Natural resource extraction has a lasting and dramatic impact on the natural environment as well as far-reaching social effects. As such, public policy and governmental regulation are crucial for a transition to sustainability. However, on their own, these have shown to be insufficient to achieve such transformation. Changing commitment and conduct of the extractives too is important to transit. Firms in the extractives are large and highly international, and their owners are decisive for businesses’ conduct. Therefore, it is relevant to determine whom and how to influence to transit towards sustainability. To this extent, we study dominant firms and their owners in the top-10 international extractive industries. We establish that both natural resource markets and ownership of keystone agents are highly concentrated: the three largest companies earn 70% of the revenues in the ten industries studied, and the three largest shareholders in these companies on average have 22% of the shares of the keystone firms. This helps explain why regulation has been rather ineffective so far. We discuss several options to influence keystone agents. We conclude that advancing sustainability in extractives requires leveraging a limited number of keystone agents.

中文翻译：

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利用采掘业的关键代理来促进可持续发展

自然资源开采对自然环境产生持久而巨大的影响，并产生深远的社会影响。因此，公共政策和政府监管对于向可持续发展过渡至关重要。然而，这些措施本身不足以实现这种转变。改变采掘业的承诺和行为对于运输也很重要。采掘业企业规模庞大且高度国际化，其所有者对企业行为具有决定性作用。因此，确定谁以及如何影响向可持续发展过渡是相关的。就此而言，我们研究了国际采掘业前 10 名的主导公司及其所有者。我们发现自然资源市场和关键代理商的所有权都高度集中：三大公司在研究的十个行业中赚取了 70% 的收入，而这些公司的三大股东平均拥有该公司 22% 的股份。基石公司。这有助于解释为什么监管迄今为止相当无效。我们讨论了影响关键代理的几种选择。我们的结论是，提高采掘业的可持续性需要利用有限数量的关键代理。