David and Goliath : Coal Dust Pollution and the Social License to Operate in Regional Australian Coal Mining Towns

Coal mining companies in Australia are facing increasing pressure to confirm a Social License to Operate (SLO), defined as the ongoing acceptance and approval of a site or technology by stakeholders that can affect the financial prosperity of mining. This paper investigates the relationships between local communities, the government, and coal mining companies in Australian regional coal mining towns and presents insights into how these relationships affect perceived SLO. Since the colonial era, Australian economic prosperity has largely been propelled by an abundant stock of minerals, including coals. This study has undertaken 27 semi-structured interviews with residents from Singleton, New South Wales, and seven with residents from Clermont, Queensland. Most interviewees expressed their strongly negative perceptions of coal dust pollution. Nonetheless, they described strong feelings of disempowerment and the power of the government-industry nexus, which resulted in a withdrawal of their engagement with the mining companies and governments. Most interviewees are found not to believe they could generate any change to their disempowerment. In the context of non-market valuation, the antinomic environmental psychology among the local communities affected by coal dust implies the complexity and difficulty of estimating the unbiased dollar value of a hypothetical reduction in coal dust pollution