Improving mining’s social and environmental performance: A key to ‘sustainable mineral development’

SAIMM Online Webinar
Improving mining’s social and environmental performance: A key to ‘sustainable mineral development’
Making Economies Great through Sustainable Mineral Development

10 August 2022
Time:15:30-16:30
Online via Zoom

This presentation first reports on recent work that demonstrates that the corporate core of the mining industry consists of some 25,000 companies operating in roughly 140 countries. Of these, about 14,000 operate about 30,000 producing mines. A profile of these companies and their extremely diverse characteristics is offered that shows the nature of the challenge that is faced in bringing the industry towards ‘sustainable mineral development.’ With the transition to a low-carbon economy and the implementation of circular economy concepts, the demand for mined materials will only increase, even with greatly enhanced recycling. Over the past several decades, change in the industry has focused on a leadership-trickle-down model that has not brought the kind of improvement that has been aspired to and tension between the industry and society continues. With increased mining, without improved performance, this tension will only increase. A fresh approach is needed to align actions of the mining industry with continuously evolving social values and address the ongoing trust deficit. Such a process needs to be undertaken collaboratively with key interests from across the global mining industry. Treatment of closure and post-closure phases of the mine life cycle will be used as an integrating thread and a number of critical research needs will be identified.

Speaker:
R. ANTHONY (TONY) HODGE
R. Anthony (Tony) Hodge received his B.A.Sc. (1972) and M.A.Sc. (1976) from the University of British Columbia in Geological Engineering. In 1995 he was awarded an interdisciplinary Ph.D. from McGill University for his work on Assessing Progress Toward Sustainability. His career has spanned a rich array of assignments - in the private sector, with government, in quasi-judicial processes, in civil society organizations, in communities, and with Indigenous peoples. Consistently he has sought common ground between actors and ways to integrate multiple values into the solutions to some of the most difficult socio-technical-environmental-financial challenges facing today’s society.

In September 2015, he stepped down after serving 7 years as President of the International Council on Mining and Metals, London UK. He currently holds Adjunct Professorships at the Sustainable Minerals Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia and at the Robert M. Buchan Department of Mining Engineering, Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. In addition, he is a member of the Natural Resource and Energy Leadership Council convened by RESOLVE in Washington DC and is leading the Faro Mine Retrospective Initiative which is undertaking a full life-cycle analysis (1950s - today) of the mine’s positive and negative contribution to people and ecosystems.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Camielah Jardine,
Head of Conferencing
E-mail: camielah@saimm.co.za
Tel: +27 11 538-0238 Web: www.saimm.co.za