Society Sustainability Independent Reports
- Independent Reports
Gold mining companies are constantly striving to improve their interaction with the environment and local communities to ensure both are not harmed but benefit from mining activity. This section looks at some of the external reports that have focused on sustainability issues in regard to the companies themselves and gold as a commodity.
Reports on this page include:
IFC's Performance Standards on Social and Environmental Sustainability
Towards Sustainable Mining - Citigroup
Social and Environmental Responsibility in Metals Supply to the Electronic Industry By Steven B. Young, GHGm
The Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) & Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) have recently published a Joint Study on Metal Extraction focused on the sources of metals used in electronic products as well as the environmental, human rights and labor conditions associated with the extraction of these metals. The report clearly identifies that the value of gold contained in waste electronic goods is a critical component in the economic case for recycling e-waste. For example, cell phones might typically contain precious metals worth around a dollar, consisting mostly of gold. Without the recovery of this gold the economic basis for recycling would almost certainly be less robust.
IFC's Performance Standards on Social and Environmental Sustainability
The links below provide access to the IFC's Performance Standards on Social and Environmental Sustainability. The Standards have become an international benchmark for project development and operation in mining and other sectors.
The standards are very comprehensive and respond to some of the issues raised by external stakeholders. Additional guidance is provided on human rights, community health impact assessments, child labour and supply chain issues and criteria re: Free Prior Informed Consultation. Criteria for determining broad community support are provided in IFC's Environmental and Social Review Procedure.
IFC has also recently released its draft Guide to Human Rights Impact
Assessment for road testing by companies.
http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/enviro.nsf/Content/GuidanceNotes
http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/enviro.nsf/Content/ESRP
http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/enviro.nsf/Content/OurStories_SocialResponsibiity_HumanRights
Towards Sustainable Mining - Citigroup
Citigroup's 2006 research report entitled "Towards Sustainable Mining" (March 2006) includes an analysis of how sustainable development pressures are likely to impact the supply and demand for commodities.
In an attempt to compare the impacts (positive and negative) of a range of sustainability issues, Citigroup constructed a commodities league table shown below. Gold compares favourably when viewed against other commodities, receiving the highest rating in the table, benefiting most from sustainability pressures such as its long life cycle and high recyclability.
Source: Citigroup, Heath Jansen / Mike Tyrrell / Alan Heap
The latest instalment of the joint-World Bank / United Nations Council on Trade and Development / International Council on Mining and Metals report, The Challenge of Mineral Wealth: using resource endowments to foster sustainable development, focusing on Ghana, shines a favourable light on the immediate positive impact of gold mining to "failing" economies:
"Importantly, the Ghana case also suggests that mining, and gold mining in particular, may be one of the first sectors that can sustain growth in a previously failing economy once some minimum package of economic and institutional reforms have taken place. In some ways this is logical – unlike many other productive sectors gold mining needs quite a limited institutional and infrastructural base to be able to prosper. Key requirements include sound property rights, a realistic real exchange rate and taxation that is not punitive. Conversely, gold mining does not need, for example, a robust domestic market (given that the gold is exported). Nor does it need a sophisticated transport and communications infrastructure (typically gold ore goes through an initial refining process at the mine site, before being flown overseas for final refining)."
The full report can be accessed at: www.icmm.com/publications/1405Ghana.pdf
