SUSTAINABILITY WORKING GROUP

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 sustainability. Established in 2021, its purpose is to:

• Be a global community of interest where participants can collaborate on industry concerns and share knowledge, lessons learned, and success stories.
• Develop guidelines, best practices, strategies, and tools.
• Align on areas with the biggest gaps and most opportunity for impact, building off existing efforts and initiatives, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
• Connect like-minded organizations from around the world and share lessons learned from both inside and outside of mining.

Join the Working Group to contribute to its current project.

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 in order to make it clearly distinguishable, measurable, and understandable throughout mine operations.

ACTIVE PROJECTS/SUB-COMMITTEES