The Sustainability Working Group has been established to develop resources and materials and foster collaboration across GMG initiatives and the mining industry on issues relating to the operationalization of sustainability. As a new group on a diverse topic, the scope and objectives are still in the process of being refined.
OPERATIONALIZING SUSTAINABILITY
An overarching aspect of this working group is to look at how the broadly used, global concept of sustainability can be operationalized for the mining industry, and specifically for mining operations. Building off existing frameworks and high-level resources, this working group will focus on how sustainability can be made practical and operational. For initial purposes and to ensure all stakeholders are working from the same understanding, two definitions have been established to improve clarity amongst the working group:
- Sustainability: Sustainability is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In the mining context, this includes designing, operating, and closing mines in ways that maintain or build long-term ecological and social system capacities.
- Operationalizing sustainability: The process of defining sustainability to make it clearly distinguishable, measurable, and understandable throughout mining operations.
PROJECTS/INITIATIVES IN THE PIPELINE
Operationalizing Sustainability Framework
There are already many existing sustainability frameworks developed by stakeholders across all areas of the mining community, many of which overlap. Across the frameworks, there is diversity in topics addressed, with each framework including different ways to assess how key performance indicators are measured. It isn’t clear what many of the gaps or common challenges are amongst the existing frameworks, or how this working group could be best positioned to address such topics.
This activity aims to collect existing frameworks to determine commonalities, gaps, and common challenges across the mining community, which will then lead to a clearer sense of what the focus and scope of this working group should be. The workflow will be as follows:
- Collect existing frameworks
- Review commonalities
- Gather member input on priorities
- Define the scope of the working group
