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Mining is an anthropogenic activity that creates both positive and negative impacts on society and the environment. Governmental authorities play an important role in managing mining activities throughout a project's life cycle. The concession granting process is a common mechanism applied at the early stage of every mining project to regulate and balance the positive and negative results. Inefficient decision-making in this process can lead to short- and long-term problems with extensive negative impacts. Thus, governments need to evaluate and ensure that a new mining project is worth developing before approving it. This study develops an assessment framework that will provide information for the Thai government for a better decision-making performance in relation to the development of new mining projects. The development of this assessment framework is based on Buddhist principles, which are the foundation of Thai values and national policies. It will help identify and overcome the weaknesses of the current assessment approaches which are driven by an emphasis on self-interest and the influence of reductionism within the concept of sustainable development. The assessment framework considers the necessity of mining projects and the negative impacts of these projects, each of which is determined by a set of key risks and anticipated impacts of the proposed projects on the main stakeholders arranged in a hierarchy. The project's worthiness is presented as a development priority. The case of underground potash mining in Bamnet Narong, Thailand is used as an example for the application of the new assessment framework. The assessment results confirm the applicability of the framework and provide information that can support decision-making during the approval process. They can also be used by the Thai authorities as well as by investors in order to manage the risks and impacts of projects at later stages.

Overview of China's energy sector and the coal subsector. Profile of Luan Coal Industrial Company. The project will contribute to: a) increasing coal production by about 4.5 mtpy by the early 1990s; b) transferring technology in mine design, engineering and construction; c) introducing modern coal washing technology; and d) fostering improved management techniques for project scheduling, monitoring and cost control. The project will finance construction of the Changcun mine. Project costs and financing plan. ICB procurement: plan and equipment. Statistics, 1984-2007. (Econom. Voorlichtingsdienst)

This entry has been realised in the framework of the H2020-MSCA-RISE-2018 project "LoGov - Local Government and the Changing Urban-Rural Interplay". LoGov aims to provide solutions for local governments that address the fundamental challenges resulting from urbanisation. To address this complex issue, 18 partners from 17 countries and six continents share their expertise and knowledge in the realms of public law, political science, and public administration. LoGov identifies, evaluates, compares, and shares innovative practices that cope with the impact of changing urban-rural relations in five major local government areas: (1) local responsibilities and public services, (2) local financial arrangements, (3) structure of local government, (4) intergovernmental relations of local governments, and (5) people's participation in local decision-making. The present entry addresses intergovernmental relations of local governments in Argentina. The entry forms part of the LoGov Report on Argentina. To access the full version of the report on Argentina, other practices regarding intergovernmental relations of local governments and to receive more information about the project, please visit: https://www.logov-rise.eu/. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 823961.

Over the past two decades, practices of accountability have acquired a new presence in neoliberal governance and resource extraction in Peru. In the context of mining activity, accountability generally refers to public mechanisms of evaluation and record‐keeping through which citizens can make corporations and governments answerable to them. However, I argue that these practices often prioritize mining interests by enabling corporations to define and ultimately enforce standards of performance. This article focuses on a key process in the making of social and environmental accountability in mining projects: Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). I show that the form of the documents produced for the EIA (i.e., their required components, as established in legal frameworks) and the process of making them public (participatory meetings and public forums) can take precedence over their content. I examine two aspects of the EIA that make this possible. First, the risks that are identified in the EIA are those that a company deems to be technically manageable based on the solutions and interventions that it has to offer. Second, the participatory process of the EIA creates collaborative relationships among state agents, corporations, NGOs, and communities that strengthen the EIA's claims of accountability while circumscribing the spaces for opposition to a proposed project.

In this article, I analyze how Guatemalan indigenous citizens claim their rights to be citizens and agents of their own development through local resistance to large-scale mining projects. These indigenous communities face massive resource extraction by multinational mining companies that endangers the quality of land and water, adversely affects community relations, and impedes indigenous self-determination. At the same time, the political recognition of indigenous peoples allows them to negotiate the regulation of natural resources on the basis of their ethnic identity, as neoliberal reforms have led to decentralization and greater responsibilities for development at the municipal level. I argue that narratives of "alternative development and citizenship" are not only shaped within the multi-scalar character of the anti-mining movement but also constructed within the different ways the resistance is framed, that is, as an indigenous struggle, as a class-based resistance, or as resistance against neoliberal development policies in general. To understand the complex ways that citizenship is constructed from below, we need to take these two dimensions of analysis into account.

The need and estimated utility for a structured analysis of the Roşia Montană gold exploitation project have been palpable in the Romanian public sphere during the last 15 years and there is a vast amount of conflicting information and opinions on the benefits and risks involved. This article provides a comprehensive decision analysis of the Roşia Montană project. Over 100 documents from the past years have been gathered regarding the Roşia Montană mining project, which cover the main official, formal and less formal documents covering the case and produced by a wide range of stakeholders. These were then analyzed while designing a multi-criteria tree including the relevant perspectives under which the most commonly discussed four alternatives were analyzed. The result of this can be translated into a valuable recommendation for the mining company and for the political decision-makers. If these stakeholders want the continuation of the project and its acceptance by civil society, the key challenge is to increase the transparency of the process and improve the credibility and legal aspects ; if these aspects cannot be met, the decision-makers need to pay attention to the alternatives available for a sustainable development in the area.

"Mining is no ethnographic playground," Chris Ballard and Glenn Banks warned in their 2003 review of the anthropology of mining. The deep conflicts that characterize the industry find echoes in "a parallel war of sorts …waged within the discipline about the nature and scope of appropriate forms of engagement" (p. 289). This review essay examines how authors of recent ethnographic studies of large-scale, capital-intensive mining projects in Papua New Guinea, South Africa, and the United States have politically positioned themselves as researchers, and the insights into mining companies that derive from these situated perspectives.