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.     

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.     

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"。     

村庄下科学采煤的研究与探讨

科学合理地开采村庄下压煤是新老矿区提高经济、社会效益的重要问题,也是煤矿开采技术中探讨的重要理论和实践问题。村庄下采煤可用条带法开采、充填法开采、长壁多工作面协调开采、全柱式开采、极不充分开采法、双翼背向开采、村庄维护或建抗变形结构新村等七种开采方法。这七种开采方法各有其优势,也各有其劣势,应结合每个煤矿的具体情况和经济、技术条件,扬长避短。     

Economic vulnerability and regional implications of a low carbon emissions future

Climate change, as well as associated mitigation efforts, will substantially disrupt some economies. Seemingly inevitable market and policy changes will push economies to transition away from reliance on industries with higher carbon emissions and bring transient economic impacts, especially in regions that are currently heavily reliant on such industries. This situation is not unusual in a global context. To underpin better‐informed decisions that enable a smoother economic transition to a low‐emissions future, we developed a ‘latent economic vulnerability to emissions reduction’ (LEVER) index, which maps and explores regions that are more likely to be economically impacted from climate change mitigation. Thus, this paper provides an analysis and discussion of the potential regional implications of a future low‐emissions economy, with the analysis contextualised for the state of Queensland, Australia. Given this case study, the economic impacts and future of coal‐fired power stations, coal mining and renewable energy are discussed.  The LEVER index weighs the risk of high carbon economic exposure against the variability in carbon economic resilience from employment in low‐emission sectors across local economies. We find that between 3 and 6 per cent of Queensland regions are assessed as having a very high latent economic vulnerability to increased decarbonisation of industrial activities. To promote a smoother transition, these regions will require targeted investments and strategies to enable their transition towards lower carbon‐intensive systems, while maximising economic and social outcomes.     

A novel model to estimate the impact of Coal Seam Gas extraction on agro-economic returns

There is an ever growing demand for energy worldwide and the demand for gas alone is predicted to double between 2010 and 2035. This demand together with concurrent advances in drilling technologies caused the production of unconventional natural gas such as shale gas and coal seam gas (CSG), which is in the focus of this paper, to grow rapidly in the last decades. With the gas bearing coal seams extending across vast areas within their respective basins and with CSG production having to follow these seams through a network of production wells, pipelines and access roads, CSG activity affects large areas and therefore interferes with existing land uses, predominantly agriculture. For the eastern Australian Surat Basin and the southern Bowen Basin alone there are projected well numbers in excess of 15,000 to 20,000 between the years 2020 and 2030. The interference of CSG with agriculture on a large scale has raised concerns about the impact of CSG on farmland, food security, water resources and the socio-economic environment within the affected regions and beyond. This paper presents a newly developed spatial model which provides order of magnitude figures of the impact of CSG activity on gross economic returns of current agricultural land uses in a given region over the time of CSG production. The estimated gross figures do not account for any compensation payments received by farmers. The model is capable of accounting for a variation in a variety of parameters including impact frequency of distinct infrastructure elements, differences in soil types and associated varying responses of soil productivity, varying length of the CSG production phase and more. The model is flexible in that it can be transferred and applied in other regions as well. Based upon a literature review and given that CSG is an industry that started operating at larger scales relatively recently, we claim that the presented model is the first of its kind to provide these important agro-economic indicators.     

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.     

逐步衰老矿区吨煤收益发展规律数理预测模型

针对邢台矿区出现的矿区或矿井后备储量不足、优质资源逐渐枯竭的问题,通过多年的探索与实践,总结出一套有效提高资源回收率的措施,通过实施取得了良好的社会效益。采用灰色系统理论和回归分析经济模型对矿区煤炭吨煤收益及其随着社会经济发展而变化的规律进行了预测分析,得出了在当前条件下,无论是烟煤还是无烟煤的回收开采都能为企业带来良好的经济效益,并提出了以烟煤产量保障矿区经济效益的企业发展战略模式,为提高资源回收率措施的推广提供了理论支持。     

Incorporating biological regeneration into economic assessments of mining in forest regions

Assessments of the economic, environmental and social consequences of mining have usually produced an estimate of the commercial benefits that mining in the area would generate, with environmental costs being examined in physical terms only. A theoretical framework for calculating the threshold environmental value of an area (the minimum size of the environmental cost of mining required to make conservation the socially optimal choice) is developed, where both the potential mining benefits and the rate of biological regrowth following mine rehabilitation are known. Including the rate of biological regrowth allows for the calculation of a more meaningful figure, as the benefits generated by rehabilitation are explicitly considered.     

我国煤炭资源税改革效果、问题及对策研究

煤炭资源税的从价计征在提高煤炭资源使用效率、促进煤炭行业健康发展方面取得了一定的成果,对煤炭行业和地方财政都产生了一定的影响,但是同时也会伴随着诸如煤炭企业税负转嫁困难、资源回采率未与税额挂钩、特殊和稀缺煤类资源税偏低并且不统一等问题。建议：⑴通过增值税转型、提高煤炭资源的利用效率和煤炭产品的销售价格等方式解决煤炭企业税负转嫁问题;⑵让煤炭资源税与回采率挂钩,最终使企业回采率与资源税款成反比,即回采率越高,资源税款越少;⑶实行弹性税率,即根据经济形势及其他因素的变化,动态调整煤炭资源税率;同时在提高特殊和稀缺煤种资源税单位税额时进行适当调整。     

Evolutionary governance in mining: Boom and bust in peripheral communities in Sweden

This study investigates the consequences of dramatic price fluctuations on the global iron ore market between boom and bust for the Swedish communities Kiruna and Pajala, located above the polar circle, in the years 2006-2018. It focuses on the impact of the Swedish state’s reorientation towards neoliberal policies that have entailed reduced state involvement in peripheral communities still dependant on heavy industry. This reorientation was manifested in the Mineral Strategy presented by the liberal-conservative government in 2013, in which the state was prescribed a role as facilitator of investment of foreign and private capital in the Swedish mining sector, but not as an active owner or developer of mining enterprises. The neoliberalisation of Swedish mining has established a fundamental conflict of interests between communities whose economic, social and cultural wellbeing depends on long-term state commitment, and the state whose main interests are aimed at global capital flows rather than the maintenance of industrial production in peripheral regions. This conflict remained latent as long as global mineral prices were high, but as boom turned to bust around 2012, it was activated in a way that highlighted asymmetric relations of power and economic development between the sparsely populated and resource-rich northern parts of the country and the densely populated south.     

乌海市煤炭资源开发与矿区环境保护

通过对乌海市煤碳开发中产生的滑坡、塌陷、煤层自燃、瓦斯爆炸等十几种主要地质灾害造成的水土流失、土壤、草场、水资源、植被地质环境受损,带来的矿渣、废水、废气、矿区环境污染问题的分析,提出了应用循环经济理念,指导煤碳资源综合开发利用,延伸煤碳产业链,实现矿区固体废弃物的零排放和矿区污水、废气的零排放,全面实行矿山生态经济管理,积极进行环境整治,立体式复垦、恢复地貌、绿化、美化矿区,实施植被恢复和生态重建工程的总体战略构想。     

煤炭资源性城市产业结构调整目标的选择

煤炭资源性城市是依托煤炭资源建立起来的 ,在国民经济发展过程中发挥了重要的作用。由于煤炭资源的可耗竭性 ,因此该类城市必然要进行产业结构的调整 ,实现经济的可持续发展。结合煤炭资源性城市的特殊性 ,产业结构调整的核心是调整其生产能力结构。目标是摆脱对煤炭资源的依赖 ,建立新的主导产业 ,实现对环境资源的保护。     

基于社会责任的绿色矿山政策取向

矿山企业社会责任层次的划分应突出矿业的特殊性,按照利益相关者和外部性的双重视角,将节约资源和保护环境分别作为社会责任体系中的一个层次。据此构建的矿山企业社会责任体系中,经济责任和法律责任是责任体系的基础支撑部分;环境责任和资源责任构成了责任体系的主体部分;而伦理责任和慈善责任是矿山企业在优先落实资源与环境责任基础上更高的责任层次。将绿色矿山基本条件与矿山企业社会责任结合起来,建立社会责任与基本条件矩阵,为绿色矿山政策制定提供分析工具。通过分析对比,资源与环境责任、伦理与慈善责任是矿山企业持续发展面临的现实要求,而且其行为结果均具有明显的社会性,成为绿色矿山鼓励政策抉择的重要取向。     

Exploiting comparative advantage in agriculture and resources: the way forward for Small Island States

Using Papua New Guinea as a case study, this paper investigates the macroeconomic and sectoral impacts of various developments in its agricultural and resource sector. It was found that commodity booms from 2004 to 2009 and the proposed large liquefied natural gas project increase output growth substantially but with Dutch disease consequences. The output expansion of the agricultural and fishery sectors on the other hand has limited positive impacts and the challenge lies in raising the productivity growth in these sectors and the better use of foreign aid. Lastly, the optimal policy strategy for sustainable development in the agricultural, fishery and resource sectors lies in the packaging of appropriate complementary policies (both institutional and economic) that support one another and the coherent implementation of these policies in a timely manner.     

SOME GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM EFFECTS OF MINING GROWTH ON THE ECONOMY

The effects of mining sector growth are analysed with a five-sector general equilibrium model. The effect of the mineral discoveries is to cause the agricultural sector to contract, but to cause the import-competing sector to expand by a small amount–a result which differs from Gregory's (1976) analysis. However, a mining boom caused by increases in external demand, rather than by new discoveries, leads to a different set of results. Some likely effects of the boom on the growth rates of the different sectors in the economy are reported. Finally, the effects of an export tax on minerals are considered.     

峡江县“十一五”林地和立木价值核算

依据国内外研究成果,目前开展森林资源价值核算的目的主要有两类情况:一是从改革现行的国民经济核算体系出发,试图建立绿色GDP综合核算体系,其中包括森林资源及其环境因子核算;二是从客观反映森林的多种价值出发,研究森林的各种物质效益和环境生态效益、社会效益,致力于树立一种与可持续发展理念相吻合的森林价值观,为森林保护和利用提供科学依据。介绍峡江县自然社会经济状况,对峡江县"十一五"林地和立木资源进行价值核算,以供参考。     

The Struggle to Sustain Agriculture in EU Southern Neighbourhood Partners: Improving Data and Policies

The agricultural sector in the EU Southern Neighbourhood Partners (SNP) is struggling to respond to sustainability challenges. It needs stronger policies to deliver balanced sustainability outcomes in economic, social and environmental terms. Based on recent information and a structured assessment of the impacts of prevailing public policies on the sustainability of agriculture in Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Turkey, carried out within the Sustainmed project ( https://sustainmed.iamm.fr ), we conclude that several factors contribute to the struggles in strengthening sustainability functions of agriculture in these countries. In the main, there is a lack of policy coherence toward sustainability uncovered by the dual, unbalanced consideration given to different sustainability factors in the study countries: pure economic factors largely prevail over factors related to resource conservation and social and cultural values, these latter factors being a precondition for long-term economic growth. Consequently, there is a genuine need for a more consistent vision of sustainability issues in future policy agendas, including better data systems and specific policies to incentivise sustainable agriculture in the SNP; as the challenge over the coming decades in these countries will be to increase agricultural production and productivity while at the same time managing natural resources sustainably. Findings can guide policymakers and other stakeholders in the agricultural sector to identify pathways towards sustaining agriculture in the SNP.     

Coping with change in rural landscapes: The psychological stress of rural residents experiencing unconventional gas developments

Rural landscapes in many parts of the world are experiencing increasing pressure from competing uses. One particular use, unconventional natural gas extraction, has received considerable attention over the past decade owing to its rapid growth and associated impacts on rural landscapes. This study examined how a sample of Australian rural residents experienced the processes of psychological stress induced by a coal seam gas project that created perceived undesirable changes to resources they valued. Its effect on residents’ psychological well-being slowly unfolded over several years. We deconstructed the stress processes by investigating primary appraisal, secondary appraisal, and subsequent emotional and coping responses guided by the cognitive theory of stress and coping. Primary appraisal measured how the impacts of change on personal and communal resources were assessed while secondary appraisal gauged the options available to individuals to cope. Our results show that when primary appraisal alerts individuals of resource loss, negative emotions are more likely experienced. Such an appraisal directly drives engagement in eight coping strategies classified into four categories: problem-focused, support-based, emotion-focused, and maladaptive coping. It also motivates coping indirectly except for one strategy of emotion-focused coping mediated by negative emotions. While secondary appraisal also directly contributes to four coping strategies that each pertains to one of the four coping categories, it has no effect on negative emotions and four remaining coping strategies that are emotion-focused and maladaptive. These findings shed light on our understanding of the psychological consequences of undesirable change of land use on rural communities. Implications for land use policy are discussed with an emphasis on the need for considering a holistic perspective on the multi-dimensional nature of rural resources valued by community residents and establishing procedural fairness and legitimacy for proposed changes.