Sustainable development and mining: Opportunity or threat to the industry?

A five-year study of four resource extraction projects indicates that: articulating a clear, honest, transparent and defensible vision of the values that lie at the heart of resource extraction projects is crucial to building public confidence in resource extraction industries. commitment to principles of sustainable development has an important role to play in reducing conflict and building public confidence and trust in companies proposing or engaged in resource extraction activities. These two observations provide a key to discerning the way ahead for the mining industry They also pose significant challenges. Mining is widely seen as an unsustainable industry. Historically, the industry has nourished this perception by defining its environmental social and economic responsibilities narrowly. These observations, however, are not insurmountable obstacles. Mining is not, in principle, incompatible with environmental social and economic sustainability. Defending this view is the central task of this paper.