| dc.description.abstract | The increasing importance of market-based voluntary sustainability standards has the potential to move businesses towards a self-governance organizational structure. The precious minerals mining industry has seen a serious increased involvement in these business-induced sustainability standards in the last decades, thus allowing the business practices to move towards a more sustainable, CSR-based structure. The potential impacts of these globally applied voluntary initiatives on the (sub-)national level allows for an interesting research possibility.
This research therefore aims to uncover the market-based incentives for moving towards sustainability standards, and provides qualitative analyses of good-governance performance of these business-induced initiatives. Furthermore, to uncover effects of self-governance standards on the national level within resource-rich developing countries, a case study for the country of Namibia is provided. Effects of globally applied sustainability standards on state-induced sustainability regulations are studied and insights about interactions between traditional (government-based) governance and (market-based) self-governance structures are provided. Building on a Theory of Change (ToC)-framework, this research provides insights into precious minerals markets on a global and national (Namibian) level for three basic commodities: gold, platinum and diamonds. The research design is divided into three main phases, covering precious minerals markets, standards’ good governance quality and the Namibian case-study.
The first phase focuses on the key market trends and trade dynamics of relevance in the global precious minerals trade in a sustainability-context. The main findings are threefold. First, studied commodities show clear price volatility and overall price increase. Furthermore, peak minerals (decreased primary production possibility) is likely to cause long-term global supply issues. Finally, mining companies deem CSR-based business practices as increasingly important for competitiveness. The second phase covers the good governance-analysis of the main mining standards, which seem to perform relatively well overall on the categories analyzed. Main points of improvement include the need for providing adequate and localized auditing systems, complaints procedures, as well as setting up a transparent financial justification system and providing a solid budgetary plan. The final phase focuses on sustainable mining standards in the Namibian context. The governments partnerships with large multinational corporations has created favorable circumstances for most stakeholders involved. Shared ownership allows for partial control of mining activities. Whereas regulatory power has slightly shifted towards large corporations, community drawbacks have been rather slim. The globally increasing importance of market-based sustainability standards will keep transforming mining practices. The exact future of self-governance structures application cannot be predicted, yet their importance has already become visible. | |
