The world in which mining must make its way today is a vastly different place to what it was just a few decades ago. It is now operating in a much more regulated and challenging context.
The reasons are not hard to understand. The negative environmental legacy of the mining sector lives on in many countries including South Africa. Globally, this is still a common basis for many communities to oppose mining. The sector’s social impact has also been variable, often leaving little behind it in the way of economic sustainability.
In recent decades, however, the industry’s responsiveness has been generally encouraging – paving the way to generating increasingly positive impacts in mining countries. These extend beyond the more visible benefits of adding to job creation and government revenue, to the frequently unseen effects of promoting good governance and legal frameworks for economic development.
Mining has historically proved to be a powerful pioneer industry in many countries around the world, and is still playing that role around Africa. A key aspect of being an early entrant into an evolving economy is that mining companies require the host country to provide and enforce ‘the rules of the game’. This in turn needs regulatory institutions within the state to make policy and apply laws and regulations.
Read the full article in Mining Weekly
