Reflections

Since I made the decision eight years ago to work with junior and mid-tier explorers and operators I have been making the case that they can contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (the SDGs) and just as importantly, be recognised for what they do. As is my way, I started by for ideas to borrow and tweak. The ICMM references the SDGs in their good practice principles. Another good source was a think-tank report mapping mining to the development goals . More recently IPECA has published a guide for the oil and gas industry and the US FAO has incorporated SDG considerations into their sustainable forest management toolbox.  All have been useful in one way or another, but they definitely reflect the capabilities and strategies of the big-end of town and overlook (or at least underplay) the shorter life-cycles, smaller physical, environmental, social and economic footprints, leaner management teams and lesser lobbying strength that are typical of mid-tiers and juniors.

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Supporting education can be done in many ways. However, education presents a conundrum – the community wants and needs with a passion, but companies do not have in-house capability, interventions have little immediate development impact (particularly when compared with the other areas of water and food security, health, and income generation) and the requirement to work with government education agencies adds a level of complexity.

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I can’t think of one site I’ve worked on or visited that doesn’t provide some level of support to improving the availability of clean water and better sanitation. It is easy to cut the cloth to fit the available resources, although it must be said this is an area where it is easy to under-estimate the amount of effort to create long lasting behaviour change which goes far beyond simply providing a borehole or building a toilet and hoping for the best, which unfortunately is an approach taken by many companies, big and small...

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I don’t know about you, but when permaculture was suggested to me a technique for community development I had some doubts but having seen Edge5 Permaculture in action I am  now a convert. The Edge5 way uses an integrated approach to design, combining the ecological processes of land, plants, animals and climate into highly productive systems resulting in stronger and healthier communities. The approach is practical and hands-on, encourages peer-to-peer learning, starts at the backdoor with intensive kitchen gardens before building to larger scale strategies for water-harvesting, sustainable farming (crops, trees and animals) and agro-forestry...

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Community health is an area that is very broad and where it pays to stay focused on a (relatively) small number of areas. Malaria, HIV and communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis have long been priorities for company and community alike. Ebola and COVID-19 are more recent concerns. The first three are essential in so far as ensuring a healthy workforce is concerned and are standard practices for responsible companies operating in Africa. And they are not that difficult to address...

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This story comes from my early days in Ghana. At the time we were in the pre-final investment decision phase and not having in-house community development skills we chose to work with a local development NGO. We also made the decision to put a strong focus on debunking community misconceptions that the company was the centre of their universe, that we had unlimited access to money and that we had all the answers. We had a very self-centred reason for taking this approach, believing as we did that success for the business was intimately linked to the ability of the local communities to develop and grow and that success would only come if we worked with local people and local government to identify and implement ideas and actions that would ensure that they would both be better off as a result of us operating in their backyard...

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