2492 community polarization, and reputational vulnerability. At the supply chain level, the blending of legal and illegal gold undermines traceability mechanisms and exposes exporters, refiners, and financial institutions to compliance risks. As global buyers increasingly demand origin verification and ESG compliance, even indirect contamination may compromise market access and investor confidence. At the regulatory level, repeated extensions of temporary formalization mechanisms and legislative volatility weaken policy predictability. For industry, regulatory uncertainty increases long-term investment risk and complicates strategic planning. At the societal level, the consolidation of social acceptance around illegal mining creates parallel authority structures in certain territories. When informal actors assume quasi-governance roles, such as providing security or employment alternatives, the monopoly of legitimate institutional authority becomes fragmented. This fragmentation reduces enforcement feasibility and increases conflict sensitivity. The systemic issue is therefore not only the existence of illegal mining, but the absence of an integrated territorial governance risk framework capable of identifying where legitimacy competition has reached structurally destabilizing levels. For industry, the challenge is twofold: 1. Protect operational continuity and supply chain integrity. 2. Maintain trust and compliance under global sustainability standards. However, this challenge also presents an opportunity. By integrating territorial governance intelligence into risk management systems, mining companies and regulators can move from reactive crisis response to preventive risk anticipation. The Territorial Legitimacy Risk Index (TLRI) proposed in this paper addresses this gap by providing a structured, scalable mechanism to detect governance competition before it escalates into operational disruption or institutional erosion. In doing so, it contributes directly to the Congress theme of building trust, enabling transformation in governance practices, and advancing data-informed approaches to responsible mineral delivery. 4. GENERAL OBJECTIVE The primary objective of this paper is to develop and propose a structured governance early warning framework — the Territorial Legitimacy Risk Index (TLRI) — capable of identifying and anticipating legitimacy competition between illegal and formal mining within extractive territories. By operationalizing legitimacy dynamics into measurable territorial indicators, the paper seeks to provide industry and policymakers with a preventive risk management tool that strengthens supply chain integrity and institutional reliability. 4.2 Specific Objectives This contribution pursues four specific objectives: 1. To conceptualize illegal mining as a legitimacy-based governance competitor rather than solely a criminal or environmental issue. 2. To identify and systematize territorial, economic, political, and social indicators that reflect structural consolidation of illegal mining influence.
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