ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the challenges posed by competing land uses, tenure and compensation regimes and the need for equitable decision-making, and focuses on three specific issues in this contentious debate that highlight its complexity: indigenous lands and mining, resettlement issues, and mining in protected areas. Land use disputes may occur throughout the chain of minerals exploration, production, processing, and use. Metal recycling plants, coal-fired power plants, lead refineries, iron foundries, and landfills leaching cadmium from discarded mobile phone batteries are not always welcome as neighbours, even by those who benefit from their products or the employment they create. Mining is therefore embedded in the context of a much broader discussion of rights and responsibilities, of political power and marginalization, of competing world views and ways of viewing land. Land tenure is often a mix of formal legal components and informally accepted normal practices that are not well protected in law.
