ENVIRONMENT: Mining Companies Embrace Sustainability

By Stephen Leahy Reprint | | Print |

Stephen Leahy

TORONTO, May 17 2002 (IPS) - Some of the world’s biggest mining and metals corporations publicly committed to sustainable development at a Global Mining Initiative Conference here this week. Activists greeted the promise with scepticism.

“Meaningful change is coming to the global mining industry,” declared Sir Robert Wilson, chair of Britain’s Rio Tinto, the world’s largest mining company. Those changes include respect for human rights, guarantee of safe workplaces, partnership with local communities and some form of third party verification system for mining operations to minimise environmental impacts.

The conference, which included more than 70 representatives from civil society groups, a 600-page Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development (MMSD) report and a new industry group are preparatory to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, scheduled for August in Johannesburg. The mining industry wants to be part of the transition to sustainable development, said Wilson.

“The industry’s fighting all the bad publicity over mine tailing spills and environmental disasters it creates,” said Joan Kuyek, national coordinator for MiningWatch Canada. “And they don’t want any more Costa Ricas.” New Costa Rican President Abel Pachecho recently banned all new mining and oil exploration, she explained.

“Mining always makes a huge mess and cannot be sustainable,” said Kuyek. Minerals are not renewable, 97 percent of processed ore ends up as waste, large quantities of cyanide are spilled, and enormous volumes of water and energy are also required. Then there are the social impacts on local communities and the long-term problems of acid mine drainage, she added.

Sustainability means less mining, and more reuse and recycling of existing metals, said activists from a number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the North and South, including Friends of the Earth, Nucleo Amigos da Terra, Tebtebba Institute, and Third World Network-Africa. They rejected what they termed the Global Mining Initiative’s efforts “to co-opt the very notion of sustainability.”

Stopping mining means a return to the dark ages, countered Doug Yearly, chair of the newly formed International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM). “Mining metals can help break the cycle of poverty in the South.”

ICMM has been set up by 28 of the world’s largest mining companies to educate and lead the industry on the social, economic, and environmental principles of sustainable development. “Our objective is decrease mining’s environmental footprint while providing the raw material for future technology and help alleviate poverty around the world,” said Yearly, former chief executive officer (CEO) of the U.S.-based mining conglomerate Phelps Dodge Corp.

Any of mining’s problems are “worst practices” that can be remedied he said. For example, when asked directly at the meeting, the CEOs of Noranda, Codelco, Anglo American, BHP Billiton, WMC Limited and Pechiney all declared their companies would not use rivers or lakes to dispose of mine wastes.

ICMM plans to institute performance standards and independent audits, community development concepts, an emergency response registry and environmental guidelines. The community development concepts will be done in conjunction with the World Bank.

“We have set a whole level of expectations that will be very challenging,” said David Kerr, CEO of Toronto-based Noranda Inc.

Despite the talk of partnership with local communities, one of the most challenging issues remains the right to self-determination.

For example, in Tambogrande, northern Peru, a Canadian company, Manhattan Minerals, is developing a gold mine in the centre of the village. “We do not want to give up our livelihoods. We do not want to see the ecological and agricultural richness of our region destroyed. And we will not allow this project to go ahead,” said Francisco Ojeda Riofrío, president of the Front for the Defence of Tambogrande.

Prior informed consent by local communities before a mine is constructed is crucial but it does not happen often, said Meg Taylor, compliance adviser to the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation. “Capacity building is needed in addition to wealth distribution, especially at local level,” she said.

A multi-stakeholder group is needed to advise the industry on how to remedy these problems. Although Taylor generally applauded the industry’s sustainability initiative, she found fault with the lack of representation from the South and by women “There has also been too little focus on the way forward,” she said.

Two other major issues — cleaning up abandoned mines and the rights of artisanal, or small-scale, miners — while hotly debated, will not be dealt with by the ICMM. “We do not believe we should be the lead in the effort to solve those problems,” Yearly said.

Kuyek agreed that as a result of the MMSD report and upcoming sustainable development summit, mining executives have become more aware of environmental and social issues. But, she added: “Will there be any on-the-ground changes?”

Many mining executives seemed aware of this critique and voiced it often themselves at the Toronto conference. “The test for all of us is to take action on these principles,” said Wilson at the close of the meeting.