albeit at a lower rate than in the 1990s. Our adjusted MFP growth measures at a state level and subsector level are greater than unadjusted productivity measures. In a complementary study using an econometric decomposition of mining MFP at a state level, we find no statistically significant effect of technological change on MFP growth in the sector, but positive and statistically significant effects of technical efficiency and scale over the period 1990–1991 to 2009–2010. Our results do not support specific policy interventions to increase productivity growth in the mining sector beyond appropriate incentives for resource exploration including the provision of precompetitive resource data.     

煤炭开采利益公平分配研究

长期以来,我国在资源开发尤其是煤炭开采利益的公平分配方面存在严重的问题;分析了我国煤炭开采利益分配冲突的存在及原因,试图构建煤炭开采利益分配新体系,以实现社会发展的"实质公平"。     

矿产资源开发经济关系研究

矿产资源勘查开发过程中的四种经济关系,即由矿业权出让行为产生了矿产资源所有者与矿产资源勘查开采主体之间的权利过渡经济关系和国家作为前期投资者与矿业权受让方的投资利益过渡经济关系,由矿产资源勘查开采行为产生了社会管理者与矿山生态环境破坏者之间的经济补偿关系和矿产资源所有者与矿产资源开采主体之间的因开采行为导致矿产资源耗竭的经济补偿关系。我国现行矿产资源税费体系存在的突出问题是:所调解的利益关系不清,有缺项;体系不完整,内部既有重叠又有欠缺;费率过低,相关参数设置不合理,缺乏弹性;利益分配不合理,欠缺向资源原产地倾斜的收益分配机制。我国矿产资源勘查开发的税费体系应是"一费一款一税一金":即探矿权采矿权使用费、探矿权采矿权价款、环境税、权利金。     

The Development of Aquaculture in Central Thailand: Domestic Demand versus Export-Led Production

Expansion of aquaculture in Central Thailand since the 1970s is intimately linked to growth in other sectors of the local and national economy, and to participation in global trade. Thailand's agro-industrialization has led to the diversification of agriculture in the Central Region and the co-development of aquaculture. Production of domestic aqua-products is largely positive for consumers, farmers and the environment. By contrast, intensive production of shrimp for export has been characterized by periods of boom and bust resulting from disease outbreaks and international competition. At the farm level this has translated into surges of profit followed by overcapitalization, debt and environmental degradation.     

Regional economic transformation: Changing land and resource access on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island

The West Coast region of New Zealand has experienced significant structural economic changes since the 1980s. These changes have been a result of state imposed land use restrictions that limited productivist activities such as logging and mining, which in turn have been overlain by the effects of changes in national and global resource demand. This has led to both job loss and local resentment to what is seen to be external political and environmental interference in the region. Such changes overlay on-going boom-and-bust cycles experienced in the region’s resource dependent communities and the state’s pursuit of neo-liberalism from the 1980s, leading to the loss of state support and employment in the region. Regional path-dependence and ‘lock-in’ centred on productivist activities and the slow realisation of the need to diversify the economy have not helped. The region has under-performed in comparison with national trends economically and demographically reflecting and reinforcing local path dependence. The gradual growth of the service and tourism economies marks a new use for land resources and slow structural economic change. However, in the absence of governance processes that allow for collaborative planning to resolve conflicts over future trajectories for the region, conflicts over land uses, resources and access are likely to persist.     

Understanding bioenergy conflicts: Case of a jatropha project in Kenya's Tana Delta

In recent years, conflicts related to tenure, management and utilization of natural resources, in particular bioenergy conflicts, are becoming increasingly common. Many bioenergy conflicts are related to plantation projects seeking to capitalize on the opportunity to profit from a combination of factors, centred on the enabling environment for biofuel plantation establishment found in many developing countries. This study analyses these and other related issues in a conflict in the Tana Delta in Kenya. The conflict is centred on a proposed 65,000 ha Jatropha curcas plantation for biodiesel by the Canadian company Bedford. Ethical Analysis, a conflict management and research tool, was employed to better understand the underlying conflict causes. Shortcomings in the technical feasibility studies and participatory planning processes were revealed, including a poor understanding of the different interests and values with regard to land tenure and traditional rights. While the adoption of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is proposed, also capacities and the regulatory framework need to be strengthened to improve transparency, coordination, impact assessment and investment security. The study proposes ways to manage the ongoing conflict and discusses its implications for bioenergy governance.