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Background to Mining Issues
Extractive and energy industries make up a large proportion of the most destructive and unsustainable projects funded by international finance, trade and corporate activity. While standards have improved, there are significant gaps in policy, implementation and monitoring which permits detrimental projects to go ahead, and excludes the perspectives and needs of impacted communities from being integrated into decision making, marginalising and increasing the poverty and disadvantage of often poor rural populations.
Natural resources, including minerals continue to be unsustainably extracted without the consent of their traditional custodians, degrading and irreversibly impacting surrounding natural resources, irreversibly impacting our natural heritage and the source of livelihood for communities who rely upon these environments and resources for their survival.
A diverse array of international institutions, including private financiers, export credit agencies and corporations have increasingly signed up to common standards embodied in the IFC guidelines and safeguard policies and other multilateral standard setting bodies such as the United Nations and the OECD, yet implementation of these standards is not effectively preventing destructive outcomes for environments or local communities.
At the same time, there are efforts to weaken existing standards to make accountability of these actors more difficult. Ongoing reform and improvements of these standards and the processes for their full implementation is urgently needed to counter the negative impacts of many large scale industrial developments in the majority world, and to ensure that these actors are accountable to the communities which are directly impacted by their activities.
For more information, please contact:
Techa Beaumont
Executive Director
Workphone: +61 2 9557 9019
Mobile: +61 (0) 409 318 406
Created: 13 Apr 2005 | Last updated: 13 Apr 2005
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