Environmental/social performance indicators (ESPIs) and sustainability markers in minerals development: reporting progress towards improved health and human well-being: Phase II
for International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada

Summary

Objectives

The specific objectives of the Indian component of Phase II of this project were the following:
Joint refinement of the conceptual framework of health and well-being in order to enable the construction of intercultural tools in minerals development.
Development of a framework of environmental and social performance indicators based on issues identified in Phase I, using a bottom-up approach rather than an off-the-shelf approach and testing of the indicator framework in different clusters in the mining region.
Development, refinement, and testing of the Quality of Life (QOL) tool.
Developing impact adjusted income accounts for the mineral sector in Goa by putting a value on the use of minerals and groundwater, and the impact on health and the environment.

Approach

The project had a transdisciplinary approach, involving a research team from the social, health-related, statistical, and environmental sciences. The tools and the processes evolved as the project progressed.

Research methods

A detailed review of quality of life, health, well-being studies was carried out. The study also looked into advances in the development of indicators, natural resource accounting, environmental, health, and social cost valuations.
The approach used in the project to assess progress is consistent with emerging ecosystem approaches in which it is explicitly recognized that the well-being of people cannot be separated from the physical, social and economic context in which they are located. This is particularly so in situations wherein there is a development driver that influences these domains in several ways.
This study adopted a multi-stakeholder perspective-industry, government, and community-to identify and validate the issues that served as a basis for the development of tools. This is a central methodological feature of the framework used. At the first level, the issues of concern to stakeholders were identified from the assessment of economic, social, and environmental domains. These issues were refined further through direct observations in the field, focus group meetings, and semi-structured interviews with key persons in order to triangulate and validate the data gathered. This explicit identification of issues with stakeholders is carried out so that these issues are representative of the various interests in a mining region, to ensure that all the different versions of reality are captured, and reflected in the proposed tools. At the second level, these identified issues are validated with the three major stakeholders-the state and local government, the local village community, and the mining companies to ensure that the issues are acceptable to all stakeholders, reflect their priorities, and that those issues that are left out are less important than those that are included. The predominant issues from individual and common stakeholder perspectives were organized using a Venn diagram, and a common set of core issues of concern to all three stakeholders arrived at. The tools developed were based on these issues.
The environmental and social performance indicators are part of Level III of the MERN indicator framework. However the actual indicators were developed using an indicator hierarchy chart using the IUCN methodology. Such a hierarchy displays the domains, issues, sub issues, indicators, and enables an understanding of their relationships. The initial indicator set developed was tested for validity, relevance, and feasibility. The indicators were tested in selected mine sites in selected villages. These were operationalized using a combination of impact indices and R/P ratios which serve to indicate the future of the activity and present stress. This method suggested 17 villages. Within these villages, one mine with the largest current production in the villages was selected.
The development of the Quality of Life tool involved work on the clarification of that concept using literature surveys, e-mail discussions with MERN and INER, and interaction with others working in the field of QOL assessments. The process for developing the Quality of Life tool was inspired to some extent, by that which was adopted for developing the WHOQOL instrument. The domains and sub-domains were defined through methods that were transdisciplinary, participatory, and gender-sensitive. The QOL tool was piloted in selected mining villages in Goa and Mozambique by TERI and MERN, respectively; analyses of the results from the pilot study using appropriate statistical methods were obtained; Version III of the QOL tool was fielded in the same selected villages in Goa (17 villages with 5% of the population as sample) in three clusters of the mining region and in two villages of a non-mining region. The QOL tool was administered to the head of the household members or to their spouses who lived in the mining and non-mining villages using a systematic random sampling technique. 389 respondents in the mining region were canvassed (Cluster I: 116, Cluster II: 182, Cluster III: 91) and 61 respondents from the non- mining village, of which about 50% were males and 50% females. Each interview took approximately 30 minutes. In this study, subjective satisfaction is measured using a five-point scale. The t-test for equality of means and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to compare whether any statistically significant differences existed between the mining (overall and across clusters) and non-mining regions.
Impact-adjusted income accounts: A TERI 1997 study provided the data for the physical assessment of impacts. This was supplemented by a health survey also done in 1997 and reported in Phase I of this study. The resource costs were estimated for mineral depletion using the change-in-stock approach and valuing these using the user cost approach, for ground water depletion as a by-product of mining using the opportunity costs of supplying tanker water to people affected by water shortages, and for foregone timber of lost forests using imputed values from market data in other states of India^a. Environmental costs were estimated for loss of services from forest lost to mining. Health costs were estimated for those exposed to air and water pollution and using valuations from other studies done in India. Social costs were estimated for those whose croplands were affected either by loss of soil productivity or land conversion to agriculture. These valuations are based on yield per hectare and valued at net market prices.

^a. There is a ban on timber logging in Goa; hence there is no market for local timber. So loss of timber and non-timber resources connected with forest clearing is valued based on market data from other states in the absence of a direct market.

Research findings

Development and testing of environmental and social performance indicators

Testing involved ascertaining if:
The indicator is meaningful to companies and governments to describe progress.
The indicator is realistic and feasible and can be used.
The agent and the scale is best suited to provide the information needed.
Find out if the data are collectible, do they exist and in what form.
             

Quality of Life (QOL) tool

The QOL tool has been developed with the following in mind:
Its relevance to mining areas in developing countries.
The need to be sensitive to both, the charge of conservatism and to that of expert dogmatism in QOL assessments.
To be both, participatory in its approach and gender-sensitive.
To have policy relevance.

The main differences in features across the three versions of the QOL tool are given in the table below.

Table 1 Differences across the versions of the QOL tool

Particulars	Version I	Version II	Version III
Type	Fully subjective 100 %	Objective: Subjective 50:50	Objective: Subjective 75:25
Type of questions	Fully structured closed ended questions	Semi-structured with both closed and open ended questions	Semi-structured with both closed and open ended questions
Information	Only subjective, no objective	Covers objective as well as subjective (better coverage of both)	Subjective information is less
Time required	45 minutes	1 hour	30 minutes
Interviewers view about canvassing	Moderate	Difficult	Easy
Data entry and computation	Easy direct	Not so direct	Not so direct
Advisable method of collection	Direct filling by respondents	Direct filling by respondents	Interviews/direct filling by respondents

All three versions were tested and found reliable for internal consistency. We believe that all three versions have potential for use depending on the economic and social context of the mining region. Version I will be of importance in a mining region in a developed country, as some basic conditions are already met; Version II would be more appropriate for developing regions where there is a certain degree of political and social emancipation; Version III would be more appropriate for developing regions, where the need to measure objective conditions is very important.
         

Adjusted income accounts for the mining region

A tool to track sustainability in the mining region has to account for the impactof the activity and then adjust the income obtained from mining to account for such impacts. In this report, the costs of mining in Goa have been estimated. It is important to state at the outset, that the valuation attempted here is based on impacts identified in the TERI 1997 and other secondary data. No new surveys or primary data collection have been done to arrive at more precise estimates of value as the objective here is to demonstrate how the tool can be of use. More detailed studies are required to enable improved estimates of the value of these impacts.

These estimates can be used to operationalize the concept of sustainable development connected with mining operations. The values involved with the environmental costs can be seen as an additional amount that should be contributed by the mining companies to finance environmental rehabilitation using the polluter pays principle. The values under resource, health and social costs can provide the rationale for community development funding. In the case of minerals this emerges from the fact that after a point, there will be no more resource available for the community. Hence a part of the income stream that is generated from the mineral development (the capital component or user cost) needs to be put away to finance community development so that even when the resource is exhausted the community has the necessary skills and resources for alternative development. Unlike environmental costs, this involves an intertemporal interpretation of opportunity costs. This argument, based on intertemporal equity, was also reflected in the views of the people in the focus groups. Mining contributes to sustainable development if the adjusted income 0.

Research outputs

Environmental and social performance indicators for mining companies: company level, mine sites; for government: village and region level.
Quality-of-life indicators for the community.
A jurisdictional map for the mining region of Goa.
Three versions of the QOL tool.
A methodology to develop impact-adjusted income accounts for mining region