| dc.description.abstract | For as long as new mines have been opened, others have been closed. Mineral resources are finite and eventually all existing mines will cease operating. However, what is often excluded from studies on mining and its impact on the local host-community, is the final stage of a mine’s life-cycle: mine closure. This research set out to describe and analyse the long-term impacts of mining on the livelihoods of host-community members, including implications associated with expected mine closure. It makes use of a particular case study, being that of the Kwale Project in Kwale county, Kenya, where mining company Base Titanium is extracting minerals ever since the start of production in 2013 and is expecting to close the Kwale mine mid-2023. Primary data has been collected through ethnographic participant observation and semi-structured in-depth interviews with community members and other relevant stakeholders carefully selected through snowball sampling. Fieldwork has been carried out in February and March of 2020 in Kwale county, Kenya. Due to the global pandemic and subsequently, the ending of field work, primary data has been complemented with secondary data, consisting of a combination of textual sources (e.g. statistical data archives, previous relevant research, reports from local NGOs, CSOs and Base Titanium, and internet-accessible interlocutors). Outcomes of this research confirm that local host-community members are negatively and positively impacted by Base Titanium’s mining activities in the past, present and presumably also in the future. Positive impacts include a substantial rise in community development projects initiated and implemented by Base Titanium, enhanced skills through the provision of trainings, improved health and nutrition and promising educational opportunities. Negative impacts include adverse environmental consequences, challenges as a result from MIDR relating to conflicts on land-ownership, land use and land value as well as difficulty in sustaining livelihoods and contributing to further marginalization, unavoidable expected loss of employment opportunities, and possible out-migration of skilled mine workers. Moreover, results have brought to the fore that Base Titanium has inadvertently contributed in the creation of a dependency culture among the local community of Kwale county through its implemented Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy. This means that even after closure of the Kwale mine, the local community will be subjected to implications related to mining. Also, a consistent lack of community participation as well as limited collaboration between key stakeholders (e.g. the investor/mining company, national and local government and indigenous/affected communities), are identified as threatening local livelihoods and having adverse implications for local development. | |
