ICMM - Partnerships for Development

Ecoal, March 2010, Volume 70

The International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) launched the 'Mining: Partnerships for Development' initiative earlier this month at the INDABA Mining Convention in Cape Town. The global initiative will work to enhance mining's contribution to development and poverty reduction through multi-stakeholder partnerships.

ICMM research has identified 41 economies which currently or in recent decades have relied significantly on mining. Many of these are developing countries with high poverty levels. However, some still suffer from the so-called 'resource curse', while others have been able to prove that this curse is not inevitable.

'Mining: Partnerships for Development' builds on ICMM's long-standing Resource Endowment initiative which has been conducted with various partners, including the World Bank and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). ICMM work in this area has indicated that partnerships involving companies and other stakeholders, such as governments, donor agencies and civil society can be a powerful way to tackle development challenges.

ICMM's 19 member companies have made a formal policy commitment to actively seek such partnerships across six priority themes:

• Poverty reduction- - activities that seek to promote growth and reduce the level of poverty in a community, a group of people or country, through economic and social policies and programmes - where possible (and where quantifiable) in line with the Millennium Development Goals.
• Revenue management- - steps that companies can proactively take to ensure effective use of mining revenues,particularly at a sub-national level. This may involve support for government capacity building and technical assistance projects, or revenue transparency projects.
• Regional development planning- - public planning that supports longer-term economic diversification at a sub-national level.
• Local content- - in the context of large-scale mining, refers to the sourcing of labour, materials, goods and services from small businesses and communities close to a mine site (where the exact geographical area constituting 'local' is agreed on a site-by-site basis in consultation with communities).
• Social investment - - the provision and use of finance to generate social and economic returns in the local community, typically in the area of health, education or housing.
• Dispute resolution - - the development of accountability mechanisms for resolving complaints, disputes and grievances between communities and companies.

In support of the commitment, ICMM has also released 'Mapping in-country partnerships' - a publication that illustrates existing partnerships across the six priority themes.