9.4 Challenge 2: Environmental and Social Impacts

The first refers to a multiuser approach in which several companies in a region develop or use common infrastructure. This can lead to economies of scale among the various companies and increase tax revenues to the government. The second refers to a multipurpose activity, where nonmining users share the infrastructure with the mining company. This also offers efficiencies in terms of access to water, energy, transportation, and telecommunications services, all of value to economic development in the region.

The viability of a shared-use concept is dependent on ownership structures. Companies that have built their own infrastructure or bought it from a predecessor are unlikely to be willing to share it. For infrastructure that is strategic to the extractives operation, such as ports or railways, a shared-use approach may constrain capacity or entail high costs of coordination. Where such infrastructure is nonstrategic or less so, flexibility can be expected.

An alternative model of ownership would involve ownership by a third party or a state-owned company. The government will be better able to limit exclusive access to a particular company. The trade-off is that the project may be developed more slowly as a result. A government demand for such access is also likely to lead to a less favorable deal on fiscal terms.

It is important to note the differences in opportunity between various minerals. For example, a bulk commodity such as coal or iron ore will require the development of railways, while gold extraction will require only roads but correspondingly more access to water resources. Similar differences will arise with respect to energy demands. This will have an impact on demand patterns for third party access to infrastructure.

9.4 CHALLENGE 2: ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL IMPACTS

The conventional view is that the environmental and social footprint of mining is greater than that of the hydrocarbons sector. With the rapid expansion of the hydrocarbons sector in the early 21st century into many new countries around the world, both on land as well as in offshore waters, this view needs revision. During this period, many oil and gas companies have joined the international mining industry in designing and publicizing best practices in these areas. Sometimes the results have even been published jointly.

In the following subsections, the range of potential impacts are enumerated, first with respect to environmental subjects and second with respect to social issues. In each case, those which are peculiar to oil and gas, and those peculiar to mining are noted, even though in the real world overlaps exist, and where possible these have been highlighted. Also noted are the different points in the life cycle of an investment at which they are likely to materialize and/ or at which efforts need to be undertaken to mitigate and prevent them. In practice, environmental and social impacts will often be managed together rather than separately, but for analytical purposes, they are on the whole treated separately in the sections that follow. A legally binding approach to management of environmental risks with penalties for noncompliance is common, but for social issues this is less usual. The reason is that environmental risks are well understood and measurable, so that the compliance criteria can be clearly defined. Social impacts however, tend to be more complex and as a result are not always subject to quantification or empirically measured compliance criteria.

The environment

Good practice in managing environmental impacts of extractives activity involves the continued and dynamic development of an overall sector policy framework. An important part of that framework should concern how to address social and environmental impacts, health and safety, and the interests of internal stakeholders such as employees and contractors. Protection of vulnerable groups such as children should also play a role in the overall policy framework.

Identification of the likely or actual impacts of an oil, gas, or mining project is clearly one of the first orders of business, since the goal will be to avoid or at least minimize negative impacts and to maximize the potential positive impacts. Some impacts may be readily defined, while others are less known or are contingent on what may actually occur in the affected areas, and indeed they are dependent on whether an initial investment moves on from the exploration stage to full development. Even so, the process of identifying impacts is generally more straightforward for environmental than social concerns because they are at present better understood. Social impacts are more complex and elusive, and the tools for addressing them less tested than those for environmental impacts.

Environmental impacts take place along the entire EI Value Chain, but they will vary in their impacts according to the life of the project. Depending on the kind and size of extractives activity, and also their location and the

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