ABSTRACT
Mining is the business of extracting useful minerals from the earth's crust. Since minerals, once exacted, cannot be extracted again, a preoccupation of the industry historically has been the continued physical availability of resources in the ground. The activity of mining is keyed into the resource nexus at several points. Good governance is a key to the effective management of mining and the resource nexus. Most obviously, mining requires land for the exploitation of ores and for the disposal of wastes. But mining also requires considerable amounts of water for washing and processing minerals. The centrepiece of the Global Mining Initiative was a worldwide research and consultation exercise entitled Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development. Companies and the communities in which they operated should seek to build partnerships to ensure that the community's voice was heard in the design and development of mining projects and that the communities benefited fully from them.
