Can Mining Help Deliver the SDGs: Discourses, Risks and Prospects

In this paper, we explore the mining sector’s potential to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by examining its past engagement with sustainable development. Once a pariah, the mining industry is now very active in the sustainability space and played a key role in the development of the SDGs. In this paper, we first examine two key texts in evolving institutional frameworks: the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development (MMSD) Project and the recent Mapping Mining to the SDGs, highlighting their limited framing of sustainable development. Then, we examine how sustainable development concerns and voluntary standards have been translated into practice by mining companies. Analysing this history and track record shows an approach to sustainable development which sidesteps contradictions at the heart of the mining industry’s production processes, all of which bode ill for their potential to contribute meaningfully to the SDGs.