IISD’s Mining and Sustainable Development Initiative

The background brief describes the history of IISD’s work and vision on mining and its development to a mature multidisciplinary and inclusive understanding of mining in relation to sustainable development.

IISD’s Mining Initiative seeks to promote inclusive growth and social development without compromising the environment. These interconnected components bring in a set of mutually supportive goals and responsibilities for companies, governments and communities.

The transition to applying the concepts of inclusive growth and social development is essential from a sustainable development viewpoint, and for many companies it is already well underway. Where IISD will make a powerful contribution is in the development of an integrated toolkit that will allow companies, governments and communities to identify an optimal mix of fiscal and non- fiscal economic benefits to maximize a win–win–win conception of mining projects. IISD will achieve this by marrying its economic analysis with its legal expertise to identify the best mechanisms for adopting and implementing these tools in mining and fiscal law frameworks.

The objective of enhancing the social and economic benefits without compromising the environment is equally relevant. While mining will always result in some environmental impacts, the scale, duration  and degree of landscape change or air and water impacts will vary by the type of mining (e.g., underground versus strip mining) and scale of the project. These differences must be understood—and strategies developed—that reflect the potential variations in impacts of mining operations on human and ecological systems.

To support the goal of raising awareness among governments and communities about effective tools and opportunities, IISD will develop, apply, revise and promote a model that will enable optimization of the value of mining investments in a win–win–win context. This applied research will be complemented by development of training materials and effective capacity provision.