MINING AND ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY: LOCAL AND NATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

Sustainable development is a multidimensional concept--more specfically, three dimensional. It requires, broadly speaking, activities that simultaneously sustain and enhance: environmental quality, economic wellbeing, and social justice. Much recent discussion of mining and sustainable development has focused on how mining affects the natural environment (the first dimension) and local communities and indigenous peoples (important parts of the third dimension). But less attention has been paid to the economic dimension of sustainability. Thus this paper focuses on sustaining the economic benefits of mining. This form of sustainability requires a look at mineral revenues and how they are used. More specifically, it requires appropriate investment in activities that generate benefits long after a mine has been depleted, including education, health care, and scientific research and development.