A mining legacies lens: from externalities to wellbeing in extractive industries

Abstract

Mining has contributed to human development and technological prowess over several millennia. Accompanying this practical contribution has been a growing set of interrelated impacts that society has slowly began to acknowledge. The accumulation of externalities—or impacts on people and planet—are referred to as mining legacies, denoting both current and long-lived outcomes, ranging from pollution to community fragmentation to intergenerational embodiment. Mining legacies have origins, causes and impacts in both the physical process of mining and the industry's complex role in society, where it has been integral to colonial expansion, imperialism and global capitalism. This synthesis of the special issue Mining Legacies: Still breaking new ground explores the concept of mining legacies as a term capable of capturing a more expansive understanding of interrelated and complex impacts on society, where heterogeneous modes of existence clash with the dominant Western mining paradigm and global, capitalist development. Articulating a mining legacy lens contributes to orthodox debates on mining policy and managing specific impacts, while also challenging understandings of the underlying values, potential benefits, and externalities of extractive-led development. This synthesis also offers deeper insights into community agency and resistance as well as wellbeing and governance, also offering up possibilities for transforming negative legacies.