Large-scale Extractive Industries in Madagascar: Perceived Social-ecological Impacts of Operational and Exploratory Foreign Mining Investments

Mining has the potential to play an important role in contributing towards Sustainable Development Goals, whilst also threatening and damaging the environment and people’s wellbeing, livelihoods and local cultures. Global resource extraction is growing rapidly, and this increase is also being observed in Madagascar, a key global biodiversity hotspot. There are currently a few large-scale extractive investment sites in Madagascar, with more in the exploration and planning phases. To understand the place-based impacts of operational and planned large-scale extractive investments on social-ecological systems in Madagascar, we took an empirical, case study-based approach using the following sites, owned, run or being explored by foreign investors: 1) Ambatovy Moramanga, 2) Ambatovy Tamatave (both belonging to the same investment), 3) QIT Madagascar Minerals/Rio Tinto, 4) Ranobe and 5) Tantalum Rare Earth Malagasy. To allow for a causal attribution of perceived land use and management changes, resource access, livelihoods and wellbeing to these sites, we applied a counterfactual approach. Villages were selected independently using a spatially-explicit propensity score matching. A total of 459 small-scale farming and agropastoral households responded to the survey across the five sites. Through the survey, we obtained information on general household characteristics, land use, land management, livelihoods, wellbeing and any perceived changes to these variables, as well as any perceived mining impacts related to these changes. Impacts on land use, livelihoods, wellbeing and security were perceived to be predominantly negative. Pollution from the mining sites, mostly from the operational sites, led to decreased access to water and fish resources. Access to natural forests was also lost and households perceived a decrease in forest size. Households were engaged in different land uses, often for subsistence purposes, and they perceived a range of negative impacts on land use and management. A common negative impact across different land uses was reduced productivity due to soil, water and air pollution. Pollution also negatively impacted health, particularly for households living close to the sites, and most prominently around the QIT Madagascar Minerals/Rio Tinto site. However, some mining projects, like Ambatovy, were seen to improve healthcare and infrastructure. Our results show that while mining impacts occur mostly once mining operations and resource extraction start, land users living around these sites already perceive negative impacts during the exploration phase of planned investments. This has important policy implications as currently, Environmental and Social Impact Assessments are not required for exploratory mining activities. Our study also demonstrates a methodological issues with using a counterfactual approach in this study, no counterfactual exists in the context of these mines. Overall, our results provide a first holistic overview of how operational and planned large-scale extractive investments in Madagascar affect land (and sea) use, as well as human wellbeing through the lens of small-scale farmers and pastoralists.