DEVELOPING nations’ inexperience in the establishment of sustainable mining industries has meant some are missing out on the benefits afforded by new mining projects.
Director of the University of Western Australia’s International Mining for Development Centre, Ian Satchwell, told WA Business News some countries lacked the skills required to negotiate with miners.
The centre held a roundtable meeting in Perth last week with representatives from all over the globe – including developing countries in Africa and South America.
Mr Satchwell said a major concern expressed was that policy and government officials in less-developed countries didn’t have significant experience working with mining companies, and were missing out on potential benefits.
“They’re often getting suboptimal outcomes because they lack the ability to negotiate good win-win deals,” Mr Satchwell said.
“They may be getting less from their resources than they should or could, or they could be overdoing it and are not attracting the investment that they need.
“Another possibility is that regional communities don’t know enough about mining and so are not supporting it; unless companies and governments have a social licence to operate it’s unlikely that mining operations are going to be sustainable.”
The centre, which is run in collaboration with the University of Queensland, was established in October last year with $31 million of funding through AusAID.
Its work involves establishing mining legislation and policies around investment attraction, project approvals, environment regulation and community engagement.
Mr Satchwell said even countries that had good policies and regulation didn’t necessarily have the human experience to back it up.
To help rectify the situation, the centre has committed to establishing educational programs to improve the level of experience.
“We’ll work on building that human capability predominantly mid-range and senior public servants, NGOs, and universities,” Mr Satchwell said.
The centre’s activities have captured the attention of Canadian authorities, which wanted a similar organisation set up to collaborate with those working out of Australia.
“There’s far more demand out there for what we know and what we can do than what we can provide – so we will, of course, collaborate,” Mr Satchwell said.
