Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Thesis Format

Monograph

Degree

Master of Laws

Program

Law

Supervisor

Steyn, Elizabeth

Abstract

Large scale mining projects generate highly variable outcomes. Proponents of mining cite benefits including job creation and revenue generation, while critics point to adverse social and economic impacts borne by mining-proximate communities. Community-based concerns about mining operations have raised ethical and social justice considerations relating to human-rights and consent. Community development agreements (CDAs) have emerged as an increasingly common tool to address such concerns and facilitate the delivery of tangible benefits from mining operations to affected communities. The effectiveness of CDAs, however, varies widely depending on the negotiated provisions and their implementation. This work contributes to the understanding of CDAs by refining a comprehensive evaluation framework that can be used to empirically analyze CDAs. The framework is applied to CDAs from Australia, Canada, Papua New Guinea, Ghana, Greenland, Mongolia, and Sierra Leone, following which exploratory statistical analyses are conducted to highlight novel insights that can be drawn from its application.

Summary for Lay Audience

The mining industry is considered to be both necessary and controversial. On one hand, the current structure of our society demands the extraction of minerals. On the other, large mining projects can generate highly inequitable outcomes, with affected communities bearing the weight of social and environmental costs. Community-based concerns about mining operations have raised ethical and social justice considerations relating to human-rights and consent, which generate conflict between project proponents, government, and local communities. Written contracts between companies and communities, known as community development agreements (CDAs), have emerged as an increasingly common tool to address such concerns and facilitate the delivery of tangible benefits from mining operations to affected communities. Despite their increasing prevalence, the use and effectiveness of CDAs to keep the peace and generate positive outcomes for communities remains a controversial topic. Questions are numerous and far reaching but real answers are few and vague. Are CDAs effective at generating positive outcomes? What contextual factors are important for CDA success? What does a well-drafted CDA look like? How are we to evaluate these agreements? To date, these questions have scarcely been addressed by the literature in an objective and empirical manner. This work contributes to the understanding of CDAs by refining a comprehensive evaluation framework that can be used to empirically analyze CDAs. The framework is applied to CDAs from Australia, Canada, Papua New Guinea, Ghana, Greenland, Mongolia, and Sierra Leone, following which exploratory statistical analyses are conducted to highlight novel insights that can be drawn from its application. For the first time, comprehensive comparative and empirical analyses of CDAs across multiple jurisdictions are conducted, drawing specific attention to the strengths and weaknesses of different CDAs, and the importance of external, contextual considerations.

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