Mining Camps

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McCrea R, Walton A, Leonard R. A conceptual framework for investigating community wellbeing and resilience. Rural Soc. 2014; 23(3):270–82. Contingency, owner’s costs, EPCM and indirect costs on Joe Mann’s initial capital also included in the sustaining capital. Solomon F, Lovel R. Social dimensions of mining: research, policy and practice changes for the minerals industry in Australia. Resourc Policy. 2008;33:142–9. Queensland Health. The Health of Queenslanders 2014; Fifth Report of the Chief Health Officer, Queensland. Report. 2014. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Rural, regional and remote health: indicators of health status and determinants of health. Australian Government. Report. Canberra. 2008.

The historiography of mining has largely ignored mining women, as well as the wives of the miners. Footnote 1 This overview leads to more questions for the future than it can resolve. The emergence of large enterprises in coal, tin, iron, and other minerals, the creation of wage-workers in the mines, and technological advances necessitates a global history that could link these processes to the presence and eviction of women. The persistence, or growing importance, of women's work in small-scale and artisanal mining today, especially in the Global South as part of the globally connected mining industries, is a contemporary phenomenon that new research needs to historicize by focusing on ASM in the past. Given that the processes of proletarianization and industrialization have never been uniform throughout the world, small, artisanal, and independent mining might have been more important than we think in some regions, and the role of women might have been seriously underscored in the past, particularly in the Global South. Clearly, it is fundamentally important to analyse the role of ASM over time, and to study the long-run evolution of the gendered division of labour and the segmentation of demand and supply. We do not know, for example, whether the inclusion of women in mining today is due to a less sharp gendered division of economic activities or to a contemporary geographical expansion of extractive activities all over the world, requiring labour on a scale that did not exist before and within particular conditions. The transnational transformation of industry is now associated with flexibilized labour, subcontractors, and exploratory firms. This implies that the separation between “informal” and “formal” mining is somehow misleading because, as Samaddar has noted, throughout the history of capitalism there has always been a mix of the two. Today, contemporary capitalism uses cheap labour throughout the global supply chain, “ordaining” the informal condition of labour, particularly in the extractive industries linked to neoliberal policies. Footnote 106 In the case of Bolivia over the past decade, for example, a subsidiary enterprise of the Coeur d'Alene Mines Corporation used to buy the ores delivered by small artisanal miners without incurring the costs of extraction or the costs of labour. Here, there is a modus vivendi, with tensions between the state company, which has the legal lease of the mines and sub-leases them to the ASM (organized as cooperatives), which is characterized by informal, labour-intensive, minimally mechanized, and low-technology mining operations. Footnote 107 There are connections and even a vertical integration between the formal sector and the small-scale and artisanal mining of the informal sector. Total projected mined tonnes from Corner Bay are expected to be 7.60 Mt ramping up to a maximum capacity of 2,600 tpd over a mine life of 10.5 years. Almost eighty per cent of all gemstones are mined artisanally. Women are employed in panning, washing, and processing. Footnote 97 In the case of diamonds, before 1917, the Diamang Company in Angola worked with male and female labourers; in the last few decades of the twentieth century, women started to supply food to the company. Footnote 98 Gold exploitation is another arena for women. In Papua New Guinea, the gold industry can be dated to the late 1880s and was dominated by Europeans until 1960. Today, at least thirty per cent of the workforce there are women, engaged in manual activities such as tailings, panning, and sluicing. Footnote 99 In Ghana, gold-mining is a large-scale activity that comprises sixty-five per cent of all mining production, with 16,000 workers accounting for 66,000 jobs indirectly, while small and artisanal mining directly supports over one million individuals and creates additional employment for as many as five million. Women are omnipresent, engaged in work as ore haulers and washers, and as service providers (supplying food, clothing, water, and light mine supplies). Footnote 100 Women are also present in transporting ore and water, receiving salaries sixty per cent less than those paid to men. Footnote 101 In India, fifty-seven per cent of those involved in the small and informal gold-mining sector are women. Footnote 102Regional Queensland has been a focus of Australia’s coal seam gas (CSG) development over the past decade. CSG is a natural gas that is extracted via wells drilled in to coal seams, and involves exploration of land for CSG deposits, production, transportation and distribution. Significant CSG deposits are found in Canada, China, USA, and Australia, and were first explored in regional Queensland in the late 1970’s, which led to commercial production from 2006. CSG is utilised domestically, but a proportion is converted in to liquefied natural gas (LNG) and exported internationally off the Queensland coast [ 1]. Growth of the CSG industry and the relatively large geographic span of exploration and extraction means that ‘mining activity’ often co-exists with primary production of some of Queensland’s most diverse agricultural land, with positive and negative implications [ 1]. There is anecdotal concern that the environmental, economical and social change in the community brought about by the labour intensive development stage of CSG mining can have implications for health and wellbeing [ 2]. CSG development and public health There is evidence of indirect and long-term health and wellbeing implications of living in proximity to CSG development. How communities respond to the boom, post-boom transition and ‘bust’ of CSG development is important for government, the mining sector and the scientific community. The findings from this study may inform health service planning in regions affected by CSG development and provide the mining sector in regional Queensland with evidence from which to develop social responsibility programs that encompass health, social, economic and environmental assessments that more accurately reflect the needs of the community. Development after almost 100 Aussies stranded on luxury cruise shipThe ship, carrying 206 people on board, ran aground in a remote location.

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