Mining Sector

The Sector Wide Impact Assessment (SWIA) on Limestone, Gold and Tin Mining in Myanmar was the fourth and final full-scale SWIA undertaken by MCRB, with guidance from the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR).

A SWIA is a forward-looking assessment that aims to contribute to preventing and minimising the sector’s negative impacts as well as strengthening and improving the sector’s positive impacts. The Mining SWIA analyses the impacts of mining of these three commodities on the environment, local communities and workers. It covers sector-wide, cumulative and project-level impacts, looking at both the formal and informal parts of the sector.

Initially it had been planned to conduct MCRB’s 4th SWIA on Agriculture.  However, the decision to pursue a SWIA on mining was taken after engagement with environmental and human rights defenders consistently showed that mining was their chief concern. The legacy of the 2012 protests at the large scale Letpadaung copper mine continuing to reverberate, but individual and cumulative impacts at historical mining sites, and sites affected by artisanal mining, particularly of gold. Furthermore, mining activities are drivers of conflict in Myanmar, and the resolution of this through a federal mining framework is  central to building peace. General conflict analysis based on field research findings was contained in Part 5.6 of the SWIA and Part 6 contained a Region-Specific Governance and Conflict Analysis focussed on Kachin, Shan State and South East Myanmar and the conflict dynamics and armed group involvement in mineral extraction in all of these areas.

Another reason for switching to mining included interest from international ‘junior’ companies in exploration in Myanmar, and the presence of Myanmar commodities, particularly tin, on global markets. This increased the potential leverage for improving practices.

Field research took place in 2016/2017 in eight areas throughout Myanmar, with two research sites for each commodity/topic (tin, limestone, large scale gold mining and artisanal gold mining.  After consultation, the SWIA was published in March 2017.

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Complete Mining SWIA

Document PDF, 7608 downloads, 08 March, 2018

Executive Summary and Recommendations (English)

Document PDF, 3237 downloads, 08 March, 2018

သတ္တုတွင်းလုပ်ငန်းများ၏ သက်ရောက်မှုများအား ကဏ္ဍအလိုက်လေ့လာဆန်းစစ်ခြင်း စာတမ်း အပြည့်အစုံ

Document PDF, 6890 downloads, 13 December, 2019

အစီရင်ခံစာ အနှစ်ချုပ် (ဗမာ)

Document PDF, 3596 downloads, 08 March, 2018

A supplement of ‘Linked Initiatives’ in the mining sector aimed to outline the initiatives relating to mining and human rights in Myanmar by government, development partners, business, and NGOs at the time of publication in 2017.

Drawing on the SWIA findings international standards, and follow-up multistakeholder discussions a Mining Sector Briefing Note was prepared as a supplement to MCRB’s series of 2018 publications on Biodiversity, Business and Human Rights.

The SWIA contained the usual recommendations to the Myanmar Government, businesses, civil society and other actors on how adverse impacts of the mining sector can be avoided and addressed, and how positive impacts can be maximised. However, the SWIA also sought to crystallise the dysfunctionality of the sector, both at the policy/law level, and the practice level, in comparison to sectors in the first three SWIAs (oil and gas, tourism and ICT) and the challenges underlying this, specifically:

1. Policies, laws and regulations relevant to mining activities lack clarity and inhibit responsible investment
2. The capacity of government and business actors to monitor and address environmental, social and human rights impacts of mining is limited
3. The environmental, social and human rights costs of mining are externalised on local communities
4. Governance of mining in conflict-affected areas is highly problematic
5. Extensive informality in the mining sector needs to be addressed

In the SWIA, MCRB advocated for Myanmar to completely overhaul the sector, starting with a Mineral Resources Policy, rather than the approach of adoption of multiple laws and confusing and contradictory amendments, with a substandard retrofitted Policy (which was the approach being taken at the time of the coup).

The sector’s dysfunctionality was explored in a multistakeholder discussion in Monywa in March 2019 on gold mining in Sagaing which explored the contradictions between national and sub-national law, and between laws pursued different Ministries, as well as local community priorities.

As with the Oil and Gas SWIA, the Mining SWIA was preceded and followed up by other multistakeholder discussion and advocacy, mainly focussed on the emerging environmental and  social impact assessment process, including public participation and draft sectoral EIA guidelines on mining (2018). Findings were also incorporated into advocacy on the draft Rules to implement the Mining Law (2016) reform of land laws, including land acquisition and resettlement.

There was general confusion at the level of legislators, regulators, company and communities about the difference between requiring a company to avoid, reduce and mitigate adverse/negative impacts, and the opportunity for mining to promote positive social impacts and community development such as local employment. MCRB regularly sought to distinguish between these two approaches, and how they related to the EIA process.

Fixing problems of transparency and environmental and social performance in the mining sector was one of the main civil society priorities that they pursued as part of Myanmar’s participation in the Extractives Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Although Myanmar was delisted from  EITI in 2024, licence data from reports published between 2016 and 2020 is mapped here.   Public participation, grievance handling and mediation of community conflicts with mining companies were all issues on which MCRB facilitated discussion, including with others working in the field such as Peace Nexus, Oxfam, Earthrights and World Wildlife Fund. 

Others, particularly Global Witness, have published excellent research on conflict, human rights abuses and environmental destruction related to mining of jade and rare earths. To ensure that work undertaken in 2016/2017 by Coffey-Valentis with recommendations for more responsible and better planned jade mining practices was not lost as a result of non-publication, MCRB has also included these on its website.

Although not a commodity included in the SWIA, MCRB, in the course of its work on tourism, highlighted a number of issues relating to river, seabed and beach sand mining and conducted advocacy on this with national and local governments between 2015 and 2018.

The Mining SWIA also identified a role in Myanmar for international initiatives and standards such as the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. In 2018, an In-country Working group on the Voluntary Principles was established with MCRB as Secretariat. However, unlike oil and gas, Myanmar lacked the presence of international mining companies who are members of the Voluntary Principles Initiative, other than PanAust, who were at an early exploration stage.  This made practical activity relevant to security in the mining sector challenging, despite an appetite to learn on the part of government ministries and civil society. dialogue on possible emerging regulation of private security companies which ultimately led to MCRB’s 2022 Baseline Assessment of Private Security Companies, which drew heavily on the work of ICoCA, the responsible security association, of which MCRB became a civil society member.

Following the coup, most remaining foreign mining exploration companies suspended their plans for exploration and possible investment. MCRB’s activity in the sector, including on the VPSHR, ended in February 2022.