Balancing the roles of mining companies, governmental institutions, and civil society in response to the impacts of mining poses significant challenges to the governance actors involved. Literature on governance and mining has identified cross?sector collaboration as essential in addressing mining impacts by sharing information, resources and responsibilities in order to realise outcomes that cannot be achieved by one sector alone. Notwithstanding the importance of context?specific conditions, there is value in comparing international experiences of local governance and the management of mining impacts. To date, however, there have been few comparative reviews of the range of structures, strategies and processes adopted to address governance challenges in different settings. Rather, the research has focused on place?based case studies of governance challenges and responses. This paper presents results of a review of governance models and challenges drawing on two international contexts. The findings are drawn from research exploring cross?jurisdictional governance responses to mining in Australia supplemented by a desk?top survey of Peru. The analysis indicates that actors' economic resources and political power are crucial influences on the forms of collaboration. This is especially true in countries where government decentralisation processes lack concurrent support for local autonomy, authority, and financial resourcing-critical factors in enabling local governments to provide new 'relational' forms of leadership, coordinate development, and mediate among the different interests with respect to resource exploitation. This paper summarises lessons from the crossjurisdictional analysis and concludes by suggesting conditions that may enable the opportunity potential of resource projects to be realised in various contexts.