Assessing the social and economic impacts of coal mining on two different communities in Central Queensland, Australia

The broad aim of the project was to assist coal mining companies develop effective processes for engaging with their communities and developing impact assessment and planning processes that can be agreed by their stakeholders. This paper focuses on two different communities in Central Queensland: an existing mining community and a predominately agricultural community where coal mining companies have just started up and are planning to increase their operations. Each case study involved the application of four different impact assessment tools: stakeholder analysis, input output modelling, choice modelling and experimental workshop assessment.The analysis showed that while there is a great deal of consistency in the results from the different techniques, different techniques provided different insights into the types of impacts on communities. Also, using four different socio economic impact assessment techniques, some significant differences between the two communities were identified. While mining was generally viewed in positive terms because of the economic and demographic impacts, there were varying levels of concern about different economic and social impacts. The differences between the two communities indicates that dealing with impacts needs to be tailored to specific community characteristics and issues.