Looking into extractives with a resource use lense

Following the interesting webinar from which you could hopefuly take away pieces of knowledge, we will now delve into real life examples where Land Use planning approaches and practices were used to directly solve issues of sustainability around an extractive site.

But first we offer a short recap of the Institutional Resource Regime approach and its strenghts for investigating sustainable practices in the extractive sector.

An alternative view of sustainability

As far as management of natural resources is concerned, traditional environmental policies have fallen short in providing a framework that safeguards the sustainable use of resources while addressing multiple, and often conflicting, uses of the resources. The Institutional Resource Regime theoretical framework suggests a resource-based approach to sustainability, which shifts from a pollution restriction focus to safeguarding the renewal capacity of resources.

This can be achieved by coherently regulating all the uses of the resource within its environmental limits. Hence, IRR suggests a resource-based sustainability framework, as an alternative to a use/user based one. From this perspective, there is scope for prioritizing the environmental sustainability of the resource over the social and economic dimensions of sustainability, since the ecological sustainability of resource systems constitutes a necessary condition for the support of social and economic sustainability.

In line with Rockström et al.’s (Rockström et al., 2009) planetary boundaries concept, the IRR framework suggests that the sustainability of a resource system can only be guaranteed if all the users and beneficiaries jointly do not extract from a resource more than what its renewal capacities allow for (resource boundaries). Following that, there is scope for prioritizing the environmental sustainability of the resource over the social and economic dimensions of sustainability, since the ecological sustainability of resource systems constitutes a necessary condition for the support of social and economic sustainability.

Exploitation of a natural resource often leads to use rivalries and sometimes conflicts amongst users. The long-term solution to these conflicts involves a political process of defining rules that regulate these uses (J.-D. Gerber et al., 2009) . An institutional Regime (IR), in this context, refers to “all the formal rules governing resource uses in a given area” (J.-D. Gerber et al., 2009). In other words, an institutional regime refers to all rules and regulations governing the share of the resource quota amongst rival users.

IRR framework for non-renewable resources and its application to the extractives sector

We have already introduced this topic in Week 1, but here is a brief reminder: As IRR’s premise for sustainable management of resources is closely linked to safeguarding their renewal capacity; it seems from the outset that IRR framework is only applicable to renewable resources. Did you know that, currently, IRR on the use of non-renewable sources is a completely new field of application and research? Thus, it might offer many interesting new insights for practitioners on how to improve sustainable management of mineral resources!

Despite classifying as non-renewable resources, the discourse on sustainable mineral resource extraction can still unfold from a (renewable) resource sustainability perspective, since an increasing demand for minerals has its toll on renewable resources.

Overall, extractive activity is very dependent on renewable natural resources, such as water and land, for both direct uses, as input factors for production, and indirect uses, in terms of absorption of pollutants. Mining also influences 50 million km2 of Earth’s land surface, of which 8% are protected areas, 7% are key biodiversity areas and 16% are remaining wilderness; all of which are considered crucial for halting biodiversity loss (Sonter et al., 2020).

Thus, the question of how non-renewable resource use, such as mining, affect the reproduction capacity of renewables provides a rationale for taking an IRR lens to analyse the role of mineral extraction. Looking into the rules regulating resource use, we try to find out effects that institutional rules (public policies and property rights) that facilitate mineral extraction have on the renewable resources they utilize.

As a result, the identification of the institutional rules and its conditions for their sustainable management constitutes a scientific endeavour, as well as policy priority.

In this study, IRR framework is applied insofar as understanding the effects that institutional rules (public policies and property rights) that facilitate mineral extraction have on the renewable resources they utilize.

To make this more tangible for you, we look into sustainable management of extractives in two case studies, Spain and Sweden (metal mining and quarrying), in relation to their impact on renewable resources assessed at the scale of the extraction area affecting other resources.

Mineral extraction in four sites of the Boliden Area analysed in this study affect and/or rely on three renewable resources: nature and biodiversity, reindeer and water, as well as land, which albeit not a renewable resource, is a crucial resource, the use of which has a direct impact on renewables. Here, reindeer have been analysed as a resource in its own right, because although it is covered by biodiversity as an umbrella resource, it is also a key resource for the Sami people and is vested with unique social and legal (property rights) relevance.

So, we are wondering how an IRR approach investigate conflicts of mineral extraction and other forms of resource use, such as reindeer herding or biodiversity (species and habitats) in nature protected areas. Therefore, let us find out in the next step and dive into our case study to find practical implications of this approach.

In case you are interested in the results on the other three resource regimes (water, nature-biodiversity, land), please look into this report: SUMEX D3.2 Report on Policy Analysis.