There is a realisation amongst many mining companies that to ensure a sustainable business into the 21st century and develop a ‘thrivable future’ requires a shift from business as usual to innovative out of the box thinking. Building on the outcomes of the 2012 AMIRA International workshop, Sustainable Mining In South Africa, AMIRA International in collaboration with Sustain our Africa (SoA – www.sustainourafrica.org) will be co-hosting a congress on Sustainable Mining in Africa. The congress will be held in Cape Town under the SoA Summit theme FUTURE AFRICA. The event is in collaboration with the World Capital Design 2014 program (WDC – www.wdccapetown2014.com). Cape Town was awarded the World Design Capital 2014, a prestigious biennial designation by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design.
The SoA Summit is Africa’s first integrated sustainability summit focussing on designing tools for change. In a world first for the continent, thought leaders from across the globe will gather for the Summit, Expo and Festival from October 26, 2014 to November 2 to explore the question: Can Africa deliver enough for all, forever?
Driving sustainable development performance is a critical objective, with most major companies already pursuing comprehensive sustainability policies and programs. While advances are being made through better implementation of known technologies, achieving more ambitious and sustainable targets will require a combination of product, process and business innovation. Individual companies can make significant strides on their own, however as an industry, developing more sustainable solutions to common challenges for mining in the future and the shared benefits that it will bring to all stakeholders can be more effectively realised through collaboration.
The Sustainable Mining in Africa congress will expand on the key themes of AMIRA International’s 2012 workshop and could include the following industry issues:
- Innovation and design towards creating a Net Positive impact (NPI)
- Global responsible stewardship
- Envisaged future including social-economic activities beyond the life of a mine
- Recycling and upcycling as a resource, i.e. value from waste and ZERO WASTE
- Sustainability and transformative leadership
- Business Model Innovation for Sustainability – Business case and license to operate
- Balanced approach between human capital and automation.
The key message for this Congress is embodied in the following extract from Professor Mark Swilling & Eve Annecke, ‘Just Transitions: Explorations of Sustainability in an Unfair World’ (International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics September 2013, Volume 13, Issue 3, pp 405-408).
“Current economic growth strategies are rapidly depleting the natural resources and ecosystem services that we depend on. As many developing countries strive to eradicate poverty via economic growth, they are all encountering the consequences of global warming and dwindling levels of cheap oil, productive soils, metals, clean water supplies and forest products.
If the fast-developing large-scale countries (China, India, Brazil) and small-scale countries (South Africa, Mexico, Venezuela, Poland) want to develop in the same way and to the same level as currently developed economies, they will simply be unable to find the natural resources they require to make this happen. For these developing countries, very different solutions are required.”
