The governance-gender intersection in global mining and its socio-environmental impacts

Abstract

Governance and gender are concepts that are scientifically and institutionally recognized as essential analytical keys for understanding and monitoring major contemporary socio-environmental dynamics, to which global mining is a major contributor. The intersection between governance and gender as determining factors in the socio-environmental impacts of global mining is explored in this study. We also intend to contribute to the understanding of such elements as drivers in the sustainable performance of global mining. A systematic review of the specialized literature (SLR) is applied in order to describe in detail the main topics involved in such interactions, as well as to reveal the latent structure of content in this structural network of influences. The analysis reveals a transversal presence of health, its characteristics and causality, but also more generic or complex aspects, such as health policies, public health and health promotion. The two big models of mining, industrial and artisanal, appear in the semantic structure crossed by ‘health’ and their respective risks and impacts: corporative ESG (internal and external) elements, the first, and local sustainable development concerns. Governance and politics, as well as gender, take different senses in each context. As a main conclusion, the use of SLR has facilitated the joint understanding of the governance - gender - mining impacts conceptual triad, assuming a hypothesis of socio-environmental complexity of the context. This assumption and joint understanding is considered necessary for the sustainable design and management of mining projects.