Lenzen, Foran and Dey: Triple Bottom Line Accounting of Economy and Environment

The primary mining sector portrays advantaged outcomes for the environmental and financial indicators, but below average performance for the social indicators of employment generation, income and government revenue. The export propensity indicator is four times the average reflecting the industry’s contribution to helping improve the international trade balance. The lower than average contribution to government revenue may be an overestimate since resource rents paid for mineral and petroleum extraction to state and federal governments are not included as ‘payments to government’ in the internationally implemented ‘System of National Accounts,’ and thereby the national input-output tables. The lower than average indicators for employment generation and income are essentially structural due to the scale, capital intensity, and economic efficiency, required by each mine that exports to a competitive international marketplace. However there is some justification to claims from mining regions, that a significant component of resource rents be pledged to long term structural investments in those areas from which minerals are extracted, rather than being directed towards the maintenance of major urban centres where the political power lies.