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MINERALS DOWN UNDER Flagship www.csiro.

au

A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship


Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies
Justine Lacey and Kieren Moffat
EP121153 March 2012

Citation

Lacey, J & Moffat, K (2012). A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship: Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies. CSIRO, Australia.
Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge and thank Terry Norgate, Nawshad Haque, and John Rankin (CSIRO Process Science & Engineering), Simone Carr-Cornish, Barton Loechel and Karen Stenner (CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering), and Damien Giurco (Institute for Sustainable Futures, UTS) for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts.
Copyright and disclaimer

2012 CSIRO To the extent permitted by law, all rights are reserved and no part of this publication covered by copyright may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means except with the written permission of CSIRO.
Important disclaimer

CSIRO advises that the information contained in this publication comprises general statements based on scientific research. The reader is advised and needs to be aware that such information may be incomplete or unable to be used in any specific situation. No reliance or actions must therefore be made on that information without seeking prior expert professional, scientific and technical advice. To the extent permitted by law, CSIRO (including its employees and consultants) excludes all liability to any person for any consequences, including but not limited to all losses, damages, costs, expenses and any other compensation, arising directly or indirectly from using this publication (in part or in whole) and any information or material contained in it.

Contents
Executive Summary 1 Introduction & Context
1.1 The development of a technology assessment framework for the MDU Flagship

3 4
5

2 The Role of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)


2.1 Existing efforts to incorporate social and economic value impacts into LCA 2.2 Other methods of social and economic impact assessment applied in the mining and minerals industry 2.3 What can social science do?

7
10 11 14

3 Key Elements of an Integrated Research Framework


3.1 Sustainability: A common goal 3.2 Interdisciplinary research practice 3.3 System level innovation

16
16 18 21

4 Using Water as an Entry Point to Integrated Research Practice


4.1 Water as an entry point to practice

25
25

4.2 Conducting a systematic review: Water in the mining life cycle 26

5 Possible Case Study Interventions

36

References 39

Figures
Figure 1: Life Cycle Opportunities and Future Obligations Figure 2: The Triple Bottom Line Recast as a Sustainability Ethic Figure 3: Company Behaviours, Drivers and Material Chain Focus Figure 4: Key Themes based on Word Similarity in Stage 2 Active Mining Figure 5: Key Themes based on Word Similarity in Stage 3 Post Mining & Closure Figure 6: Most Significant Environmental Impacts from LCA for Production of 1 tonne of Refined Copper Figure 7: Integrated Framework in Context 13 17 23 32 32 33 38

Tables
Table 1: The Roles of Social Science in an Interdisciplinary Research Context Table 2: Incorporating Life Cycle Thinking into Participatory Methods of Research Table 3: Results of Pilot Database Search of Literature Table 4: Results of Multiple Database Search of Literature Table 5: Characteristics attributed to Papers included in Qualitative Analysis Table 6: Most Reported Issues by Stage of Mine Life Cycle Table 7: Most Reported Issues by Geographical Location 14 24 27 28 29 30 31

Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies

Executive Summary

A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship

Technology development, adoption and deployment in the mining and minerals industry are activities that need to demonstrate not only environmental sustainability, but also broad societal acceptance. The aim of this report is to examine how life cycle assessment (LCA), which is an established method for assessing the environmental impacts of mining technologies and processes, might be integrated with social analysis to provide a more comprehensive way of assessing both the environmental and social impacts of these mining technologies and processes. In effect, part of this challenge has been about determining how best to structure an interdisciplinary and integrated research framework that can capture the technical and social science expertise that exists within the Minerals Down Under Flagship in order to enhance the overall science impact of the Flagship. This responds to both the increasing importance of achieving environmental sustainability and efficiencies, and the need to understand the ongoing social acceptability of the Australian mining and minerals industry into the future. Key decisions about the future development and deployment of mining technologies must be responsive to this range of concerns. In terms of bringing the technical and social sciences together in this way, the interdisciplinary domain of Technology Assessment (TA) provides an appropriate overarching framework in which to develop integrated research practice. LCA is also recognised as a valuable tool within the broader domain of TA and this provides scope for thinking about how to consider it alongside other (and quite diverse) tools such as stakeholder engagement and participatory methods. These more deliberative processes also provide the necessary scope to consider and assess the social values and tradeoffs involved in decisions about technology. Such values and tradeoffs are often too complex to be assessed through purely technical means or alternatively can reveal how impacts are spread unevenly across stakeholders or geographical locations. In setting about identifying what kind of primary data was required for these evaluations (or assessments) in order to inform decisions about mining technologies and processes, there seem to be two key areas of greatest potential where interdisciplinary expertise can enhance the path to impact for the Flagship. These include:

Using the stages of LCA to map key social considerations and impacts Using LCA data much more centrally in social engagement processes to inform deliberative
processes. In terms of the potential for this approach to be applied in practice, we have selected the issue of water in mining as a test case. Working with the idea of water in mining provides two key opportunities. First, there is potential to consider how environmental and social issues intersect in practice and second, it provides the impetus for developing a methodological process for conducting a systematic review of the peer reviewed literature that takes its inspiration from LCA to generate quantitative data sets based on qualitative information. This demonstrates a first attempt at mapping key social considerations to life cycle stages, and also highlights the potential of this process to be refined so as to provide more targeted or context specific data. Broadly, this report maps out the range of theoretical underpinnings leading to the development of an integrated research framework that will harness the collaborative expertise of technical and social scientists within the Flagship. The next immediate step based on the development of this integrated research framework is its transformation into a program of integrated research practice. This will occur through a series of proposed case study trials that will demonstrate the capacity of this framework to assess the combined environmental and social impacts of mining technologies. Even more broadly, it is also anticipated that these case studies will provide the success stories that will pioneer the development of mining TA as a distinct area of technology assessment work that deals with the explicit issues and challenges of the mining and minerals industry. CSIRO is uniquely placed to be a world leader in this field of research due to its combined technology development and technology assessment capabilities.

Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies

1 Introduction & Context


The development, adoption and deployment of technology in the mining and minerals industry increasingly take place in a contested and complex social, environmental and political context. The economics of mining lower grade ores with limited availability of skilled labour in Australia, for example, must be balanced against a drive to adopt more sustainable approaches to mining and achieve broad social acceptance. For critical elements of the Australian mining research and development innovation system such as the CSIRO Minerals Down Under (MDU) Flagship, and the industry more broadly, there is therefore an increasing need to make decisions about progressing technologies that simultaneously:

demonstrate responsiveness to matters of economic, technical and resource efficiency to


support a stronger and more competitive business case, and

increase capacity to demonstrate responsible environmental stewardship and the creation


of social value. At the same time, development and deployment of technologies that can achieve wider societal acceptance will be critical to their uptake and also their successful and ongoing application in the industry. Decisions about technologies necessarily reflect the interrelated nature of complex technical, environmental, economic and social systems. One of the major challenges associated with these decisions is how best to assess and manage the uncertainties related to the impacts of these complex systems (Sotoudeh, 2009). Further to this is the need to understand and manage the risk that is present in these systems. These risks can be understood as both the potential intended and unintended consequences of particular activities or policies (Taylor-Gooby & Zinn, 2006), and encompass both technical risks and perceived social risks (Sandman, 1987). Part of the response to these challenges necessarily demands the coordination of interdisciplinary efforts and expertise. This has, in part, been reflected in the emergence of new interdisciplinary fields such as technology assessment and industrial ecology that seek to provide a more integrated response to these complex and multi-dimensional problems (Kastenhofer, Bechtold & Wilfing, 2011). In these approaches we see the adoption of an interdisciplinary focus on understanding technology in its social context (Boons & Howard-Grenville, 2009; Russell, Vanclay & Aslin, 2010) because in essence, these are problems that are characterised by the intersection of technological systems and social systems.1 Such approaches to these problems also reflect the ongoing efforts associated with bridging the natural and social sciences in the context of achieving those sustainable social and environmental goals; an area where the Minerals Down Under Flagship has clearly demonstrated its research commitment (Katz & Solomon, 2008; Norgate, 2009; Franks et al., 2010). Ehrenfeld (2009) also argues that developing a response to such problems necessarily requires the involvement of both technologists and social scientists and whether they are to collaborate (work together across space and time), cooperate (work together in real time and space), or coordinate their work (set priorities and act accordingly), all active actors must be able to speak in a language that is commonly shared (p.269). This is something that should not be underestimated if success is to be realised. This increasing recognition of the need to develop an integrated and interdisciplinary response to sustainable development has also been reflected in a number of key developments in the mining and minerals industry. This includes the Global Mining Initiative and the formation of the International Council of Mining and Minerals (ICMM), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the subsequent development of sustainability indicators, and the increasing trend in sustainability reporting that is occurring across the industry (Rankin, 2011). In particular, the MMSD report (2002) has highlighted that if the mining and minerals industry is to remain viable into the future, maintaining a narrow focus on technical and economic development at the expense of environmental and social sustainability will be at the risk of the industrys future.
1

The importance of social understanding to improving environmental sustainability through technology also formed part of the Agenda 21 statement from the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) where it was recognised that especially for developing countries, the deployment of technologies would need to be compatible with social, cultural, economic and environmental priorities (United Nations, 1992). Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies

A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship

This has been accompanied by increasing pressure on the industry to demonstrate its effectiveness as a corporate social citizen, and it makes explicit the link between industrys practice and its ongoing social licence to operate (Gunningham, Kagan & Thornton, 2004; Thomson & Boutilier, 2011). This notion of the industrys social licence to operate has gained increasing currency over recent years and reflects the broad issues related to societal acceptance and approval of the mining and minerals industry. Some of these issues revolve specifically around the technologies being developed and deployed by the industry (e.g. such concerns are reflected in current debates about the development of the coal seam gas industry in Australia (Prosser, Wolf & Littleboy, 2011) and the potential social impacts of automating mine site technologies (McNab & Garcia-Vasquez, 2011)). So while on the one hand, sustainability reporting is increasing and this provides a mechanism for demonstrating environmentally sustainable best practice, there is also a growing focus on establishing the industrys social licence to operate which underpins the relationship between industry, community and other stakeholders in resource development (including government). Some initial efforts to document and quantify aspects of the nature of this social licence, and thus key aspects of societal acceptance, are also under development (Australian Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, 2011; Moffat, Parsons, & Miller, 2011). However within this broader framework of sustainable development and societal acceptance in the mining and minerals industry, this report is more narrowly focused on decisions about how technology is developed, used and managed in the industry. In particular, we focus on the use of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology for comparing the environmental impacts of particular technologies and processes. We examine this methodology with a view to developing some initial advice on how LCA could be complemented by incorporating a broader focus on the social value impacts of those same technologies and processes. The purpose of incorporating the broader social impacts alongside the traditional focus on environmental impacts also reflects a move toward achieving the goals of an integrated approach to social and environmental sustainable development. This report is therefore aimed at summarising some initial observations about how to develop an interdisciplinary response to technology assessment in CSIROs MDU Flagship. It also seeks to build on the existing work of the MDU Flagship, in particular the findings presented in the report, A Review of the Integration of Social and Economic Impacts into Life Cycle Assessment (Norgate, 2009). That report, which summarises existing efforts to integrate social value into life cycle assessment, has provided the foundations on which these inquiries have been developed.

1.1 The development of a technology assessment framework for the MDU Flagship
The broader goal of the MDU Flagship is to unlock Australias future mineral wealth through transformational exploration, extraction and processing technologies. There is well established technical capacity and expertise within the Flagship with regard to meeting this goal. However there is a recognised need to broaden the base of decision making to incorporate not only the technical and environmental impacts but also the social impacts of deploying new technologies, or making changes to existing technologies. This project was initially borne out of a desire to take the science measurement methods that underpin environmental LCA of mining processes and technologies and apply them to an assessment of social impacts. While it is rarely simple or appropriate to apply engineering methods to understanding human behaviour and the social values and tradeoffs that accompany our decision making processes2, there is significant potential to explore how the Flagships expertise in both technical sciences and social analysis can be more effectively integrated to increase science impact. This responds to both the increasing importance of achieving environmental sustainability and efficiencies and the changing social landscape around the mining and minerals industry. This emphasises the need to have a clear and well developed sense of the social acceptability of mining

Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies

A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship

technologies for the future of this industry in Australia. In particular, the focus of interdisciplinary responses such as technology assessment have sought to move beyond the technical aspects of risk assessment by incorporating democratic criteria such as societal acceptance in the decisions we make about such technologies (Assefa & Frostell, 2007 cited in Russell, Vanclay & Aslin, 2010). This highlights the importance of CSIROs trusted advisor role not only for government and industry but also for the broader community of Australians. In developing a response to how MDU might assess mining technologies against both environmental and social criteria, the deliverable is outlined in this report in the form of a methodological framework. This framework draws heavily on successful models of technology assessment as per previous research undertaken within the Flagship (Katz & Solomon, 2008; Franks et al., 2010). However the aim of this report is also to determine how these previous models might be moved beyond theoretical interventions to demonstrate practical application and involve a broader range of stakeholders beyond the researchers within the Flagship (i.e. to move from constructive technology assessment to participatory technology assessment 3). Therefore in responding to this national challenge, we propose a technology assessment framework for the Flagship that provides an approach to conducting evaluations of mining technologies across a variety of design, performance, investment and decision contexts so as to:

inform technology (re)design within research and development institutions and organisations inform technology options for deployment in new or existing mines, or transitions to
alternative technologies by mining companies and operators

inform policy development and approaches to regulation of new and existing technologies and
the contexts within which they are deployed by government

enable communities affected or likely to be affected by technologies or issues of focus to


develop and articulate the attributes that will underpin local and societal acceptance of new technologies or mining practices. What we are seeking to do with this framework is to establish a methodology that will drive the identification of the primary data that is needed to make these kinds of evaluations or assessments and can also be applied meaningfully across all of the key stages of the mining value chain:

Exploration Mining Processing Metals Manufacturing (and potentially beyond e.g. recycling).
Technology assessment is applied in a wide variety of contexts around the world. However there is currently no significant body of applied mining specific technology assessment work. An important component of this framework will therefore be its development and adoption through a series of case study applications. These case studies will also potentially serve as the showcase examples for pioneering the development of a mining specific form of technology assessment (mining TA) with a view to profiling CSIROs expertise as a world leader in this area of research.

2 What sits at the heart of some of these difficulties is that natural science and social science do not operate in the same way. Some of the core assumptions underpinning engineering and social science methods and their differences are explored further in Section 2 and then again in more detail in Section 3.2. 3

The importance of incorporating aspects of both forms of TA (i.e. constructive and participatory) is emphasised by Heiskanen (2005) and reflects the strengths of the interactive TA model developed by the Rathenau Institute (Grin, Graaf & van de Hoppe, 1997).

Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies

2 The Role of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology that is used to assess the environmental impacts associated with all stages of a product, process or activity. It is a relatively widespread approach to comparing the environmental impacts of particular products as per a series of international standards (ISO 14040, 14041, 14042, 14043) based on quantifiable measures. The development of the methodology began in earnest in the 1970s but it was not until 1993 that the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) released the first generation of standardised methods for conducting LCA. SETACs definition of product life cycle assessment is as follows: Life cycle assessment is an objective process to evaluate the environmental burdens associated with a product, process or activity by identifying and quantifying energy and materials used and waste released to the environment, to assess the impact of those energy and material uses and releases to the environment, and to evaluate and implement opportunities to affect environmental improvements. The assessment includes the entire life cycle of the product, process or activity, encompassing extracting and processing raw materials; manufacturing, transportation and distribution; use, re-use, maintenance; recycling and final disposal (SETAC, 1993 quoted in Shen, 1999, p.102-103). As a methodology, Shen (1999) describes LCA as a holistic approach to the evaluation of environmental impacts of a complete product system from cradle to grave. While a full LCA that investigates every aspect of the life cycle requires significant data (including the ability to synthesise a number of data sources 4), it is also possible to conduct simple LCAs that target specific environmental aspects or states of the life cycle. For example, a simple LCA might adopt an exclusive focus on water usage in a system or alternatively, a focus on energy can often serve as a good proxy for overall environmental performance (if it also monitors toxic emissions which can be detrimental in small quantities). The four broad components that make up an LCA process are:

Goal definition and scope Inventory analysis Impact analysis Improvement analysis (SETAC-Europe, 1999; Shen, 1999; Sotoudeh 2009).
Whether undertaking a full or simple LCA, it is a highly rigorous data analysis method that has the capacity to provide us with certain types of information that may improve research targeted at materials and technologies. The results of LCAs can also raise the awareness of manufacturers and end-users about the environmental impacts of particular products that they may make and sell, or buy and use. This also implies a shift about where responsibility for environmental stewardship sits in the production chain. In the past, for instance, responsibility has sat solely with industry. However there is an emerging belief that in making sustainable choices, participants all along the production chain, including the end-users, also have the capacity to actively reflect their own environmental values in their choice of their supply chain partners or even in the product they select at the point of purchase. Examples of how stewardship is currently being adopted in the steel industry are reflected in the Steel Stewardship Forum, through two key projects the Steel Chain Footprint Project and the Responsible Steel Certification Scheme. These efforts seek to bring about innovative products and solutions, process improvements and cooperation across the full steel life cycle (Rowe, 2011; Steel Stewardship Forum, 2011). Broadly, an established range of environmental impact categories are employed in LCA. The results generated against each of these categories tend to be expressed as measurable physical quantities (e.g. global warming is expressed as kg CO2 equivalent; acidification is expressed as kg SO2 equivalent; resource depletion is expressed as % of global reserves or MJ surplus5 etc). The output results of two or more technologies or processes are then compared with each other. Finally,
4 For example, in a recent LCA of sugar cane processing, Renouf, Pagan & Wegener (2011) examined 13 impact categories (some of which had several sub-categories) which required the synthesis of an extensive range of multiple distinct data sources. The ability to synthesise data sets is a critical aspect of the LCA process and the challenges of working with aggregated data to generate comparable data sets are persistent challenges for LCA practitioners. 5

In the mining and minerals industry, MJ surplus refers to the additional energy requirement to compensate for lower future ore grade (Yellishetty, Haque & Dubreil, 2012). Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies 7

A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship

a decision over the potential costs and benefits of the alternatives are weighed up based on the available data. Another issue to be considered is that the impact categories can operate across vastly different scales. For example, GHG emissions tell a story about environmental impacts at the global scale (and in Australia also have a quite specific policy driven focus) whereas the impacts of ecotoxicity tend to be much more localised. An optional step that can be incorporated in the impact analysis stage, depending on goal or scope, is normalisation. This means that the magnitude of a category impact result is calculated relative to available reference information (Norgate, 2009). The reference information may relate to a given community (e.g. The Netherlands, Europe, the world), person (e.g. Danish citizen) or other system over a given period of time. The aim is to better understand the relative magnitude of each indicator result of the product system being assessed. LCA software, such as SimaPro, presents results which have been normalised in this way (Norgate & Haque, 2010; Yellishetty, Haque & Dubreil, 2012). Because some of these normalised results are not always comparable across impact categories, the additional step of weighting may also be introduced. However this is still somewhat controversial and no singular widely accepted method of weighting exists.6 However this emphasises two dominant approaches in LCA impact categorisation which have broadly developed around assessing mid point impact categories or end point impact categories. Mid points tend to be more closely related to the intervention being examined in an LCA and are often described as problem oriented impacts. They tend to include traditional and widely used LCA categories such as acidification, human toxicity and so on (Norgate, 2009). End points seek to document damage oriented impacts such as the land loss or natural disasters that may result from acidification or the cancer that may result from human toxicity. Obviously establishing the causal links to this level remains a challenge and the availability of reliable data and sufficiently robust models to support end point modelling remains quite limited (Norgate, 2009, p.10). It is also possible that performing a detailed LCA involving multiple impact categories might yield data sets across a range of impacts that could provide contradictory outcomes on the basis of a sustainability assessment. For example, in terms of performance against GHG emissions, one technology may emerge as clearly more environmentally sustainable than the alternative options. However, that same technology might perform less well in another area of impact such as water usage or eco-toxicity, for example. In comparing a range of impacts, these kinds of mixed results do ultimately rely upon a process of deliberation when making a final choice about the potential or preferred value of a particular technology. While that process is often limited to experts there is real potential in opening this up to a broader range of stakeholders, including citizens. Part of the value in doing this can be realised in the ability to canvass and address a much broader range of concerns or issues related to technologies, to gain broader support or to avoid unforeseen consequences as just a few examples. In making these kinds of decisions, the context of the technological application might also play a critical role in the final decision. Thus, LCA does not completely remove the challenges associated with making these kinds of tradeoffs between the costs and benefits of any given course of action but incorporating a deliberative process can help. This is especially the case when it comes to incorporating social values that defy usual modes of scientific measurement. In such cases, the human aspects of this decision making and the social context may prove to be what drives such a decision or at least, provides the context for the best possible decision (e.g. in a drought situation or as a result of a federal tax on carbon emissions7). This highlights that input from other perspectives, not only those of technical experts, can be critical to increasing engagement around identifying an effective and relevant set of questions for exploring the full range of social impacts of technologies (White, Fane, Giurco & Turner, 2008).

While it is recognised that within the LCA community there is ongoing debate over issues such as allocation, weighting, software choices and other methodological issues, this section is not designed to answer or explore those questions which are the domain of LCA experts. Rather the focus here is to provide a general summary of the key stages of LCA.

For example, LCAs that demonstrate the impact of the Australian Governments carbon tax on minerals processing highlight the ongoing interaction occurring between technical and social domains in the form of the social embeddedness of material flows. Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies

A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship

However, even in this more deliberative process, it is likely that LCA data will provide us with the information that will sit at the centre of any such process. In this way, scientific evidence provides a solid base from which to begin that process of engagement. The increasing number of LCAs being performed over recent years reflects the growing interest, and investment, in the use of the environmental impacts of particular technologies and associated processes to assess environmental sustainability (Peters, 2009; Renouf, Wegener & Pagan, 2010). This trend is reflected across a number of different sectors such as food processing, agriculture, and construction, for example. It also reflects that as the methodology has developed over time, it has demonstrated its reliability in terms of providing a true picture of the environmental costs of the life cycles of various products, processes and activities. The value of conducting an LCA therefore appears to be twofold:

at one level, the process of undertaking a detailed mapping of a product or process life cycle
can reveal potential areas of improvement or opportunity

and at another level, these efforts also provide rigorous data sets about environmental costs
that may assist in decision making (Baumann & Tillman, 2004). Examples of how LCA has shaped process improvements include the identification of step change improvements or hot spot identification to improve environmental performance, particularly in minerals processing technologies (Giurco & Petrie, 2007; Norgate & Haque, 2010; Norgate & Jahanshahi, 2010). The MDU Flagship has clearly demonstrated capacity in the area of conducting LCA of minerals processing technologies and implementing LCA across the value chain to achieve the broader goal of reducing GHG emissions, water usage, dispersion of heavy wastes and the production of large volume wastes (Norgate, Jahanshahi, & Rankin, 2007; Norgate & Haque, 2010; Norgate & Jahanshahi, 2010; Rankin, 2011). However, the potential for LCA to be used to inform decision contexts, including in selection of technologies has also been demonstrated. This has occurred through the application of life cycle thinking to strategic resource decisions at oil refineries and other large facilities (Weston, Clift, Holmes, Basson & White, 2011), and in the use of LCA as an information tool for examining alternative future scenarios for strategic planning needs as demonstrated in the analysis of a complex integrated water and wastewater system for the Sydney Water Corporation an exercise which ultimately contributed to choices about technology investment (Lundie, Peters & Beavis, 2004). At the scale of these larger decision contexts, the input of a broader range of stakeholders becomes increasingly important. Further to these successes with LCA for measuring environmental costs and benefits, there has been a great deal of interest in using the same methodological approach to quantify the related social and economic impacts. The purpose of this has been to develop comparable data sets that provide a complete picture of the environmental, economic and social costs and benefits of a particular process or product. However, this has run into some problems not least of which is the fact that LCA is a method that has been borne out of the engineering sciences and therefore demonstrates the particular strengths of that discipline in assessing the environmental costs and benefits of selected technical processes. What sits at the heart of some of these difficulties is that natural science and social science do not operate in the same way. While the natural or technical sciences document the objective what of the world around us, the social sciences are rather more concerned with understanding the how and why that underpins how humans interact with those natural systems under observation (Boons & Howard-Grenville, 2009). Any attempt to simply apply a singular method from one domain onto the other needs to be approached with some caution. This is also because the natural and social sciences demonstrate vastly different strengths and weaknesses. As Flyvbjerg (2001) points out, we value natural science for its contributions to explanatory and predictive theory whereas we value social science for its contributions to the reflexive analysis and discussion of values and interests, which are the prerequisite for an enlightened political, economic and cultural development in any society (p.3).

Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies

A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship

One cannot substitute the role of the other and these challenges will be explicitly addressed in this report as any successful framework will rely on an ability to innovate through these disciplinary differences.

2.1 Existing efforts to incorporate social and economic value impacts into LCA
Despite these challenges, there have been significant recent efforts around the integration of social and economic impact assessment into the methodology of traditional environmental LCA (Benot et al., 2010; Dreyer, Hauschild & Schierbeck, 2006, 2010a, 2010b; Jrgensen, Hauschild, Jrgensen & Wangel, 2009; Jrgensen, Lai & Hauschild, 2009; Weidema, 2009). Following the standardised SETAC guidelines for LCA which were initially released in 1993, a set of guidelines for incorporating economic impact assessment were released in 2002 and a set of guidelines for social life cycle assessment were released in late 2009. In particular, the guidelines for social LCA were described as more of a map of what that process might look like and they were closely modelled on standard LCA stages in line with ISO 14040 and 14044 standards. This meant that these guidelines did not necessarily provide a detailed understanding of how a local context might be reflected in their application. At any rate, each of these standards has also been accompanied by the development of various software packages to streamline the application of these assessments. For the purposes of this report, the focus will be mainly limited to efforts to develop social LCA.8 These efforts to develop a social LCA methodology have not been without their challenges, and while these efforts have been ongoing (Klppfer, 2003, 2008; Benot & Mazijn, 2009), the questions of valuing and aggregating social indicator results remain (Feiefel, Walk, Wursthorn, 2010, p.141). For example, one of the issues that has made this task so challenging is the fact that while the benefits of broadening the scope of LCA to include social issues means that a wider set of questions can be usefully considered in the Goal and Scoping stage, some of these broader questions might also create different boundaries between social and environmental LCAs. This potentially creates a major problem in terms of clarity around the issues and outcomes that can be reliably compared. Certainly, efforts to build an inventory of established social life cycle data is an activity that will also reasonably take decades to accomplish and will not be without controversy. However, in spite of these challenges, there is ongoing commitment among LCA practitioners to adapt existing LCA tools to handle social data in similar ways as physical data are currently managed. Even so, this will rely upon creating or identifying social data that are measurable and the identification of a clear boundary that can be linked to quite explicit and clear goals (just like an environmental LCA).9 These are not trivial undertakings and there is extensive work being undertaken by LCA experts to address these very challenges. Two instructive examples will be briefly examined here. The first example is the work by Wiedema (2009) that brings social impact assessment to LCA and has identified 14 social inventory categories that can be influenced by industrial activities. His work demonstrates both the ability to use default statistical data (i.e. pre-existing data that should readily be available) and provides a credible way of monitoring at the factory or company level. Thus Weidemas work emphasises the need to look to existing sources of social data as a first step but this issue of the boundary being limited to the level of company or factory emerges as a pervasive problem when we consider the often far reaching ripple effects of social impacts, and the difficulties of placing a meaningful boundary around them at the company level. The second example is an alternative approach to thinking about how to incorporate social value into the notoriously difficult and often controversial area of establishing weightings for

While it is recognised that economic LCA (or LCC) has progressed somewhat further than social LCA, and this is likely due to the fact that the quantified nature of economic analysis and methods such as input-output modelling reflect similarities with the LCA approach, there is still significant work to be done with regard to developing data sets across the environmental, economic and social areas that are truly comparable and provide an integrated body of evidence with which to undertake a thorough analysis. N. Howard, Past President of ALCAS and Managing Director, Edge Environment, pers. comm., 26 August 2011. Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies

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A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship

environmental impacts. This challenge has been taken up explicitly by Bengsston, Howard and Kneppers (2010). Working with weightings in LCA is often challenging not least because they are based on value choices rather than scientific data and this again reflects the socially embedded nature of the way we understand and measure material and energy flows (Boons & HowardGrenville, 2009). It is also well recognised that subjectivity has been and will always be part of a LCA. This statement is even more applicable to a social LCA, despite all the attempts to build it on the agreement of different stakeholders (Benot & Mazijn, 2009, p.79). However, in thinking about how to embed some of these social values into the way we understand and prioritise environmental impacts, Bengsston et al. (2010) ran a series of workshops with a range of stakeholders around a particular issue. These workshops aimed to collect data that would allow the researchers to analyse how Australian stakeholders subjectively judge the relative importance of different environmental impacts in different locations/climates around Australia (Bengsston et al., 2010, p.8). While the authors recognised some limitations with their study, their efforts sought to better understand the issue of how different environmental impacts can be evaluated in vastly different ways in different locations. In effect, their work highlighted the contextual and geographical nature of social values and attitudes. What these examples demonstrate is that context matters to understanding social values and other indicators. In a recent review of the collective efforts to integrate social and economic impacts into LCA, Norgate (2009) has analysed some of the areas of greatest difficulty in terms of successfully integrating the social aspects in particular into the LCA methodology. These difficulties include the challenges related to:

directly connecting social impacts to products and the reality of assessing entire supply chains
as opposed to single companies

the broad range and variability of social indicators which tend to be contextually specific to
particular localities

the lack of case studies that have been able to demonstrate success.
Norgates key conclusions identify that the key and persistent challenges relate to the relatively immature stage of development of the social LCA methodology, and the inherent difficulties associated with quantifying the chosen indicators and the degree of complexity needed to do this (Norgate, 2009, p.3). However they also confirm what emerged from the work of Weidema around the limitations of working with social data at the company or factory level when the impacts are likely to be much further reaching in reality, and some of those issues explored by Bengsston et al. (2010) around the contextual nature of social values and indicators. Importantly however, Norgate emphasises the lack of case studies that have been available to demonstrate success in efforts to combine social data with LCA. An important element of this report is to map out a practical way of doing exactly that in a way that will provide value to the Flagship, to government and industry and to the wider Australian community. The United National guidelines for social LCA emphasise the importance of stakeholder involvement and participation in this process (Benot & Mazijn, 2009). We suggest that a realistic way of envisioning what this might look like would be to use the LCA framework to map social considerations and impacts, and to incorporate deliberative elements where appropriate as part of determining key priorities and developing a solid understanding of what drives the social acceptability of particular technology options.

2.2 Other methods of social and economic impact assessment applied in the mining and minerals industry
Beyond LCA, it is also worthwhile briefly considering alternative methods being applied to social and economic impact assessment, particularly within the mining and minerals industry. By focusing on these efforts, there may be potential to consider how these methods and data sets might be drawn together for best effect. Broadly, a social impact or risk may be defined as something that is experienced or felt (real or perceived) by an individual, social group or economic unit (Franks, 2011, p.1817). In keeping with
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this fairly broad definition, a social impact or risk may be characterised as either positive or negative and may vary in intensity both temporally and spatially (Vanclay, 2003). This presents a broad array of possible impact categories and an equally broad range of tools and methods for capturing that information. The increased level of difficulty associated with capturing some forms of social data reflects the increased levels of uncertainty and risk in social systems. However this also highlights a significant point of departure from the LCA methodology that is based on clear and measurable categories to assess environmental impact. In the mining and minerals industry, the focus of social impact assessment (SIA) also tends to revolve around the geographical location of mine sites and their localised impact on communities. In keeping with this focus, some of the more common social and economic impacts related to mining activities tend to focus on:

Employment effects Changes to demographics and population movement (Haslam-McKenzie, 2011) Changes to social services (e.g. health, childcare) Housing affordability (Greive & Haslam-McKenzie, 2010) Demands on infrastructure (e.g. transport, communication, energy) (Rolfe, Ivanova & Lockie,
2006; Franks, 2011). While this range of indicators of social and economic impact present a range of potentially measurable and quantifiable impact categories, establishing pathways of impact remains challenging. This is especially the case when considering impacts in those even less tangible areas such as changes in crime rates, impacts on sense of community and place (i.e. the cultural aspects of shared beliefs, customs and values), and assessment of impacts on scenic or visual amenity. In the Australian mining context, SIA tends to form part of a broader Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process that is required as part of the regulatory framework governing any proposed mine site development. The criticism of this compulsory assessment of social and economic impacts of mine sites tends to be that effort is concentrated in the pre-approval stages of a mine site development.10 This focus on the social impacts of mine site development also dominates the SIA literature and has meant our attention on the impacts of the industry has been directed to the geographical sites of extraction and minerals processing but has not always included a broader focus on related industries and product and value chains that rely on minerals extraction. However in reality, mining has a profound impact on the Australian economy well beyond the location of individual mining operations. This is particularly the case if we consider the effect of the industry more broadly on the value of the Australian dollar or its impact on other sectors of the economy such as tourism, manufacturing, steelmaking, agriculture and so on. When we are thinking about the life cycle of technology in the industry, this broader impact is a significant omission. However there have been some recent efforts to begin to redress this through research that looks at integrating SIA into business systems (Esteves 2008; Esteves & Vanclay, 2009). Even so, the economic impact assessment that is generally undertaken as part of the regulated SIA tends to be based on the use of spending multipliers or input-output modelling of the, again, localised distribution of costs and benefits such as those relating to employment effects and the flow of profits. While there is great value in undertaking social and economic impact assessments, there are also increasing calls for the process to be better integrated into the life cycle of mining projects and their related activities (Lockie, Franettovich, Petkova-Timmer, Rolfe & Ivanova, 2009; Bice, 2011). This suggests that despite the differences between LCA as a method and the way standard SIAs are undertaken in the mining and minerals industry, there is a common desire to reflect a more complete story of mining, which in the case of social impacts is likely to be an iterative and dynamic process. However what is apparent here is that the use of the term life cycle in relation to SIA
10

One mechanism for addressing this is through increased regulatory requirements around SIA such the Queensland Governments recent introduction of the Social Impact Management Plans (SIMPs) for all new or expanded major resource development projects requiring an EIS. When developing these new SIMPs, project proponents are required to develop their plan in consultation with government and key stakeholders and to demonstrate how social impacts will be managed over the life of the project (i.e. from the point of project approval onwards) (Queensland Government, 2010). Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies

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tends to describe the various phases of a mining operation from exploration through to closure (which might be usefully understood as the value chain stages) whereas life cycle opportunities can potentially occur at any one (or even all) of these phases. Figure 1 demonstrates the life of the mine through various phases on the vertical axis (i.e. the value chain stages) with the life cycle opportunities mapped on the horizontal axis. This emphasises the importance of understanding where our focus needs to be and where the greatest potential might be identified in the mining value chain. It draws our attention to this potential to use the term life cycle in significantly different ways, but also where we might usefully identify new and different opportunities to demonstrate innovation in the mining and minerals industry.

Figure 1: Life Cycle Opportunities and Future Obligations (reproduced from Mason et al. 2011, p.20)

Social impact assessment also introduces the importance of participation of stakeholders, but as Rolfe, Ivanova and Lockie (2006, p.11) state it is not always clear...how communities of interest should best be involved in these processes. Methods commonly adopted in SIA can rely quite heavily on the participation of local stakeholders. This can happen through direct involvement in surveys, focus groups and workshops, for example. While this targeted engagement can elicit rich contextual information about regional stakeholders and concerns, it can also be time intensive and needs to be well managed. A poorly run engagement program is just as likely to hinder fair assessment of a new project as it is to help. However, while this local level engagement can provide access to the kinds of data that cannot be gained from a desktop study, the traditional social and economic impact assessments that comprise the broader EIS process are also criticised for providing data sets that are not well integrated in terms of providing a complete picture of the socioeconomic impacts of mining development (Rolfe, Ivanova & Lockie, 2006). Like LCA, there are elements of SIA methodology and practice that remain controversial and subject of ongoing debate among practitioners. Its reliance on existing but descriptive data sets can be a strength but there is also a need to develop the normative aspects of the method. Some of this criticism has centred on the fact that traditional models of SIA have been a technocratic expert driven process which has failed to effectively engage with communities of interest (Vanclay, 2005, p.1). What exists here is an opportunity to explore some of those methodological challenges related to how participation and engagement can be used to better understand the broader issues of societal acceptance of technologies and how this can inform the way we anticipate and manage any related social risks that emerge from such a process of engagement.

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2.3 What can social science do?


This summary of attempts to construct a method of social LCA (Section 2.1) and other efforts to document social and economic impacts (Section 2.2) reveals the challenges of integrating findings across these broad domains that are persistent across methodologies. Thus integrating social and environmental data and impacts is not a challenge that is limited to attempts to develop a form of social LCA. Rather it reflects the nature of interdisciplinary research more broadly. A central question therefore appears to be:

How do we develop an interdisciplinary response to these persistent challenges of social and


environmental data collection, integration and comparison? It is accepted that environmental LCA is a proven methodology for assessing the true environmental picture of mineral processing but that in its current form, it is not necessarily equipped to provide an assessment of the social costs of those same processes. Ehrenfeld (2009) suggests that it is worthwhile thinking about what we aim to achieve by bringing social and natural sciences together.11 Broadly he suggests that we begin by considering the potential areas of social science contribution to the problem and ask whether we are looking at social science as generating descriptions, prescriptions or as a means of implementation. This range of roles and examples of the kinds of social science interventions that illustrate them are summarised in Table 1 below.
Table 1: The Roles of Social Science in an Interdisciplinary Research Context
Purpose Role Example

Descriptive Prescriptive Implementation

Epistemological Normative Practical

SIA Ethics Participatory TA

How can LCA data be used in conjunction with these approaches?

(adapted from Ehrenfeld, 2009) Descriptive approaches make use of existing data about social conditions to provide a representation of how things are, and how they might otherwise be or change. Normative approaches emphasise the implications of our decisions about technology and the kinds of ethical or moral conflicts that might accompany those decisions (Grunwald, 1999). Implementation approaches are an attempt to move us beyond theoretical interventions and to demonstrate practical application of these approaches. It is in these implementation approaches that we also have the potential to use aspects of the descriptive and normative approaches to inform how we will activate those practical applications. Already in an approach like technology assessment (TA), we have an established method of analytic and democratic practice which relies upon a comprehensive analysis of existing socio-economic conditions as well as considering the possible social, economic and environmental impacts (descriptive) of new technologies. This allows us to make judgements about how desirable these would be (normative) for the implementation of new technologies. However, if we look more specifically at participatory forms of TA, we also have a method for taking these approaches and beginning to implement them with a range of technologies at various stages of development and/ or implementation through a case study approach (practical). The proven success of participatory technology assessment (pTA) across a range of research institutions in Europe is well documented and TA research networks and activities have been strongly active in Europe for more than 20 years (Decker & Ladikas, 2004; Russell, Vanclay & Aslin, 2010). As noted in Section 1.1, to look to TA as a field that offers a solution to the problem we are attempting to address is not a new idea. Previous research in and for the Flagship by Katz and Solomon (2008) and Franks et al. (2010) have both recommended the adoption of a constructive

11

Modes of integrated interdisciplinary research practice will be explored in more detail in Section 3.

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technology assessment (cTA) approach. This earlier research within the Flagship has focused heavily on developing the relationship between technologists and social scientists within the Flagship but it is now also valuable to consider how examining engagement with industry and the wider community might also usefully inform not only how technologies are developed but also how they are selected and deployed in a range of contexts. In terms of moving this existing theoretical work to application, it now seems as though pTA may provide the path forward in terms of building these more active social engagement processes that can be trialled with specific technologies and a broader range of stakeholder groups. As Norgate (2009) has pointed out, there is a distinct lack of case studies that can demonstrate the success of approaches that combine environmental and social criteria to assess technologies. TA raises questions that are relevant not only to researchers and technology developers but also to a broader audience of stakeholders whether that be in industry, government or broader civil society. The inclusion of pTA in an expanded TA framework is an effort to think about the broader range of conversations that need to occur if we are going to capture more representative social views. The theoretical framework has been established and now it is time to mobilise it in order to gather data. As Ehrenfeld (2009, p.267) argues, social scientists are equipped to guide this process in two ways: The first is as part of the design team, bringing pragmatically useful models into play. The second is to act as some sort of process facilitator, using their understanding of social interactions to guide problem-setting and subsequent activities, for example by reducing the communication barriers among the many actors, especially public stakeholders. Moving from the first step to the second step as articulated by Ehrenfeld (2009) defines the shift from cTA (design phase) to pTA (process phase). The emphasis on developing case studies has been considered carefully. Initially it was felt that to run a series of case studies would result only in a series of demonstration projects that were so context specific they could not be compared. However it does seem that until success stories can be demonstrated and the details of the process that made them successful is clearly articulated, the debate about what method is the right or most effective one for making decisions about the social and environmental impacts of technologies cannot be progressed to any significant degree. Further to this, the contextual nature of these issues is important. The potential for this work to showcase examples that will form the foundations for a mining specific form of pTA as a viable research activity has been the subject of preliminary discussions with key international TA researchers. What this has confirmed is that there is currently no established mining specific body of TA work in the world (see also Cooper & Giurco, 2011). Given CSIROs capacity as both a technology development and technology assessment institution, it is therefore uniquely placed to become the world leader in this field and this is the long term vision which will drive the development of individual case studies. Part of the case study approach will also be designed to address questions about the scale of focus. One issue that sits at the heart of this is how we might bridge approaches that are based on using geographical location to drive a more regional response to technology assessment with what we know about product chain approaches that reflect the material life cycle. The challenge is thus how to balance these two aspects into a useable and applicable methodological approach and this needs to be refined through practical application.

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3 Key Elements of an Integrated Research Framework


What has emerged from the discussion thus far is that there are three core roles social science can play in responding to the challenge of bringing together social and environmental criteria to assess mining related technologies, and there is value in considering how elements of each can contribute. These roles were previously identified as:

Descriptive what do we know about how things are right now from a social and
environmental perspective?

Normative what ethical issues do we need to consider about our technology choices that cut
across those social and environmental perspectives?

Practical how will we go about gathering the data we need to make the best technology
choices that we can? While those three roles make explicit the contribution of social science to this research problem, Section 3 now seeks to identify the key elements of an integrated framework that have emerged from the previous discussion. These elements represent the combined contributions of what technologists and social scientists might achieve by addressing this research problem together. Such an integrated research framework might reasonably encompass:

Sustainability providing an overarching and common research goal Interdisciplinary research practice enabling a shift from specialisation to integration without
sacrificing the integrity of disciplinary strengths

System level innovation allowing us to address the challenge of working across a variety of
scales.

3.1 Sustainability: A common goal


As noted earlier, some of the key work coming out of the MDU Flagship frames environmental research in the mining and minerals sector against a backdrop of sustainability (Rankin, 2011). This involves elements of stewardship (consider resource, material and product stewardship in the mining life cycle12) and also the way in which human behaviour impacts upon the environment through our actions and decisions. This focus on sustainability thus provides a critical way of conceptualising a broader vision of sustainability that comprises not only environmental concerns but also those of economic and social sustainability. For example, the focus on health and environmental impacts of technologies and processes can be extended to consider what opportunities these technologies and processes might present in the market and also the value of engagement with key stakeholders - from those who might be customers or suppliers in a value chain through to regulators and the broader public (Rio Tinto, 2012). As Rankin (2011) points out there have been clear successes in terms of drawing together science and human behaviour in the field of industrial ecology which has focused on integrating increased technological efficiencies with business models through the application of Design for the Environment principles. Such efforts have relied upon ways to incorporate increasing social complexity, changing governance and institutional structures, and the drivers for human behaviours alongside our scientific understanding. Those successes suggest that equally we can draw science and human behaviour together to better understand and also justify the choices we make about mining technologies.

12

Product stewardship as defined by Product Stewardship Australia (n.d.) is defined as an approach that ensures a products environmental impacts are responsibly managed across the entire life cycle from materials choice and manufacture through to appropriate recycling and disposal. See also Rio Tintos (2012) policy on product stewardship as an example of this being applied in the mining industry. Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies

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ENVIRONMENT
ETHICS

EFFICIENCY

EQUITY

(Clift, 2011)
Figure 2: The Triple Bottom Line Recast as a Sustainability Ethic

Clift (2011) frames this core focus on sustainability as taking the form of a sustainability ethic (Figure 2).13 Whereas efficiency has been the core domain of engineering where activity has been driven by scientific laws, technological ingenuity and efficiencies within the existing economic system, LCA has helped us understand these activities in the context of the environmental constraints imposed by the planet such as resource availability and capacity to reabsorb emissions. In Clifts view, introducing a social focus is a way of bringing equity into this discussion and focuses us on how our activities ensure a better quality of life for both current and future generations. In the centre of Clifts diagram we find ethics. In ethics, we find a way of understanding not only the way humans interact with the environment (and the impact of those interactions) but also the way we interact with each other (Lacey, 2009). It is through these two sets of interactions that ethics provides us with a way of justifying our actions and decisions about technologies on the basis of both environmental efficiencies but also social equities. From a social science perspective, ethical practice is very much a normative process. However such decisions rely upon quality data both about scientific efficiencies and social equity issues. So while a technical process like LCA provides us with the means to understand the ecological bounds of a system, we still then need to consider what decisions and actions we will take in light of this knowledge. In many cases, sustainability questions represent multi-dimensional problems with solutions that require value judgements and tradeoffs which are often too complex to be assessed through purely technical means or reveal how impacts are spread unevenly, whether across stakeholders or geographical locations (White, Fane, Giurco & Turner, 2008, p.81). Scientific and technological progress also tends to increase humanitys options and therefore the choices that are available to us (Grunwald, 2007). There is a clear need to understand the relationship that exists (or might be developed and shaped) between science (i.e. LCA data that quantifies the environmental impacts of various technical processes and activities) and how people relate to and use that data. Part of achieving this goal needs to address just how LCA data can be placed more centrally in social decision making processes and deliberations to achieve environmentally and socially sustainable outcomes.

13 This idea of a sustainability ethic built on interdisciplinary methodological responses and in particular, the need to incorporate social analysis in decision making, has also been explored in the domain of water management (Gibbs, 2006; Lacey, 2007 & 2009; Syme, Porter, Goeft & Kington, 2008).

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3.2 Interdisciplinary research practice


We have previously touched upon the very real challenges associated with developing interdisciplinary research methods and the need for all parties to have access to a shared language in terms of being able to communicate with each other. This has been a recognised problem in realising the value of joint efforts in the past for the MDU Flagship (Franks et al., 2010). In bringing social science to what is essentially a technical field, it has also been observed that one major barrier is that social scientists talk in many tongues and dialects. (So do technologists, but perhaps less so) (Ehrenfeld, 2009, p.269). Often the solution is cast as the need to develop a dialogue among the various disciplines. However, this dialogue is as much about exploring the beliefs and norms of the actors such that they begin to appreciate (understand and accept) those of each other (Ehrenfeld, 2009, p.269). And this highlights another issue to be navigated in interdisciplinary practice, which is the perceived integrity of methodologies. In the technical sciences, methodologies tend to be based on a positivist approach which reflects the generation of objective knowledge about the world (Schlick, 1991). In the social sciences, however, there are few universal methodologies (beyond mainstream economics). This is not to say there is less rigour in social science methods but it has led to the perception that because these methods often deal with subjective forms of knowledge that they are generating mere opinion as opposed to truth (Flyvbjerg, 2001; Ehrenfeld, 2009). However as Flyvbjerg (2001, p.53) notes where natural science is weak, social science is strong, and vice versa. For this reason relying on a single methodological approach for bringing interdisciplinary information together may not yield the results we are ultimately seeking because it will not preserve the strengths of different disciplinary approaches. Some of these challenges stem from the fact that the methodologies that are developed in one discipline are not immediately adaptable to the data sets of another discipline (e.g. some social data (but not all) defies the kind of quantification that makes LCA data so useful). However, this is not a problem that is specific to LCA based work. What it does point to however are some key questions including:

How is the data going to be used and for what purpose (e.g. are we trying to support decision
making or to map a process in a more detailed way)?

What are the areas of critical importance (i.e. what do we need to know that will enable us to
use the data in the way we want to use it)? These are questions that need to be jointly addressed by both technologists and social scientists. Mainly because they direct our attention toward our ultimate and shared research objective and the answers to these questions can therefore be used to guide our selection of key information (and in some cases, the most appropriate social science methods), particularly when our challenge in this case is the potentially endless stream of social variables that could be included in such a process (Norgate, 2009). What will also be important is to consider the most beneficial relationship that can be leveraged out of bringing natural science and social science data together. For example, in exploring the industrys fear of a single metric as being perhaps too reductive as an output, particularly in terms of corporate social performance (Rowe, 2011), it might be more useful to think about how we can make more extensive use of the metrics that are generated by LCA in different forms of social engagement. Thus a process for establishing an integrated research practice might be based on adopting LCA data as a central evidence input into deliberative decision making processes. This would require:

Recognising that LCA is a well established scientific method and for that reason, we do not
wish to alter it in any way. The integrity of the LCA method in measuring environmental impacts is recognised and should be preserved in any integrated research framework.

Identifying that the aim is to promote wider use and uptake of LCA findings in deliberative
decision making processes. This would mean making more extensive use of LCA data as a central or base input in social engagement processes and with broader range of stakeholder audiences. This would also enable exploration of new ways of using this data beyond the realm of technical specialists.

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Increasing the range of audiences who engage with LCA as part of our preferred approach to
moving this integrated research framework from theory to practice. Integrated research methods that have combined technical and scientific data with social processes in this way have been successfully used in the domain of urban water management (White et al., 2008). In particular, decision making in this domain has been focused on how best to manage supply and demand in an uncertain and changing environment in a way that can also achieve economic and environmental efficiencies at scale. While the technical and scientific know how is essential for understanding the environmental flows and yields in urban water systems, deliberative processes are seen as equally critical to ensuring fairness and equity, and bring in the necessary subjective or social dimension in the consideration of appropriate solutions (White et al., 2008, p.80). In the example described here, the authors drew on elements of integrated resource planning, adaptive management for incorporating real options analysis and multi-criteria analysis. Deliberative processes were embedded in two cycles of the process initially to establish objectives (akin to the Goal and Scoping stage in LCA) and again later to assess appropriate options based on the suite of choices that were generated by the process. This also moves us beyond limiting our thinking to a focus on how new technologies are developed because while that is an important aspect of where social processes can improve science outcomes, we must also recognise that technology development is not a neatly linear process. Social interventions in the way we think about technology at the development stage but also at the adoption and deployment stages are likely to have greater impact than relying upon a trickledown effect from the development of each new technology. For example, it was noted at the 2011 ALCAS Roundtable meeting that there is a need to increase engagement between LCA and the mining and minerals industry (Howard, 2011) and companies like BlueScope Steel are already examining how LCA data might be incorporated in the labelling and marketing of more environmentally sustainable and innovative products at the end of the value chain.14 Clearly BlueScope Steel has the opportunity to market and sell their products to end-of-chain consumers whereas others in the steel chain do not but this example does demonstrate that social engagement (based on LCA data) can occur at every stage of the mining value chain. At the same time, it is recognised that technical experts are not devoid of an understanding of human values and, in particular the values that drive their own research. As Katz and Solomon (2008) point out technologists not only have a great deal of technological and engineering knowledge to share but also tacit knowledge about the social, political and ecological aspects of technical processes that are not always accessed or made use of. To that end, technical experts have insights to share about their own goals for making broader use of LCA data through social engagement processes. While this represents one possible model of interdisciplinary practice, the finer points of applying this framework in the context of the mining and minerals industry still need to be negotiated. But those negotiations would revolve mainly around how we answer the two questions outlined above, and who our stakeholder audience will be at each stage of engagement. At the point of engagement, social science has a range of methods at its disposal for collecting the social data and we do not expect that technical experts need to become experts in those methods, any more than social scientists need to become experts in LCA. Part of the reason for working together is to increase the pool of our expertise in this way. At the broadest level we see this integrated research framework as naming the critical activities which we are jointly seeking to address. This provides a clear path forward for both technologists and social scientists and room to see the value of our particular theoretical and practical contributions. In effect, the construction of this overarching research framework demonstrates how diverse knowledge and expertise can be woven together in such a way as to drive interdisciplinary research and practice (Lacey, 2009). As much as anything, each discipline needs to understand its

14

H. Jarick, Sustainability Analyst, BlueScope Steel, pers. comm., 8 September 2011. Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies 19

A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship

boundaries and its limitations but to also recognise those shared boundary objects around which a common understanding can be realised (Star & Griesemer, 1989; Benn & Martin, 2010). The idea of a boundary object is borrowed from the domain of object orientated programming where different objects in the form of information, methods and the way they interact provide the framework in which programming occurs. Although the usage in this instance does not apply to computer programming, the nature of the boundary object provides a way of understanding how the different data sets, methods and interactions that occur between disciplines might contribute to the overall framework of our understanding. In effect, boundary objects can exist as shared terms or concepts, or even technologies, which might be appropriate in this context. However, what all boundary objects share in common is that they are both adaptable to different viewpoints and robust enough to maintain identity across them (Star & Griesemer, 1989, p.387). They can also usefully sit at the centre of diverse communities of research practice as a way of coordinating and cooperating around a research problem. As in LCA, boundaries are critical, and in this case, they may also pinpoint sites of interdisciplinary cooperation. These boundary objects (in effect, the points at which shared understanding or language is realised) can be the conceptual places which both technologists and social scientists can return to no matter how their disciplinary specific theory or practice might diverge. Thus we can maintain much of our difference if we can find just a few points of agreement and commonality. The idea of the boundary object becomes a touchstone for integrated research practice. In realising an effective interdisciplinary research framework we are in fact seeking a way of doing applied work that will afford all research participants a means to listen to each other sufficiently to understand the edges of their work and seek places where the edges can be joined more or less transparently (Ehrenfeld, 2009, p.264). In the context of the MDU Flagship, this focus is translated into a mode of coordinating technical and social science expertise to increase the science impact of these joint efforts.
3.2.1 FROM SPECIALISATION TO INTEGRATION

As soon as we introduce social, political and human elements into the discussion of technologies, we immediately transform our tame problem into a wicked problem. By their nature, tame problems are those that can be solved by traditional technical problem solving interventions (even those that are complex) whereas wicked problems defy our best attempts to apply our linear problem solving frameworks (Rittel & Webber, 1973). In their recent analysis of the complex and wicked nature of achieving sustainability in the mineral resources landscape, particularly as it relates to developing new technology for minerals processing, Cooper & Giurco (2011, p.3) also argue that while the value of technology assessment is widely affirmed, it has been rarely practiced with regard to minerals extraction and production technologies. What is required here is a way to assess mining technologies beyond their technical focus, and to identify a way of including information about social risk and also social value that have previously been excluded from our decision making processes. Thus the questions here appear to be: how do we harness the specialised expertise of disciplines to provide an integrated response to the research problem we are trying to address; and how can we integrate the range of evidence generated by these multiple processes? There are several ways we might consider this shift from specialisation to integration within this integrated research framework. For example: Single disciplinary focus Life Cycle Assessment Site based analysis Multi disciplinary focus Technology Assessment Supply chain analysis

We want to move from a single disciplinary focus to a more integrated multidisciplinary focus so as to more comprehensively address the nature of complex systems. One way of understanding the strengths of the LCA methodology has been to consider it within the broader, multidisciplinary framework of technology assessment (TA) (Kastenhofer, Bechtold & Wilfing, 2011). One reason the adoption of this broader TA approach can assist with the integration of social value impacts into/

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alongside LCA is that the domain of technology assessment tells us that we do not know much about many potential impacts of our technical design that might have serious consequences for human beings (Sotoudeh, 2009, p.17). This desire to adopt a more integrated approach to decision making about technologies is also driven by past experience where maintaining a narrow focus on elements of technical design or specificity has contributed to lost opportunities to capture social benefit, inadequate consideration or mitigation of negative consequences, and ineffective public participation (Rolfe, Ivanova & Lockie, 2006). This provides us with a way of introducing those equity concerns alongside what we already know about the engineering elements of technical design. From the other direction, life cycle thinking also encourages existing social research methods to focus beyond the single site of impact and think about social impacts along the value chain. This is going to be especially important as concepts like social licence to operate (SLO) begin to shift from being limited to geographical sites of impact (as industry currently understands their SLO) and start to exist beyond those geographical limits. In particular, the rise of social networking and the virtual organisation of activist communities is just one example of how this relationship (with industry and with technology) is starting to move beyond the traditional site of impact. The nature of the publics role with industry is likely to be another critical point in better understanding the interrelated issues of social risk and technology deployment.

3.3 System level innovation


Another emerging theme that frames this research problem seems to revolve around the nature of innovation. This appears to occur at two quite distinct levels:

There is the innovation required to craft an integrated research framework and an applied
model of interdisciplinary research that has already been described above.

There is the innovation that occurs in networks and systems across the mining and minerals
sector that drives the development, adoption and deployment of technology.15 In this latter iteration, the integrated assessment of technology in this sector might just as easily be understood in terms of the activities and decisions that occur in a broader innovation system of R&D, knowledge management and competitive advantage in the industry (Ashton & Stacey, 1995), and LCA data and social data can play important roles in each of these areas across the mining life cycle. However, in thinking about the characteristics of innovation systems, Moody and Norgrady (2010) have identified three main categories of change that enable and accompany innovation to occur. These include: 1. Development of new technologies; 2. Change in the market, or the demand for new or existing technologies; and 3. Change in the institutions that link, enable and encourage the first two components to come together (Moody & Norgrady, 2010, p.14). For innovation to occur, change needs to happen in just one of these areas but equally, innovation can also be understood as occurring in the linkages that exist between the activities in this broader system. For instance, we might understand these different stages in the innovation system as occurring:

during the development of technology at the adoption of technology in the deployment of technology.
While these activities represent distinct stages of technology use and different constituencies of stakeholders, they are interrelated within the broader system of the life cycle of technology. An example of how this kind of life cycle thinking can inform the way we respond to a particular research problem (both from an environmental and a social perspective) has been explored by Shen (1999) in his description of the problem of industrial pollution prevention.

15

This is a particular focus of the Vision 2040 Statement for the future of an innovative and sustainable Australian mining industry developed by the Institute for Sustainable Futures, UTS and Curtin University as part of CSIROs Mineral Futures Collaboration Cluster. See Mason, Lederwasch, Daly, Prior, Buckley, Hoath & Giurco (2011).

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For instance, Shen (1999) describes industrial pollution prevention as reflecting three generations of pollution problems which need to be managed in an integrated way if we are to have any real impact on environmental quality:

the first generation of problems is represented by the release of primary pollutants into the
environment

the second generation encompasses issues that involve transport, storage and distribution of
waste products

the third generation includes the ways we use, recycle and dispose of those products.
Arguably, Shens description of these intergenerational problems reflects the life cycle thinking that underpins LCA and also allows us to shift our thinking beyond the immediate site of impact to consider the complete nature of the value chain/production cycle (i.e. cradle to grave). This presents particular opportunities in terms of making explicit the connection between industry practice and stewardship and it is in this area that there are likely to be significant gains made in demonstrating benefits that cut across the environmental, economic and social domains. These attempts to address problems more holistically can also play out at different sites of a production chain and Shen (1999) further describes how our understanding of the intergenerational nature of pollution problems is also reflected in different sites of innovation thinking in the system. While traditionally our focus was at the end of the pipeline in controlling the primary pollutant emissions (and government focus continues to be here), there has since been a shift to considering how process modifications can provide reductions in waste levels and even further up the chain to thinking about what kinds of products can be manufactured to enhance recyclability in the overall system. In this domain, we are entering a complex chain of new thinking in which the importance of the technical dimension decreases and the social, cultural and political dimensions grow in importance as we go along (Shen 1999, p.3). These shifts have also been illustrated by Giurco and Petrie (2007) who have demonstrated how we might also conceptualise the scale of these interventions through a material chain focus (see Figure 3). As Moody and Norgrady (2010) point out innovation tends to occur in the spaces between activities; where these spaces are characterised by social, economic and political linkages that connect the markets with technologies. This also speaks to ideas of innovation fit which can be understood as the level of alignment between perceived characteristics and the requirements of end users at various stages of the production chain (Moreland & Hyland, 2010, p.18). While innovation fit currently tends to focus on the end of the pipeline, it is also possible to consider how a more integrated approach to compatibility issues might be embedded at various points along the life cycle of the technology. Increasingly, the domain of technology assessment has also shifted towards incorporating a better understanding of the co-evolution of innovation systems and innovation processes in recognition of the fact that it is not only the actors and issues in a system that are important but also the activities and interactions that occur between those actors and issues (Smits & den Hertog, 2005, p.1).

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Figure 3: Company Behaviours, Drivers and Material Chain Focus (reproduced from Giurco & Petrie, 2007, p.843)

3.3.1 THE ROLE OF PARTICIPATION

One way of exploring the multiple perspectives that occur along the life cycle of a technology is through participatory research methods. The nature of participation in technology assessment has been debated since the early 1970s (Carroll, 1971). Technology assessment was originally conceptualised as a purely objective and analytic activity designed to support decision makers. However, it soon became evident that there was a need to involve multiple perspectives (Van Eijndhoven, 1997). This has been addressed through increasing stakeholder involvement and public participation in technology assessment and the associated public debates that sit alongside it. In Europe, large scale processes have been designed to incorporate these multiple perspectives and include formats such as consensus conferences and citizen juries, for example. In these cases, the process around participation has overtaken the analytic purpose of decision making in terms of importance and what this highlights is the relationship that exists between technology assessment and democracy. In abstract form, the technical model is elitist and the democratic model participatory (Fiorino, 1989, p.293) and the challenge is to integrate these approaches. In particular, the participatory Technology Assessment (pTA) processes that have been championed most notably by the Danish Board of Technology make an explicit connection between the higher order principles of social equity from our triple bottom line approach and reflect them in processes underpinned by a commitment to democracy, fairness and participation (Klver et al., 2000). This also undermines the divide between technical experts and laypersons which has implied that non-expert views are not important or valuable. The integration of participatory methods provides a mechanism for moving beyond a purely technical focus towards encompassing elements of the social context which influence decisions about technology uptake and deployment. Thus in terms of introducing the participation of the full range of technology stakeholders into the assessment process, we also have a better chance of understanding how technology is likely to be integrated, accepted and adopted (Un & Price, 2007). What might be most useful is to think about the range of stakeholder constituencies that occur along the value chain throughout development, adoption and deployment of technology, particularly in terms of developing new models of sustainable production and consumption along these chains. There is a need to move beyond the end of pipeline focus and the idea of delivering a readymade technology to a passive public. In particular, issues of societal acceptance in the form of lack of awareness or negative public perceptions and reactions can impact on the uptake of

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technologies and there is a growing body of research around energy technologies being conducted within CSIRO that confirms this (Ashworth & Cormick, 2011; Dowd, Boughen, Ashworth & CarrCornish, 2011). Using these well established models of participatory research, we now have the potential to develop applied research that is tailored to the specific technologies and concerns of mining and minerals development in Australia.
3.3.2 IDENTIFYING AND LEVERAGING OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE MINING INDUSTRY

In terms of thinking about how participatory approaches along the life cycle of a technology might present opportunities for working with industry, the key industry drivers of innovation have been identified as:

increased output cost reduction local environmental issues (i.e. social licence to operate (SLO) although the changing nature of
SLO is likely to mean that this will no longer be limited to the local site of impact)

stewardship (Rouwette, 2011).


A number of these drivers of innovation have already emerged in our previous discussion, and we have already touched on the view that there is a need to increase engagement between LCA and its wider use by industry, particularly as this industry sits at the base of almost all other supply and processing chains (Howard, 2011). Therefore, one way of starting to formulate potential case study research is to think about how we could engage more directly with industry along those critical stages of the life cycle of technology whilst also being responsive to their key concerns.
Table 2: Incorporating Life Cycle Thinking into Participatory Methods of Research (Lacey, 2011)

STAGE OF LIFE CYCLE OF TECHNOLOGY & DECISION DEVELOPMENT: Investment in technology design

KEY ISSUES OR ACTIVITIES

Incorporating social values in R&D Strategic foresighting capacity Connecting technology development with
industrys social licence

ADOPTION: Uptake of technology by industry

Drivers and barriers for innovation Shifts in organisational values/culture Connecting technology uptake with
industrys social licence

DEPLOYMENT: Better understanding of public interface

Broader social acceptance Managing risk through public

How are each of these stages interrelated?

Connecting technology deployment


with industrys social licence Table 2 captures some of the broader issues and activities around which we might consider developing participatory research so as to better understand the multiple perspectives that occur along the life cycle of a technology (Lacey, 2011). It is not meant to be a comprehensive overview of all such issues but rather to represent some of the issues that might be explored. While the above table focuses explicitly on demonstrating a connection to the industrys social licence, what is perhaps more significant is that each of these stages and issues of relevance tend to be interrelated. While past research in the MDU Flagship has tended to focus on how we develop technology in order to transform those stages of adoption and deployment, it is just as likely that a better understanding of deployment will also inform the way technology is developed in the future. The purpose of this table is therefore to demonstrate only how an integrated research framework might be adapted to address a range of interrelated key issues through applied case study research.
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participation and involvement

4 Using Water as an Entry Point to Integrated Research Practice

A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship

While the development of an integrated research framework is intuitively interesting, there is a need to think about how this framework might be activated in the form of integrated research practice. It has already been suggested that there is a need to innovate through some of our disciplinary differences to achieve our common research goals. Section 4 is an effort to do that:

first, by considering how we might reframe our focus on technology around another issue
in this case, water.16 This is not an effort to displace the focus on technology by shifting to an examination of an impact category but rather to see what this might reveal about how technical and social issues intersect in practice

second, by considering a method for generating quantitative data sets based on existing
qualitative data by conducting a systematic review of the peer reviewed literature around a selected issue to demonstrate the potential to map critical social themes against stages of the mining life cycle. This is also an attempt to address some of the debates around quantitative and qualitative data that tend to dominate interdisciplinary research (i.e. innovating through interdisciplinary research challenges) and to think about making use of extensive existing data on the social impacts of mining.

4.1 Water as an entry point to practice


One main reason for considering water as a point of entry to integrated research practice is the potential to link the environmental and social aspects of water management and mining with some of the core goals of the MDU Flagship, particularly around increasing efficiencies in water use in the mining sector. There are also potential links to be explored here between the use of LCA data on the environmental impacts of water usage and eco-toxicity and the associated social impacts of these issues. By framing these technical and environmental issues around water, we also increase the potential for engaging with a broader range of stakeholders. Invariably everyone has a stake in water and the way it is managed. This implies a critical need for the engagement of stakeholders to be meaningful. Past experience in water resource management has clearly demonstrated that successful water resource planning relies on good data and science but is impossible to achieve without the people involved being committed to communicating, negotiating and achieving shared objectives through a respectful, transparent and unthreatening process (Boully et al., 2005, p.1). Participation needs to reflect a move beyond surface level engagement and stakeholder consultation to achieving real dialogue that places stakeholders within the process of generating information and influencing the way decisions are made. Another reason stems partially from the fact that extensive work has already been undertaken by interdisciplinary researchers seeking to develop quantifiable social indicators in the field of water resource management (McIntyre, Tucker, Green, Syme, Bates, Porter & Nancarrow 2006; Syme, Porter, Goeft & Kington, 2008). The interdisciplinary field of water management is an area that has also struggled to find ways of moving beyond a narrow focus on technical and economic efficiency to tell the broader story of our social, ethical and cultural understandings of this resource (Barber & Jackson, 2011; Juana, Strzepek & Kirsten, 2011). This has also reflected the challenges of working across quantitative and qualitative data sets in an interdisciplinary environment. These challenges have not been dissimilar to the challenges posed by efforts to develop an integrated model of research practice that integrates both LCA and social analysis to inform a decision context.

16 This is also an effort to extend our thinking beyond the traditional focus on water use in mining and to think about how to address a broader range of concerns associated with the impact of mining on water quality issues and so on. This also implies coordination with other Flagships within CSIRO that have shared research investment in this area.

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Further, even though mining uses a relatively small proportion of Australias total water resources, the rate of water use by this industry has been increasing rapidly over the last decade and in several regions in Australia, mining is now the main consumer of water (National Water Commission, 2010). For this reason, water use in the mining industry has come under increasing scrutiny in Australia, particularly where water systems are fully or over allocated. However, the adoption of new technologies and processes has a clear role to play in achieving water efficiency improvements. The current debate about the potential impacts of coal seam gas development on groundwater systems is an extremely topical example of this (Prosser, Wolf & Littleboy, 2011). Thus focusing on the example of water use in mining captures the intersection of a range of environmental, technical, economic, social, community and cultural issues as they relate to a wide range of stakeholders and across all stages of a mining life cycle. This may prove to be just one way of framing a case study around a specific mining technology.

4.2 Conducting a systematic review: Water in the mining life cycle


Earlier we described how social science can play an important descriptive role in telling us about the state of things. The decision to develop a systematic review process was a deliberate effort to think about how to make use of the vast range of existing data on the social impacts of mining. More explicitly, it was also an effort to develop a method for conducting a broad scan across the qualitative literature to identify and report quantitatively on the key emergent themes. This model and our preliminary results are described in detail below. A systematic review of the peer reviewed literature was undertaken as the method for trialling the identification and quantification of emergent social impacts and issues associated with water and mining. In some ways, this approach is not dissimilar to a technique conducted by Peters (2009) to review LCA publications by Australian authors as a method of documenting and tracking the impact of LCA in Australian industry and government. The main purpose of conducting our literature review was to develop and refine a systematic review process that would allow qualitative information to be analysed and key emergent social themes to be identified across the broad life cycle stages of mining activity (i.e. pre-mining, active mining and post-mining). This approach to the literature draws on a tradition of meta-analytic review methods utilised in disciplines such as medicine and psychology to analyse and synthesise results from a large number of studies examining related hypotheses. Usually in these reviews, statistical effect sizes are aggregated and a single weighted average value calculated and reported, essentially treating the combined sample sizes of all the studies as one single study to determine the overall, or meta-relationships in the data. Importantly, this type of method allows for individual variation within each study to be controlled or averaged across a large number of studies, meaning studies from different contexts and even theoretical perspectives can be assessed together. Recently, the logic of this type of systematic review method has been extended to other domains and types of research questions, including qualitative data and studies (EPPI, 2007). In the work reported here we determined some specific search criteria and conducted a systematic review of a portion of case study literature published on water and mining to answer the research question: what are the most reported social impacts related to water in mining? These data were organised such that the key emergent issues at each broad stage of the mining life cycle were identified. As this was the first identified attempt to conduct this type of systematic review in the social impacts literature, a pilot of the method was conducted. Once the method had been demonstrated and refined, a broader sample of literature from a larger number of sources was collated and analysed. Tables 3 and 4 summarise the results of the pilot and main literature searches conducted. Only peer reviewed articles and conference abstracts in English were included.17

17

Planned extensions to this work will seek and incorporate grey literature.

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Table 3: Results of Pilot Database Search of Literature

Database Compendex (engineering sciences - pilot search) Search date: 29/09/11

Search string applied Mining AND Social AND Case stud* AND Water

Number of hits 23

Number shortlisted for analysis 17

Full text 11

Abstract only 6

Number coded in Nvivo 11 0

Full text articles and abstracts identified were then coded using the qualitative software program, NVivo, and a series of emergent themes were identified. That is, the text was scanned and the main themes and issues related to water in mining were identified and recorded; the software allowed for this information to be collated, summarised and categorised. This method was piloted with Compendex (engineering sciences database) and then extended to a range of other databases to identify themes from the natural, social and environmental sciences in addition to the engineering sciences. This allowed an integrated search strategy across multiple disciplinary domains (see Table 4). To justify inclusion, an article needed to demonstrate a central focus on mining and water. Papers that addressed the topic peripherally (i.e. through the lens of another topic such as agriculture) were not included. Half of the sources identified as a result of the multiple database search were analysed and coded.18 This comprised a total of 30 full text articles and 30 abstracts of the total 120 sources that were shortlisted by the search. This process also allowed the source documents (i.e. individual articles and abstracts) to be assigned various attributes based on the following characteristics:

Stage of the Mining Life Cycle Geographical Location Commodity Focus.

18 Only half of the identified sources were coded as this was an exploratory activity to demonstrate proof of concept. Future work will complete and extend this analysis.

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Table 4: Results of Multiple Database Search of Literature

Database

Search string applied

Number of hits

Number shortlisted for analysis (duplicates removed) 48

Full text

Abstract only

Number coded in Nvivo


Full text Abstract

Web of Science (social and natural sciences) Search date: 08/11/11

Mining OR Mine* AND Social AND Water

249

22

26

11

13

Mining Scopus (life, OR Mine* physical, health & social sciences) AND Search date: 09/11/11 Compendex (engineering sciences with amended search string) Includes result of pilot search. Search date: 09/11/11 GreenFILE (to cross check againstagainst environmental science) Search date: 09/11/11 Mining OR Mine* AND Social AND Water Social AND Water Mining OR Mine* AND Social AND Water

223

40

14

26

13

139

25

16

11

34

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Table 5 lists the attributes that were identified under each of these broad characteristics. The initial focus of this process revolved around understanding social themes across the mining life cycle but there is also potential to analyse results by country and by commodity to see if there are particular patterns or differences that might emerge when considering issues across geographical locations and for different types of mining. By coding the data as described we are able to begin exploring how qualitative data sets may be transformed for use alongside LCA data sets. The aim of this activity is to explore the potential for presenting summarised social impacts data alongside environmental impacts of technologies derived through LCA to inform a decision context.
Table 5: Characteristics attributed to Papers included in Qualitative Analysis
Stage of Mining Life Cycle Geographical Location Commodity Focus

Stage 1: Pre-mining Stage 2: Active Mining Stage 3: Post Mining, Closure

Africa Asia Australia Europe North America South America Global Focus

Metals Coal Gemstones Uranium No specific focus

Results from our initial analyses demonstrate the potential for this type of approach. Table 6 summarises the emergent social issues across the three broad life cycle stages coded for. The percentages reported reflect the frequency of each social issue within the texts analysed. Using this approach it is therefore possible to identify the top three social issues at each stage of the mining life cycle in the sample of 60 source documents (highlighted in blue in Table 6). Importantly, it is then also possible to summarise the qualitative nature of each social issue identified to provide some context and richness to these identified impact areas. It should be noted that of those 60 articles only two papers contained an explicit focus on the use of water in the pre-mining or exploration stage. This small number of results necessarily implies that further and more detailed investigation is required, perhaps through the inclusion of documents associated with prospective projects as required by Environmental Impact Assessment processes and through the grey literature. As a proof of concept, this process demonstrates that this analysis of existing qualitative data sources can track a shift in the prioritisation of social issues in the peer reviewed literature across the various life cycle stages. Table 7 is included as a comparison for how these priorities can also be analysed across geographical location.

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Table 6: Most Reported Issues by Stage of Mine Life Cycle

Stage 1: Pre-mining (2) acid mine drainage competing uses for water economic costs & benefits environmental costs & benefits groundwater health impacts social costs & benefits social perceptions surface water water consumption water pollution soil & other pollution water quality water recycling 0% 0% 6.29% 0% 0% 0% 41.51% 0% 29.87% 0% 0% 0% 0% 22.33%

Stage 2: Active Mining (43) 0.77% 11.64% 10.24% 12.21% 8.82% 7.69% 6.92% 2.6% 5.91% 6.34% 11.53% 3.26% 3.66% 7.85%

Stage 3: Post Mining, Closure (15) 7.11% 1.91% 5.32% 12.27% 6.65% 7.48% 8.46% 9.23% 9.24% 1.69% 15.92% 4.51% 5.84% 1.03%

(based on 60 peer reviewed sources only)

The numbers in brackets in the table represent the number of sources analysed against each stage of the life cycle. The fact that only two sources were identified that focused on water in the premining or exploration phase means the results for Stage 1 are highly unlikely to be representative of the broader range of issues. A greater number of sources were identified for Stages 2 and 3 of the mining life cycle so these results are likely to be more representative and from a quick scan, the results reveal that while water pollution and the environmental costs and benefits of mining remained prevalent issues in both stages, there were some shifts in the priorities and the rate at which other issues were being reported (e.g. significant decrease in reporting on water consumption issues but a significant increase in reporting on acid mine drainage from Stages 2 to 3). Further extensions to this method will also aim to determine at what level social data can be refined around different technologies at these life cycle stages.

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Europe (11)

Africa (9)

Australia (10)

Asia (15)

South America (6) 0% 19.74% 13.34% 12.74% 7.25% 1.36% 7.93% 1.22% 0% 0.87% 14.01% 7.94% 19.45% 11.7% 1.74% 0% 0.28% 15.78% 14.94% 4.79% 3.52% 19.34% 10.56% 12.69% 3.06% 9.1% 0% 17.81% 11.36% 3.38% 5.65% 4.84% 0%

North America (4)

Global Focus (5)

acid mine drainage 11.15% 9.15% 10.68% 8.1% 3.49% 13.15% 1.31% 0% 6.65% 17.8% 4.65% 0.8% 1.78% 2.41% 19.75% 0% 0% 15.32% 11.5% 5.84% 0% 15.86% 0.51% 0% 0.69% 5.87% 0% 10.96% 3.27% 3.4% 18.8% 3.57% 9.73% 11.93% 8.68% 14.18% 5.31% 9.14% 4.62%

5.77%

5.12%

0%

2.35%

competing uses for water

5.15%

economic costs & benefits

6.39%

environmental costs & benefits

12.35%

groundwater

9.44%

health impacts

3.46%

Table 7: Most Reported Issues by Geographical Location

social costs & benefits

6.69%

social perceptions

9.97%

surface water

1.39%

water consumption

0%

water pollution

16.85%

soil & other pollution

2%

1.63% 1.52% 13.12%

5.5% 1.74% 0%

0% 1.4% 0.6%

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water quality

8.4%

water recycling

0.72%

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(based on 60 peer reviewed sources only)

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Another way of displaying these data is via word clusters that demonstrate how the themes are related to one another as a result of word similarity in the coded text. For example, Figures 4 and 5 contrast the shifting relationships between the same set of themes across two stages of the mining life cycle. As a quick demonstration of how the prioritisation of these issues shift, the location of acid mine drainage as a peripheral concern in Stage 2 Active Mining shifts to become a central focus in Stage 3 Post Mining & Closure.

Figure 4: Key Themes based on Word Similarity in Stage 2 Active Mining

Figure 5: Key Themes based on Word Similarity in Stage 3 Post Mining & Closure

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4.2.1 SOCIAL IMPACTS AND LCA

The next step in this process is to examine if and how LCA data and social issues and impacts data may be presented in a complementary manner to support a decision context. We take an example of an LCA analysis to explore this. In Giurco, Stewart and Petrie (2001), the authors conducted LCA on copper production technologies (flash smelting, reverberatory smelting and heap leach) against four impact areas Global warming, Eco-toxicity, Acidification and Smog and their comparative results are presented in Figure 6. This analysis revealed that different production technologies had greater or lesser impacts along the four impact dimensions examined. With particular reference to water, eco-toxicity using the reverberatory smelting technology was highest compared to the other two technology options at a global scale. This tells a compelling story and demonstrates the value of LCA.

Figure 6: Most Significant Environmental Impacts from LCA for Production of 1 tonne of Refined Copper (reproduced from Giurco, Stewart & Petrie, 2001)

The authors go on to conduct a country comparison between Australia and Chile. This analysis revealed that while eco-toxicity units were much higher for reverb deployed in Chile (240,000 units/1 tonne refined copper product) than for heap leach technology in Chile (48,000 units) and Australia (26,000 units), water consumption per tonne of copper product using heap leach in Chile (190 m3) was almost twice that used in the reverb process (100m3). In Australia, however, heap leach required only 30m3 per tonne of copper product. Taken as an LCA product alone this information is useful in a decision context about technology choices and transitions. The question then is what can information derived from our described systematic social impact review add to inform a decision context? If we first take the global mining life cycle impacts data described in Table 6, in the active mining phase of production (roughly comparable to the LCA boundary employed by Giurco et al., 2001), the top three social issues in the literature examined were environmental costs and benefits, competing uses for water, and water pollution. Specifically, these three areas picked up themes regarding:

over allocation of existing water resources a need to focus on reducing mine water usage competition from other industries the need to balance human rights and economic growth as a source of conflict eco-toxicity, specifically the impact of metal concentrations in water.

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These results support technology choices, at a global scale, that both reduce the amount of water used and the level of eco-toxicity created. While this confirms a broader sustainability agenda regarding water use in mining, it does not add a great deal beyond the LCA data and some broader understanding of drivers for the industry. What is important at this global scale, however, is that these social data tell the decision maker(s) why it is important to reduce water consumption and pollution. Specifically, that it is the over-allocation of water resources, competition among water users, including communities, and access to clean water (a basic human right), that underpins social impact concerns regarding this resource. There may also be potential to use this method to begin mapping the key drivers underpinning how deployable various technologies are across different contexts. Moreover, a broadly analogous country comparison using this social data between Australia and South America is also revealing. The top three issues in Australia were water recycling, water consumption and economic costs and benefits of mining, while for South America they were competing uses for water, water pollution and then economic costs and benefits. These results are averaged across the three mining stages analysed but they demonstrate that optimal technology choices are strongly connected with contextual understanding reducing water use in processing will be beneficial in Australia and Chile but for different reasons with likely different outcomes, as an example. It also demonstrates that social science offers an opportunity to make technology choices that have broader societal benefits or increase the likelihood for technology acceptance, and that together LCA and social science data sets have complementary and additive value through respecting the traditions and perspectives that each approach brings to the decision context or issue of focus.
Limitations of this Systematic Review Approach

It should be noted that the choice to use NVivo to code the text and identify themes limited the papers that could be used in this process to those available in digitised form. Scanned articles were not able to be coded using this software. To some extent, generating a list of top three issues based on the available literature is also heavily reliant on the way those issues are reported by authors and there is a risk that those issues selected by individual authors could reflect their own subjective bias. While the use of multiple databases of peer reviewed literature is one way to control for this bias, material in the grey literature may not always be subject to the same scrutiny. It also needs to be recognised that this process does not replace a standard and comprehensive literature review. It has been used here to document a technique for systematically reviewing specific literature on a particular issue and identifying key emergent themes. However, this process may be extended in future to provide more comprehensive results, include a broader set of source documents (e.g. grey literature, impact assessment documents), and tease apart different elements of the mining life cycle. The key emergent themes identified as part of the analysis were also relatively broad and a further refining of these themes would be useful. Developing data visualisation methods to inform a decision context will also be important, particularly to represent LCA and social science systematic review data in a complementary and appropriate manner. More centrally, this method may be criticised for reducing the complexity of social context as we have criticised some LCA attempts to capture social value in that methodological framework. Beyond systematic review as a recognised methodology for approaching disparate and complex bodies of literature, it may also be argued that the research traditions of the social sciences are respected in this process rather than ignored. This systematic review process answers a different set of questions to the original papers and sources from which it draws most heavily, however, it captures and translates these rich case studies into a broader output that speaks to a decision context alongside LCA data sets.

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There may be value, however, in exploring how other review methods may serve to bolster this argument and provide different sets of data for use in decision contexts. Meta-narrative review methods, for example, developed in the context of evidence-based medical treatment by Greenhalgh and colleagues (2009) may offer one approach. The meta-narrative approach was specifically developed to overcome the problems posed by heterogeneous methodological and epistemological approaches inherent in complex literatures.
Benefits of this Systematic Review Approach

Given that this process was more about developing and testing a method, the sample size was relatively small. However, as a proof of concept, the results suggest this is a process that has the potential to yield meaningful data sets for use in decision contexts. It will therefore be extended for broader application. In particular, this method allows for qualitative data to be represented in a quantitative manner without losing its richness and depth, and without reducing social data to a single number or metric. On the contrary, the social data presented provides a rich context within which LCA data may be interpreted more fully and applied with greater confidence. Conducting the pilot trial has also revealed another point at which technical and social scientists might work together to inform this process. In particular, when establishing the search criteria for the literature search, the selection of terms is critical. For example, acid mine drainage is also often referred to as AMD, acid rock drainage and ARD. Refining search criteria that recognise these multiple uses of technical terminology will improve the effectiveness of this approach in practice. The process has yielded a method for identifying how qualitative information (i.e. peer reviewed literature) can be analysed to produce some quantifiable outputs of activity across the mining life cycle. It would therefore be reasonable to think about how this systematic review process might be adapted to specific case study locations or issues so as to generate a literature analysis on more specific topics. That is, rather than thinking about all of the issues related to water and mining, we might adopt a focus on a particular technology such as in situ leaching to generate a range of issues that are associated with that particular technology, for example.

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5 Possible Case Study Interventions


Finally, the next critical step is to take this integrated research framework and transform it into integrated research practice through the design and implementation of a series of case studies that have the capacity to assess the combined environmental and social impacts of mining technologies. Norgate (2009) earlier identified that there is a distinct lack of evidence to demonstrate the successful integration of LCA and social analysis. Case study interventions that can demonstrate success are now critical to move us beyond the stage of theoretical intervention to practical application that will provide the path forward in terms of building more active social engagement processes that can be trialled with specific technologies and a broader range of stakeholder groups. This also allows us to build a picture of how the combination of LCA data and social processes can reveal how human decisions about technology are implemented (Boons, 2009). Our goal here is to successfully demonstrate how the stages of a life cycle assessment can be used to map social considerations and impacts and to incorporate a deliberative process as part of determining key priorities and developing a solid understanding of what drives the social acceptability of certain options. This will provide a method of establishing both the primary environmental and social data that is required in technology decision contexts, and allow them to be used in conjunction with one another. 19 Even more broadly, it is anticipated that these case studies will provide the success stories that will pioneer the development of mining TA as a distinct area of technology assessment work that deals with the explicit issues and challenges of the mining and minerals industry. It is in this domain that CSIRO is uniquely placed to be a world leader due to its combined technology development and technology assessment capabilities. The immediate challenge is to now take our methodological approach to integrated research and to test and refine it through practical application. Currently through CSIROs Mineral Futures Collaboration Cluster, a constructive technology assessment (cTA) methodology (social licence in design by Franks et al., 2010) is being tested using biochar in an integrated steel making process as a case study. The expected outputs of this work include a matrix of social science methods for use in a cTA context and a social risk assessment method. Building on this preliminary work, several other case study options for exploring an integrated participatory TA framework (with a focus on water in mining) that are being considered include:

The role of water footprinting in a regional innovation context (Australia) Groundwater management in Coal Seam Gas development (Australia) Competing uses for water mining, agriculture and human rights (Chile) Achieving water efficiencies through technology (South Africa).
Figure 7 outlines a process by which an integrated framework might be explored in an applied context. First, careful consideration of the decision context needs to be made along with an assessment of the roles of the prospective participants in this context. It is not necessary to have a single decision outcome from such a process that all participants must subscribe to, and in fact it may be more beneficial to frame such an exercise as a process within which multiple outcomes or impacts are possible. Broadly then, the process described aims to facilitate conversation with and between groups with a stake in the technology or issue being explored so as to inform one, or even multiple, decision contexts. Drawing on established TA methods and processes (Joss, 1998; Klwer et al., 2000; Bedsted & Klwer, 2009), participants in this process are provided with information and encouraged

19

While context is recognised as critical in the first stage of research application, particularly around the changing nature of social considerations and impacts across contexts, there is potential to consider some broader philosophical questions about the pros and cons of implementing generic versus context specific TA processes. This might also map well against ongoing research in LCA aimed at incorporating spatial and temporal sensitivities (Yellishetty, Ranjith, Tharumarajah & Bhosale, 2009).

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A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship

to explore and interrogate the meaning of that information. This information speaks to multiple scales. Starting with LCA data and the outputs of a systematic review of relevant social issues and impacts, through to a social risk assessment and potentially even a mirror technology impact assessment, and finally, to a set of information relating specifically to the local context that may incorporate a range of inputs including, for example, water availability and current allocation rights and amounts. It is intended that individuals with specialised knowledge are also on hand to assist with any technical questions participants may have. Through exploring and interrogating this information, outputs that are relevant to a range of decision contexts will be derived as articulated in Figure 7. These may include, but are not limited to:

informing technology (re)design within research and development institutions and


organisations

informing technology options for deployment in new or existing mines, or transitions to


alternative technologies by mining companies and operators

informing policy development and approaches to regulation of new and existing technologies
and the contexts within which they are deployed by government

enabling communities affected or likely to be affected by technologies or issues of focus to


develop and articulate the attributes that will underpin local and societal acceptance of new technologies or mining practices. As noted earlier, what we are seeking to do with this framework is to drive the identification of the primary data that is needed to make these kinds of evaluations or assessments and can also be applied meaningfully across all of the key stages of the mining value chain:

Exploration Mining Processing Metals Manufacturing (and potentially beyond e.g. recycling).
Broadly, this integrated research framework captures how we intend to deliver on these outputs. It also clearly demonstrates how interdisciplinary research practice can be mobilised to not only inform those decision contexts about mining technologies and processes for increased value to the MDU Flagship and CSIRO, but also translate and extend the benefit of an integrated approach to industry and the wider Australian public. This framework provides the mechanism for demonstrating how technology development, adoption and deployment in the mining and minerals industry can demonstrate best practice in terms of its record of environmental sustainability and pioneer the processes that will support increased societal understanding and acceptance of these technologies into the future.

Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Social Analysis of Mining Technologies

37

A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship

Figure 7: Integrated Framework in Context

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A Framework for Technology Assessment in the Minerals Down Under Flagship

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