Governance Across Time in Mining and Earth Resource Systems

The Persistence of Responsibility
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-041-38576-9
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 336 Seiten, Format (B × H): 178 mm x 254 mm

Mining's worst failures aren't engineering failures—they're failures of institutions built for a project's lifespan to answer for consequences that last generations. Drawing on four decades in the field, this book names that mismatch and shows what it would take to govern honestly across it.

Governance Across Time in Mining and Earth Resource Systems argues that the recurring crises of mining—catastrophic tailings failures, decades-long conflicts, ESG metrics that satisfy investors but not communities—are not isolated breakdowns. They are symptoms of a single structural mismatch: mining's consequences unfold across generations, while the governance systems meant to manage them are built for the timescale of a project, a permit, a career. Engineering rigor and regulatory compliance can get a mine built safely. Neither was ever designed to answer for it fifty years later.

Drawing on more than four decades of engineering practice and sustained dialogue with regulators, financiers, and community leaders across the industry, Priscilla Nelson traces how mining governance has evolved—not by replacing one model with a better one, but by layering engineering authority, law, protest, dialogue, standards, and finance on top of each other, without ever resolving who is answerable once the original institutions are gone. As the energy transition accelerates demand for critical minerals, as climate change unsettles the assumptions those systems were designed around, and as public trust in technocratic sustainability claims erodes, that unresolved question is no longer academic. This book gives it a name, a history, and a framework for confronting it honestly.

Written for mining and civil engineers who need to understand why technically sound projects fail politically; for regulators and policymakers managing risk that outlasts their tenure; for investors and ESG practitioners running up against the limits of what metrics can capture; and for scholars, graduate students, and closure and post-closure practitioners across mining, sustainability, and governance.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate, Professional Practice & Development, and Professional Reference

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nelson, Priscilla P.

Fachgebiete

• Technische Wissenschaften Bauingenieurwesen Bauingenieurwesen
• Technische Wissenschaften Bauingenieurwesen Boden- und Felsmechanik, Geotechnik
• Technische Wissenschaften Maschinenbau | Werkstoffkunde Technische Mechanik | Werkstoffkunde
• Technische Wissenschaften Bauingenieurwesen Technische Dynamik (Modalanalyse), Erdbebensicherheit
• Technische Wissenschaften Umwelttechnik | Umwelttechnologie Umwelttechnik
• Technische Wissenschaften Bauingenieurwesen Baukonstruktion, Baufachmaterialien
• Technische Wissenschaften Technik Allgemein Industrial Engineering
• Technische Wissenschaften Technik Allgemein Technik: Allgemeines
• Technische Wissenschaften Sonstige Technologien | Angewandte Technik Bergbau, Hüttenwesen
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umwelttechnik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Prologue: Listening Before Speaking. How to Read This Book: A Reader’s Guide by Movement and Perspective. Acknowledgments. The Mining Dialogues Series. Movement I. Technical Authority, Early Assumptions, and What Was Not Yet Asked. Chapter 1. Engineering Authority and the Promise of Control. Chapter 2. Single-Industry Towns and the Illusion of Stability. Chapter 3. Engineering Control and the Narrow Definition of Risk. Chapter 4. Water, Waste, and the Externalization of Consequences. Chapter 5. Standing, Harm, and the Limits of Administrative Visibility. Chapter 6. Governance Misfit and the Fracturing of Institutional Alignment. Movement I Closure: What the Technical Frame Could Not Carry. Movement II. Law, Contestation, and the Expansion of Governance Conflict. Chapter 7. Environmental Regulation and the Rise of Compliance Governance. Chapter 8. Courts as Arenas of Last Resort. Chapter 9. Protest, Opposition, and the Emergence of Voice. Chapter 10. Consultation Without Influence. Chapter 11. Fragmented Authority and the Erosion of Trust. Chapter 12. Why Adversarial Governance Could Not Hold. Movement II Closure: What Adversarial Governance Could Clarify, and What It Could Not Hold. Movement III. Dialogue, Participation, and Governance Through Process. Chapter 13. Environmental Assessment and the Rise of Consultation. Chapter 14. The Limits of Winning: When Legal Victory Was Not Enough. Chapter 15. Mediation Enters the Mining World. Chapter 16. From Intervention to Infrastructure: Institutionalizing Engagement. Chapter 17. Trust as Governance Infrastructure. Chapter 18. Dialogue Within Asymmetric Governance Systems. Chapter 19. Dialogue as Governance Infrastructure. Movement III Closure: What Dialogue Made Possible - and What It Could Not Replace. Movement IV. Scale, Abstraction, and the Reorganization of Legitimacy. Chapter 20. From Sites to Systems. Chapter 21. Standards and the Architecture of Scaled Governance. Chapter 22. Corporations as Governance Actors. Chapter 23. Codification: When Governance Becomes Measurable. Chapter 24. Financialization: When Governance Enters Capital Allocation. Chapter 25. What Global Frameworks Can - and Cannot - Do. Movement IV Closure: What Scaled Governance Enabled, and Where It Strained. Movement V. Governance Where It Must Endure. Chapter 26. Time Is Not Neutral. Chapter 27. Engagement That Endures. Chapter 28. Institutional Memory: Why Governance Forgets. Chapter 29.  Authority That Counts: Participation, Recognition, and Durable Governance. Chapter 30. Governance Beyond Formality: Authority in Informal Mining Systems. Chapter 31. From Dialogue to Shared Authority. Movement V Closure: Grounded Governance Under Conditions of Time and Consequence. Movement VI. Stewardship, Uncertainty, and Governance Across Time. Chapter 32. Urgency as a Governance Stress Test. Chapter 33. Tailings, Closure, and the Problem of Forever. Chapter 34. Financializing Risk: ESG, Disclosure, and Their Discontents. Chapter 35. Climate Non-Stationarity and the Governance of Assumptions. Chapter 36. Urgency, Speed, and the Governance Stress Test. Chapter 37. Stewardship, Ethical Memory, and Responsibility Across Time. Chapter 38. Circular Materials, Circular Responsibility. Chapter 39. Governance Without Endpoints. Movement VI Closure: Stewardship as the Governance Capacity of Time. Epilogue. Afterword. Resources for Continued Reading. References. Appendices.

Über Autor(innen)

Priscilla P. Nelson is a professor at the Colorado School of Mines and an internationally recognized leader in mining engineering, tailings and mine waste management, and risk governance. Trained as a geological and geotechnical engineer, she has more than 45 years of experience in underground construction, infrastructure systems, and mining operations. Her work bridges engineering practice and institutional design, integrating technical rigor with accountability, governance frameworks, and long-term stewardship. She directs professional education programs focused on tailings management and risk-informed decision-making and has held senior leadership roles in academia and federal research administration. This book reflects her synthesis of technical systems knowledge with institutional and governance perspectives — examining how engineering decisions, regulatory structures, financial mechanisms, and social legitimacy intersect across time.