Relative trust in critical minerals governance for just transitions in Ghana and Australia

Abstract

This paper explores the role of trust in the sustainable mining of critical minerals for a just transition across two complementary and contrasting cases, Ghana and Australia: the former being an emerging critical mineral economy and having a need to enforce social and environmental practices that depart from its history of non-critical minerals mining; the latter using domestic and international institutions to build trust in minerals governance at home and overseas. Based on an interdisciplinary exploratory and reflective methodology relying on four different data streams, this paper offers empirical research on how trust can be built and sustained in-country and through a combination of policies and practices, both on the part of mining companies and governments. We conceptualise trust in terms of confidence about a situation or entity based on experience and reasonable expectations. We found that in critical minerals mining communities, key predictors of trust are satisfaction, participation, social cohesion that is built on shared experiences of the past and present, and an adequate degree of social and economic independence for affected communities. The policy implications of the centrality of trust come at a crucial time when critiques of the role of the critical minerals industry in re-colonising and greenwashing are on the rise. This study finds government regulatory and policy settings can be used to promote trust in ways that are applicable to both developed and developing countries.