Sustainable development is a challenge for the mining industry since it concerns the three-fold: economy, environment and society, and describes the transition to a sustainable society where targets on every aspect of the three-fold are met (Cowell, Wehrmeyer et al. 1999). Mineral industry in order to gain and maintain the social acceptance, as a prerequisite for its sustainable and uneventful operation, needs to offer sharing benefits to the communities affected so as to improve their living standards (Kazakidis V.N. 2003).
Benefit sharing in the mineral industry is not a new issue as it has made its appearance in 1992 in the Convention on Biological Diversity signed at the Earth Summit of Rio de Janeiro. Initially conceived as the distribution of financial benefits of a mining activity to the communities affected (Muthuri and Gilbert 2011), benefit sharing nowadays has evolved in a broader concept of sustainable resource governance that promotes social accountability and responsibility (Tysiachniouk, Petrov et al. 2018). CITATION:Garidi, A and Gaidajis, G, 2019. Benefit-sharing mechanisms in developed mining countries: a literature review, in Proceedings 9th International Conference on Sustainable Development in the Minerals Industry, pp 134138 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).