Mining and development : examining the effectiveness of mining company community development intervention in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Development Studies at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand

This thesis explores the effectiveness of mining company contributions to development within the gold mining communities of Lihir and Simberi islands, in New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG). More specifically, it analyses the extent to which forms of community development intervention undertaken on Lihir Island by Newcrest Mining Ltd, and on Simberi Island by St Barbara Ltd, actually support meaningful forms of development. This has been achieved through the use of development ethics (Goulet 1995) as a conceptual research framework, which when applied in research practice, gives priority to the wellbeing of those whose realities may be ignored, misread or marginalised within the neoliberal realm of development. This research is based on a total of four months of fieldwork undertaken on Lihir and Simberi islands. It draws on community narratives to frame the relevance of human wellbeing, human rights and inclusive development as development ethics within the research context. This development ethics research lens facilitates discussion about the meaningfulness of development intervention from a morally-informed community development perspective. Underpinned by a locally contextualised appreciation of what human wellbeing and meaningful development means on Lihir and Simberi islands (which results in the exposition of a set of local Community Wellbeing and Development Rights), a critical review of the practice and governance of development intervention within each Island community is then detailed. The analysis of development interventions then proceeds using firstly an evaluation of practices within a human rights lens, and secondly consideration of inclusive development outcomes relative to Newcrest's and St Barbara’s development related rhetoric. The resulting account of mining company community development intervention is critical, but ultimately hopeful. This hopefulness reflects the hope of customary landowners that mining will one day lead to meaningful development benefits. The analysis from this development ethics lens reveals insights into the promotion of social justice through the delivery of mining company development interventions. It is argued that mining companies have the opportunity to enhance a set of locally significant and internationally recognised human rights that are important to the wellbeing and development of customary landowners. Although, in some instances, mining company performance is falling short with respect to the enhancement of these human rights, it is argued that the enhancement of Community Wellbeing and Development Rights exists as a potential means for mining companies to add value to host communities. However, if such a development programme is to be meaningful to customary landowners, it must also advance equity and fairness. If mining companies fail to navigate such complexities, this thesis contends that mining, and forms of mining company community development intervention, will likely do more harm to communities than good

Building community resilience in mine impacted communities : a study on delivery of health services in Papua New Guinea : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Development Studies at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

The purpose of this study was to explore the building of Community Resilience in mine-impacted communities in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The study aimed to establish the general relationship between community resilience, community capitals and the delivery of health services. It investigated the delivery of health services in three mining communities in PNG to see how these services contribute to or detract from the building of resilience. The study investigated relevant models of community resilience from the literature, and how the way policy functions in PNG can be related to these models. The study also developed a way of quantifying the impact of mining on health service delivery (through the use of community capitals) and the building of resilience in these communities. Furthermore, the thesis develops an indigenous, Melanesian-centric ‘Bilum Framework’ approach to resilience to create greater understanding of how resilience in the mining communities can be strengthened through improved access to health services. Three mining communities were selected as case studies, each representing a different stage of mining: (i) the beginning; (ii) the operational; and, (iii) post-mine closure. A mixed method approach comprising both quantitative and qualitative methods was used to collect data for this study. A survey questionnaire was designed to collect views of community members who accessed health services in their respective communities. Results from the survey questionnaire were converted to proxy indicators and led to the development of a Community Resilience Index (CRI) to provide a measure of resilience in each community. The qualitative research methods included document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and purposive observations. Document analysis was important in reviewing relevant policy documents and other literature to link theories to the experiences of the people while the latter methods contributed to describing people’s encounters in accessing health services. Analysis showed inconsistencies in the levels of resilience in these communities that varied with the stages of mining: both the beginning and post- mine closure stages demonstrated significantly lower levels of community resilience than the operational phase. Findings from the research indicated a lack of access to health services – a key influence in building resilience – is the result a range of factors including insufficient finances, weak sector governance, and the need for infrastructure and transport. The Bilum Framework is proposed as an approach that allows decision-makers to target assistance to strengthen and support specific community capitals and hence more effectively build community resilience in the mining communities in PNG

Corporate Social Responsibility and the Mining Sector in Southern Africa: A Focus on Mining in Malawi, South Africa and Zambia

The research conducted by the Bench Marks Foundation on mining in Southern provides SADC governments, mining companies and local mining community stakeholders with information and guidance on issues to consider in the process of empowerment and sustainable development through corporate social responsibility. At the same time it also alerts the global world of the human rights shortfalls that are being practised in the SADC mining communities

The politics of the doorstep : female survival strategies and the legacy of the miners’ strike 1984–85.

This paper considers the legacy of continuing activism of women in the North East of England who organized in support of the 1984-85 miners' strike. It refers to the traditional responsibility of women in mining localities for the maintenance of neighbourhood and kin relations and using the example of a key activist in one ex-mining village, it argues that the values associated with 'mining community' remain relevant as a reference point for a self-conscious, politicized reshaping of local relationships in post-industrial conditions. The material basis for this self-conscious approach has shifted from the masculine sphere of mining work and its associated community institutions to the feminized sphere of location and neighbourhood

Fighting for Pollution Cleanup in a Company Town: Silver Valley People's Action Coalition

Barbara Miller and a coalition of local activists, members of the Silver Valley People's Action Coalition (SVPAC), address the environmental and health consequence of 100 years of mining in Idaho's Silver Valley. They are up against the physical damage wrought by lead poisoning as well as community members' deep reluctance to speak out against the mining companies that had such a hold on the community

Managing rivers in Ghanaian small scale mining communities : a case study in Amansie Central District, Ghana : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree: Masters in Environmental Management, Massey University, Turitea, New Zealand

Water is a natural capital asset that must be preserved and sustained. In Ghana, rivers are critical and important source of water for the Ghanaian economy albeit with very poor and challenging sustainable management practices. This paper presents the findings of a study undertaken to assess mining and water pollution in Amansie Central District, Ghana. The quality of Ghana’s endowed water resources is increasingly threatened as industrial activities including, small scale mining continue to expand. Small scale mining operations releases high quantities of sediments, toxic chemicals, and other contaminants into water bodies that have currently damaged most Ghanaian riverine systems. In particular, this is more alarming with the avalanche number of numerous mining operations that majority of such operations are unauthorized. In addition to sampling respondent’s perceptions on small scale mining; its impacts and regulation in Amansie Central District, the study prescribes interventions that can assist in mitigating the negative impacts of small scale mining on community endowed water resources. Significant environmental performance and improved water quality can be achieved within the small scale mining sector if compulsory laws on protecting and improving water quality are adopted and adequately monitored and enforced and if government involve traditional rulers in mining regulatory frameworks to regulate unauthorized mining and to monitor community environmental performance

Incremental Community Mining in Location-based Social Network

A social network can be defined as a set of social entities connected by a set of social relations. These relations often change and differ in time. Thus, the fundamental structure of these networks is dynamic and increasingly developing. Investigating how the structure of these networks evolves over the observation time affords visions into their evolution structure, elements that initiate the changes, and finally foresee the future structure of these networks. One of the most relevant properties of networks is their community structure – set of vertices highly connected between each other and loosely connected with the rest of the network. Subsequently networks are dynamic, their underlying community structure changes over time as well, i.e they have social entities that appear and disappear which make their communities shrinking and growing over time. The goal of this paper is to study community detection in dynamic social network in the context of location-based social network. In this respect, we extend the static Louvain method to incrementally detect communities in a dynamic scenario following the direct method and considering both overlapping and non-overlapping setting. Finally, extensive experiments on real datasets and comparison with two previous methods demonstrate the effectiveness and potential of our suggested method

DAMEWARE - Data Mining & Exploration Web Application Resource

Astronomy is undergoing through a methodological revolution triggered by an unprecedented wealth of complex and accurate data. DAMEWARE (DAta Mining & Exploration Web Application and REsource) is a general purpose, Web-based, Virtual Observatory compliant, distributed data mining framework specialized in massive data sets exploration with machine learning methods. We present the DAMEWARE (DAta Mining & Exploration Web Application REsource) which allows the scientific community to perform data mining and exploratory experiments on massive data sets, by using a simple web browser. DAMEWARE offers several tools which can be seen as working environments where to choose data analysis functionalities such as clustering, classification, regression, feature extraction etc., together with models and algorithms.Comment: User Manual of the DAMEWARE Web Application, 51 page