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February 2015
MODERN MINING
33
feature
SUSTAINABILITY
IN MINING
does SA’s mining sector rate?
Community participation is
an essential part of the mine
planning process
(photo: SRK).
Damang – a large-scale open-pit gold mine in Ghana in West Africa. Projects on this scale inevitably have major environmental impacts which need to be
ameliorated using the best modern practice. The owner of this mine – Gold Fields – was recently rated as the top mining company in the 2015 Sustainability
Yearbook (photo: Gold Fields).
sustainability in the industry and – on balance
– can be considered a great success. Having
said this, it’s not perfect – and indeed is cur-
rently in the process of being amended.”
South Africa’s demanding BEE and sustain-
ability requirements have been criticised on
the grounds that they have deterred mining
investors from ploughing money into South
Africa’s mining industry. Digby rejects this
argument, saying that the goals of the MPRDA
and Mining Charter are eminently reasonable.
“South Africa has a mature, stable mining sec-
tor and there are potentially excellent returns
for companies who choose to mine here – but
they need, at the same time, to accept their
responsibilities,” she observes. “They also
need to accept that mining in the developing
world brings with it a different set of impera-
tives from mining in First World jurisdictions
and that they’re going to have to partner with
communities and promote socio-economic
development to a far greater extent than would
be the case in, say, Canada or Australia. If they
don’t acknowledge this reality, then probably
we’re better off without them.”
Digby stresses that it is also important
for mining companies to accept the spirit of
South Africa’s mining legislation. “Just focus-
ing on the letter of the law can result in a lot
of ticking of boxes and that’s not necessarily
helpful or effective,” she argues. “We need to
get concrete results on the ground and there’s
certainly a case to be made for focusing on out-
comes rather than the methods by which we
get to those outcomes.”
The goal of achieving sustainability in min-
ing means that the industry needs to have a