Right, and this can have an impact on the future of the people. Even when the mine is closed, 10 to 20 years down the line, that land may not be arable anymore, and the water sources may not be usable.
Mining these days is extremely capital intensive, which means that the possibility for employment, particularly relative to the revenues that are being generated, is quite low. In local communities, particularly in the global south where mines are being developed, the local community doesn't have the skills for the skilled labour that's needed in those mines. The capital, the technology, and the infrastructure developed for the mines, to build and run the mines, are often imported. They're not connected to the local economy.
Mining, like maquilas, tends to produce enclave economies with not very strong backward linkages to the rest of the national economy. Higher value-added processes, which draw more wealth from the processing and refining of the minerals, tend to take place in the global north, not in the global south.
Commodity prices are set in the world market, generated primarily by the demand from the global north and China, and mining prices tend to be very volatile over time. So you're depending on prices that are set globally for the national revenue. But the mining regimes that are influenced in large measure by the Canadian International Development Agency, Foreign Affairs, and Natural Resources Canada tend to be neo-liberal mining regimes that have low royalty rates and various other things that make it a bigger draw for Canadian mining companies to go in there and invest.
I'll leave it there.