Poverty in the Midst of Plenty: Aboriginal People, the ‘Resource Curse’ and Australia’s Mining Boom (original) (raw)
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Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement
Mining generates risk of environmental and social harm for Indigenous peoples but can also generate substantial revenues for them, creating opportunities for community development in a context where economic and social disadvantage is the norm. Especially as mining revenues should, in part, compensate for mining's negative social and environmental impacts, it is vital that mineral taxation on Indigenous lands reflect a careful assessment of appropriate tax mechanisms and a matching of these with community priorities. Yet little has been written that could serve as a guide for Indigenous decision-makers. This article contributes to an understanding of the issues and choices facing Indigenous communities in designing mineral taxation regimes, by focusing on the question of economic risk. Risk arises as a key variable in choosing or designing a mineral taxation regime in three ways. Different approaches to mineral taxation are inherently more or less risky, in the sense that they are more or less certain to generate tax revenues. A second aspect of risk involves the degree of economic certainty or predictability associated with different types of commodities and projects. Third, the risk tolerance of Indigenous peoples and communities can vary significantly. We show how Indigenous groups can integrate and address these different dimensions of risk, by recognizing the 'risk consequences' associated with different approaches to mineral taxation and choosing an approach that reflects, as fully as possible, the group's risk tolerance.
Society & Natural Resources, 1997
Indigenous people and their communities are often critical actors in resource development networks dominated by large-scale private and public sector organizations. Development policies and projects have often been contentious in Australia because lands on which development has occurred or been proposed are frequently areas of spiritual and traditional significance to Aboriginal people. Conflicts over development are therefore intense, occur in the context of a history of social and political exploitation of Aboriginal people, and focus on issues of symbolic value, local autonomy, power, and participation in planning. This article applies social assessment models recognizing resource development as a power network to the analysis of the social impacts of development and focuses on the political involvement of local communities as basic to social justice. Research results suggest that social impact assessments should include assessments of community competency to participate in corporate resource development networks and should study the institutional basis of local participation.
The onshore development of coal seam gas (CSG) is expanding rapidly in Australia. The industry's interaction with Aboriginal people has entailed 35 Indigenous Land Use Agreements in the State of Queensland in the period 2010–2013. Though the mining sector and, to some extent, conventional oil and gas development, are the source of much of our knowledge about agreement making in extractive industries, CSG extraction presents distinctive challenges. The industry has a distributed footprint on the landscape and multiple megaprojects are creating new forms of infrastructure to extract and handle the gas. This development is occurring during a period of evolution in law and regulation. The issues associated with agreement making and implementation that arise in this context are addressed here as seen from Aboriginal and practitioner viewpoints. Drawing on qualitative interviews, participant observation, applied native title research and indicative legal cases, we address the significance of capability challenges, the need for improved industry understanding of Aboriginal cultural politics, more explicit attention to factionalism among Indigenous groups, and the requirement for greater professional collaboration among all parties. CSG development can be seen to have accelerated the exposure of the resources sector more generally to the complexities of agreements with Indigenous people.
2016
How might we characterise indigenous responses to large scale mining projects in Australia? Certain aspects of negotiations with the wider society receive considerable public attention- in particular, the matters of protecting culturally significant land areas, environmental risks and monetary compensation [see, e.g., Connell and Howitt 1991; Howitt et aL 1996]. This paper shifts the fbcus to a consideration of internal deliberations among Aboriginal people; we seek to investigate the social processes whereby mining developments are articulated with indigenous intellectual traditions about the significance ofland. In Queensland's Gulf Country (Figure 1), Aboriginal participation during the past decade in various "site clearance " surveys and especially negotiations over Century Zinc Mine, have prompted both positive and negative local reactions to resource development projects. While some people have sought actively to lock into place a regime of potential benefits fr...
The Extractive Industries and Society, 2014
The onshore development of coal seam gas (CSG) is expanding rapidly in Australia. The industry's interaction with Aboriginal people has entailed 35 Indigenous Land Use Agreements in the State of Queensland in the period 2010-2013. Though the mining sector and, to some extent, conventional oil and gas development, are the source of much of our knowledge about agreement making in extractive industries, CSG extraction presents distinctive challenges. The industry has a distributed footprint on the landscape and multiple megaprojects are creating new forms of infrastructure to extract and handle the gas. This development is occurring during a period of evolution in law and regulation. The issues associated with agreement making and implementation that arise in this context are addressed here as seen from Aboriginal and practitioner viewpoints. Drawing on qualitative interviews, participant observation, applied native title research and indicative legal cases, we address the significance of capability challenges, the need for improved industry understanding of Aboriginal cultural politics, more explicit attention to factionalism among Indigenous groups, and the requirement for greater professional collaboration among all parties. CSG development can be seen to have accelerated the exposure of the resources sector more generally to the complexities of agreements with Indigenous people.
Community Development Journal, 2013
Research on a range of agreements between Indigenous people and extractive industries suggests that equitable benefits from such activity on Indigenous land are rare. In Central Australia, the Central Land Council has piloted a new approach to generating benefits from land use agreements by establishing a community development unit and encouraging Indigenous traditional owners to apply some of the income from land use agreements with mining companies and similar parties to community development activities. This paper discusses the variety of community development projects this unit is undertaking with traditional owners and Aboriginal community members, and the challenges it is facing as it tries to utilize community development principles in its projects. It indicates some of the issues that may need to be considered in government policy which seeks to assist Indigenous landholders gain optimum benefit from land-related payments. In particular, the paper demonstrates that the priorities of Indigenous people to support and promote social and cultural activities, including maintaining micro-communities (outstations) on homelands, may conflict with government views as to how to 'optimize benefits' from land use agreements.
Impact and Benefit Agreements: A Contentious Issue for Environmental and Aboriginal Justice
Impact and benefit agreements (IBAs) have become a common part of a standard package of agreements negotiated between an industrial proponent and a representative aboriginal organization. Among other things, IBAs recognize aboriginal peoples' interests with the land and parallel more broadly with the corporate social responsibility phenomena. IBAs seek to establish a bond based on consultation and support of both parties in a mineral development scenario. Challenges facing IBAs include their confidential nature and their relationship to conventional environmental assessment (EA). IBAs go beyond the regulatory and advisory EA processes and often find themselves in conflict due to overlapping objectives and blurred boundaries. IBAs can perpetuate injustices if benefits are not equally distributed to the community or if monitoring and follow-up on behalf of both parties are not continuous. To consider both challenges and opportunities, brief descriptions and comparison of IBAs and EAs are discussed and questions regarding the advantages of IBAs are considered.