Coal Mining: Managing the cumulative impacts of multiple mines on regional communities and environments in Australia.

Regional communities and environments in Australia have experienced the rapid transitions associated with expansion of the coal mining industry and now face the prospects of industry contraction as a result of declining global resource demand. While communities have benefited from the expansion of the coal industry through the creation of jobs and the investment in economies the compounding impacts of multiple mining operations have stretched environmental, social, human and economic capital. Such change has multiplied the extent, magnitude and profile of cumulative (or multi-mine) community, economic and environmental impacts and rendered conventional mine-by-mine approaches to management and mitigation ineffective. In this paper we draw from examples in the Bowen Basin, Hunter Valley and Gunnedah Basin to traverse the range of impacts resulting from mining activities and detail management and assessment practices drawn from working examples that have aimed to enhance positive, and avoid and mitigate negative, cumulative impacts.