Mining region value and vulnerabilities: Evolutions over the mine life cycle

This paper asserts that the value of a mining region does not only depend on the economic benefits from mining activity, but also on its geological, environmental, social and cultural values. Values and vulnerabilities evolve over the mine life cycle, forming specific territorial trajectories that depend on the initial conditions as well as on political, economic, and socio-cultural contexts. A simple graphical framework is proposed to represent and describe the changing values and vulnerabilities over the mine life cycle. This framework, which has been developed for industrial metal mines, is applicable whatever the spatial scale considered and emphasises the complexity of territorial trajectories in relation to local governance and policies. It allows for easy comparison of mining regions. Future work should focus on defining integrative indexes for the different types of territorial values and vulnerabilities.