INTERVIEW - Sustainable development group aims to aid miners
Date: 21-Sep-01
Country: UK
Author: Andy Blamey
Independent study group Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development (MMSD) aims to help miners to solve the paradox of how to supply the world's demand for minerals while addressing the social, environmental and community impact of mineral extraction.
According to project director Luke Danielson, this goal forces miners to try to balance an apparently conflicting set of problems; and the longer these issues remain unaddressed, the less attractive the industry becomes to potential investors. "You hear things from industry like, 'We thought we were helping to solve the environmental problem and people started telling us about human rights, so we started working on that problem and they came to us with local economic development,'" Danielson told Reuters in an interview.
"So the question is, what is this agenda and how can we define it well enough to understand what to do?"
An 18-month consultation process has led the group to identify eight key areas which need to be addressed, from environmental and land management issues to national economic development and sustainable markets and consumption patterns.
MMSD's 25-member "assurance group," set up to guarantee the quality and integrity of the project, includes individuals from a range of backgrounds, from miners to union representatives, investment houses to governments and environmental activists.
The group is in broad agreement on the eight issues identified, Danielson said.
SET OF ISSUES
"The issue set is recognised as the right issues by almost everybody we talk to," he said, though he added that different groups have different priorities.
"The genius of sustainable development is that the aim is essentially to try to balance those ideas. What we find is that any time you take an absolutist position on one of those issues the balance is lost," he said.
Project participants have not as yet made any firm commitments to put the group's findings into practice, but Danielson remains optimistic the project will produce concrete results.
"Our goal is ... to get a good enough sense of what it is people want and what they're willing to do that the recommendations will be very realistic and will have a very high chance of being taken up," he said.
Danielson rejects the suggestion that miners' involvement in the project might be motivated primarily by a desire to boost their public image, arguing that participation creates expectations which, if not subsequently met, could result in a PR backlash.
"The negative consequences in the long run would be so serious that they would wish they'd never heard of this project, as they'd be worse off than before," he said.
"The industry isn't going to solve these problems by public relations, it's going to solve these problems by concrete actions to make things better."
VOLUNTARY CERTIFICATION
One possible outcome of the project could be the establishment of a voluntary certification system for miners.
"The elements are pretty simple - you need a set of rules, some kind of body to administer those rules, and you need incentives to comply with the rules," he said.
The latter element is key, since mining companies - with the best will in the world - would be unlikely voluntarily to sign up to such a set of rules purely for altruistic reasons.
"The real economic drivers are the lenders, who are getting preoccupied with this sector. If you were certified and could get better loan rates at the bank, that would be a major incentive," Danielson said.
Certification could also pave the way for more favourable insurance rates and access to capital from so-called ethical investment funds, he said.
"Socially reponsible investment funds are becoming very important, but right now an awful lot of them take the position that mining is like tobacco or pornography - they just won't invest in mining."
He stressed, however, that the project would not simply result in a "to do" list for miners, citi
