Vol.:(0123456789) Environment, Development and Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-019-00410-8 1 3 Country‑level governance frameworks for mining‑induced resettlement John R. Owen 1  · Vlado Vivoda 1  · Deanna Kemp 1 Received: 7 December 2018 / Accepted: 15 June 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract Debates about safeguarding the rights of people displaced by mining focus on three levels of governance. The frst is the international system of sustainability polices and perfor- mance standards preferred by lenders such as the World Bank and the IFC. The second is the commitments and enacted performance of mining corporations. The third is the coun- try-level mechanisms of host jurisdictions as they appear in legislation and government policy. In this article, we focus on country-level mechanisms as simultaneously setting the operational context for mining and for demonstrating the rate of uptake and relevance of the international system of regulatory protections. Country-level systems of governance is becoming increasingly important as observers have noted both the generally low levels of performance by mining companies against existing standards and the overall absence of specifc legislated instruments as a basis for enforcement and accountability at the coun- try level. Moves by international fnancial institutions, such as the Asian Development Bank, to progressively recognise country systems as equivalent safeguard proxies neces- sarily brings such systems into closer scrutiny. The authors provide a comparative review of country-level governance arrangements for guiding resettlement in mining across six jurisdictions. Keywords Minerals policy · Land acquisition · Involuntary resettlement · Country-level systems · International safeguards 1 Introduction Recent decades have witnessed signifcant growth in international- and national-level instruments relating to land acquisition and involuntary resettlement. During this time, the policy landscape has evolved from a set of prescriptions by international fnance institu- tions (IFIs) targeting country-level infrastructure development to a suite of safeguard poli- cies and performance standards extending to both public and private sector organisations. Policy frameworks for safeguarding against known sets of resettlement risks have, in a sense, become mainstream governance instruments. What began with The World Bank’s * John R. Owen j.owen@uq.edu.au 1 University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD, Australia