Global Mining Co seeks input on sustainability strategy
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I received an email requesting input to use in the sustainability strategy of Global Mining Co [name changed to protect the well-intended]. I’m sure dozens of others tagged as “sustainability experts” received this request as well. This is a typical approach to stakeholder engagement when companies conduct materiality assessments, a pillar of their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy and communication.
Below I give detailed answers to the survey questions. But first…
This is awkward
Although I have created and/or responded to dozens of such surveys over the years, today I am taking a different tack:
I’m providing my survey responses publicly, here. And I’m only answering the two questions that merit response.
This is awkward because I know and love the people who sent the email, both at the mining company and the consultancy running the survey. They don’t know I’m doing this.
It’s also awkward because the request uses language I am very familiar with, having written and sent it to many stakeholders myself back in my consulting days. Yet, the phrase—
… the survey should take you 15 minutes to complete depending on your answers…
—overlooks that this is not about the time it takes to check the boxes and fill in the blanks. It’s about the years of experience it takes to understand what the boxes and blanks mean.
Further awkwardness: I recently adopted a policy of not doing pro bono work for billionaires. I make a lot of my work public and will continue to do so. But requests from entities that amass billions annually through extractive capitalism are not ones I can serve for free. Hence I answer here in the Matereal World, hoping Global Mining Co can spring $5 for a months’s subscription. It’s a bit awkward to pass the hat but it seems appropriate.
But mostly this is awkward because global mining is part of all of us.
It’s not like, say, the cocaine industry where a strong case could be made that the whole thing should just go away. I benefit from mining, every single day, in ways big and small. As a curious cosmic wink, my grandfather was a metallurgical engineer and then an executive at a mining company that, decades later, was acquired by the same company that now seeks my input.
I am of and participating in the mining industry regardless if I share my expertise with it. As are most of us.
It can be a bit crazy-making, it’s so awkward. Anyway, onward into the awkward.
Also public companies’ material issues are not confidential
In the request, the company notes (as did I, dozens of times before [face palm emoji]):
We would like to reassure you that all information that you provide us will be treated as confidential and will be combined with feedback from other participants. You will remain anonymous unless you agree being identified. We always hold the information you give us securely and delete it once no longer needed.
I am not concerned about the information I provide being kept confidential. And I wish they wouldn’t delete things so we could stop repeating ourselves. One of the things that pushed me away from mainstream ESG work—including assessing materiality—was the whole black box thing.
This is a public conversation.
It makes no sense for global, public companies that flow through our bellies and buildings and bioregions to be so cloak-and-dagger.
Now to the survey questions and my answers
And so, the following is my public response to the survey. Not all of the survey questions, mind you. I skip the ones that are too absurd to discuss (debating the relative importance of interconnected issues, for instance).
I speak to just two questions directly, which ask:
What does it mean for a mining company to be a leader in sustainability?
What do I see as the biggest risk to the mining industry in the next five years?
Although this was prompted by the survey from one mining company, my perspective is relevant for the whole industry.
I answer the two useful questions, giving details of what is needed to be leaders, as well as my understanding of the biggest risk facing the mining industry today.
I also provide a brief sweep of the mining industry’s current approach to materiality, and salient snippets to illustrate the blatant disconnect with reality.
As a bonus, I take a closer look at mining and that nifty boat.
Okay. Let’s have a look. Get ready to dig deep.
Question 1: How to be sustainable mining leaders?
The first question that I believe merits a thoughtful answer is about leadership:
In your opinion, what should [Global Mining Co] do to become a true leader in sustainable mining? What actions, commitments, partnerships, or policies can [Global Mining Co] take?
In my opinion, Global Mining Company and all of its peers should take the following actions:
Accept the premise that where you have come from, strategically and physically, is not where you are going, that the model you have built and profited from has run its course, and that a radically new way of being a successful company is upon you.
Instead of resisting this, seeing radical change as a threat to business continuity, embrace this as the greatest opportunity of your career.
Suspend all mining and R&D operations temporarily, while continuing to pay all employees and contractors. We know companies can do this, as we saw for example after Vale’s Brumadinho disaster occurred—and which maybe should have happened when the Mariana disaster occurred four years prior. We have seen this in other industries as well, for example in aviation after the September 11 attacks in 2001, and in some sectors in the early phase of the pandemic in 2020. If this still seems unreasonably drastic, for a moment imagine that 84% of the world’s population (and your workforce, including executives) will be fatally ill due to rapidly deteriorating biological conditions, and that those who survive will be in such bleak and hostile surroundings that life will not feel worth living.
Be glad that’s not true now (well it is, but for a smaller percentage and none of your executives). Then mobilize (see next steps) so you don’t profit from such deterioration .
Finance the convergence of decision-makers from the largest mining and metals companies (noted below) to plan your disassembly and asset redeployment. Decision-makers are the people who move the money and sign off on strategy (as opposed to sustainability people, with respect—although decision-makers will need sustainability folks to support them since they have done a lot of homework for the last decade or so).
Pay for this gathering* to be designed and facilitated by guides whose interests are primarily motivated by drivers other than financial profit.
These guides may be Indigenous people and/or other community elders and youth; they will hold deep, experience-based knowledge of biodiversity, holistic human health, and intergenerational history including trade, commerce, and land rights. Regardless of titles, these will be people whose common sense has not been captured by a Wendigo, who understand that the economy should serve life, not the other way around.
* As an industry sector you will have millions of dollars in extra budget to pay for this if you stop conducting castrated materiality assessments.
As an industry, share openly and in lay-terms how you have been planning to “meet the quantum potential new demand” (as Glencore phrases it in their 2022 annual report) for minerals extracted for the energy transition. Be bold and transparent about the math—and the known and potential impacts that this math entails—for waterways, migratory species, native forests, soils, and human wellness (this may help with the imagining prompt in step #2, above). Review and revise the information until there is a very clear picture of how your current strategies will play out in all regions, for all levels of society. Test the accessibility of this understanding with regular folk.
Allow the facilitators to guide discussion on this sharing process, as you answer honestly and listen actively, with an intention of adapting based on what you are learning—versus explaining why it is the way it must be.
Gather input, facilitated by these guides, regarding which of your current assets can be deployed to serve in the restoration and stewardship of bioregional systems, versus which ones need to be decommissioned, disassembled, or otherwise industrially composted. Create a specific, time-bound plan to implement this shift in how you use your resources, with an end point of improved biodiversity and human wellbeing. Create a governance structure that incentivizes progress towards this life-affirming approach, overseen by the facilitating guides or their appointees.
Do not stop until there is no single incentive that allows profit to flow from harm to humans or others.
In my opinion, steps 1-5 above would not only mean becoming “a true leader in sustainable mining” as the question is posed, it would mean contributing to an economy that works in service of life. I have to believe that is what is intended by the idea of “leadership” because, well, as I said I know and love these people and have no reason to believe otherwise.
Also, anything short of this level of leadership perpetuates harm to many for the financial gain of few.
What is the biggest risk mining faces?
The other question I thought was worthy of an answer is about risk:
In your opinion what are the biggest social, environmental, and economic risks and challenges that the mining industry will face in the next five years?
In my opinion the biggest risk is that mining companies will continue to spend millions of dollars assessing materiality to slice and dice issues into diverse graphics that have no impact, while we collectively suffer in unimaginable ways that could have been avoided if we were honest and courageous about how our economy works, for whom, and then made better decisions.
I see this as a significant risk because it places the needs of the corporate entity and its financial growth ahead of human life and the wider web of life that supports us.
This is, in my opinion, an existential risk to be interrogated and avoided at all costs.
Luckily, it is fairly straightforward to address by simply stopping the practice of assessing materiality, leveraging the many years of existing assessments (stop deleting those answers!) and collective industry knowledge, and getting on with what needs doing (see steps 1-5 above). It also conveniently frees up budget and knowledgeable, caring people to get on with the real work that so many of them long to do.
This concludes my response to the two questions that I feel merit consideration in the survey about Global Mining Co’s sustainability strategy.
Thank you for asking.
A brief sweep of global mining’s current material issues
As additional evidence to support my opinion, I include below snapshots of five of the largest global mining companies’ most recent materiality assessments (listed in alphabetical order). While their graphic designers created diverse visuals, and the sustainability departments signed off on shorter or longer issue lists, they largely say the same thing.
There is no need to take up well-meaning internal staff time, to pay consultants millions of dollars, and to fill stakeholders’ inboxes with emails requesting a repetition of these ideas. It’s all here for anyone to cut and paste (there are more—I stopped at five because this is already long and there’s still that boat to check out).
Anglo-American’s materiality assessment from their 2020 report:
Barrick Gold’s materiality graphic from their 2022 sustainability report:
Glencore’s material topics from their 2022 annual report:
Newcrest Mining’s list of material topics from their 2022 sustainability report:
Vale’s material issues from their 2022 integrated annual report:
Salient snippets highlighting the absurdity of these assessments
Along with stakeholders being asked to repeat themselves, we share the added burden of being roundly ignored while business as usual continues apace. As my (hopefully still) friends at Global Mining Co and their research consultants will attest, I have said all of these things before, publicly and privately, paid and unpaid, as have many others.
The internet isn’t big enough to hold the examples that make this point. I’ve picked a mere two to share below, from various mining companies’ own disclosures, to illustrate how meaningless the words on the materiality graphics (and therefore, stakeholder responses) are, based on how the businesses actually run on the ground.
From page 149 of Glencore’s 2022 annual report:
Marketing revenue for the year (prior to inter-segment eliminations) was $215,102 million (2021: $177,583 million). […] The increase in revenues year-on-year is principally due to the impact of higher pricing for certain commodities following the Russian-Ukraine conflict and the resulting disruption on European energy markets. [bolding my own]
One way I might rephrase that is:
“We earned an additional $37.5 billion because of violent geopolitical conflict causing loss of life, thanks to our strategic role in controlling the global energy supply.”
Think about that for a moment: $37.5 billion in additional revenues because of deadly conflict. Materiality has no way to handle this usefully. There is verbage in Glencore’s reporting about “ethics”, and their materiality assessment (noted among the five companies, above) includes all kinds of nice words, but these are meaningless in the face of the realities where many people on the ground suffer. Meanwhile earnings rise; share price, too.
I guess the silver (or perhaps cobalt) lining is that the $37.5 billion figure makes the $190,000 Glencore spent on one 2018 lobbying effort to manage “issues related to Global Magnitsky sanctions” look like peanuts. (The Global Magnitsky Act, by the way, authorizes the U.S. government to sanction foreign government officials who are human rights offenders, to freeze their assets, and to ban them from entering the U.S. [insert vomit emoji].) I get that it’s complicated, but this is really not life-serving. It’s profit-serving and economic growth-serving.
And again, materiality doesn’t trouble itself with these reality-based details. It is—as we consultants would say an awful lot—more of a “strategic discussion tool.”
To put a punctuation mark on the human realities compared to materiality at Glencore, they include nice words like “diversity, equity and inclusion” in their materiality assessment, and have 17 pages of details on executive compensation in their annual report (starting on page 121), but a simple graphic visual (by me) of their compensation data across the company tells a different story.
The picture says a lot more than the word “equity” ever could. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: ESG and materiality are not based in reality. (Hence, this here Matereal World.) This is not unique to Glencore—it’s a global industry issue.
One more little snippet and then I’ll wrap up because: boat.
From page 44 of Newcrest’s 2022 sustainability report:
Newcrest is intent on the sustainable discovery, development and production of gold and copper. Newcrest has invested in a dedicated net zero emissions (NZE) team with a diverse background from across the business, responsible for preparing and implementing our decarbonisation roadmap and assessing potential future opportunities. [bolding my own]
Meanwhile, from Newcrest’s CEO during a mining conference last month:
“Regulators urgently need to fast track approvals for new mines and the renewable energy projects to power them to ensure the supply of minerals essential to averting climate change.
[…] The alternative is terrifying.”
I would posit that the already extant ecological and human toll of mining is terrifying. Accelerating it in the name of the energy transition is even more terrifying. And Newcrest’s materiality (see above) does nothing to make reality better on the ground.
More thoughts on the dangerous fallacy of the energy transition and “Net Zero” here.
Thinking out loud after a little more than 15 minutes
Understanding these issues and providing meaningful input takes more than 15 minutes and it should not be a private, unpaid conversation when so many people’s lives and livelihoods are impacted.
Companies undertaking any sort of stakeholder engagement on fundamental issues concerning the ability of life to survive, much less thrive, should reconsider the approach of harvesting free insights from those whose business models are not extractive. (Here is my tip jar, by the way.)
And most importantly, companies, industry decision-makers—everyone—needs to get really clear and honest about each of our roles in making fundamental change where life thriving is the goal. Not the “stated corporate purpose” but the…
actual
intention
backed up by real life
on-the-ground
action.
Okay. Let’s go talk about that boat.
Bonus Round: Where’s Mining?
The caption of the banner image asks:
How many different mining activities can you spot in this image of a cargo ship**?
Here are the ones I spot, starting from the foreground (or even closer actually). What am I missing? Comments welcomed!
In the closer-than-foreground, in the iPhone I used to take the photo are copper, aluminum, lithium, silver, gold and other rare earth minerals.
The trees in the foreground are part of reconstructed shoreline after the dredging of the St. Lawrence Seaway, which was done with large machinery made with mined metals to form steel which combines mined iron ore as well as using mined metallurgical coal, powered by a range of fossil fuels.
The ship is made from a lot of steel (this particular ship weighs in at 12,936 tons). It runs on bunker fuel which is made from extracted substances (aka oil).
The ship’s cargo is wind turbine parts which are mostly made of steel but can also include iron and copper.
The ship is passing under the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, which is also made of steel.
The cars and trucks seen driving on the bridge are made of mined minerals including steel, aluminum, and all the requisite mined inputs for the electronics, not unlike the iPhone I used to take the photo.
The electrical wires passing over the Seaway, as well as those powering the lighting on the bridge, contain copper and other mined minerals.
The person on the bow of the ship is wearing clothes which were most likely manufactured in facilities using modern equipment made of steel and other mined minerals.
Those are the ones I see at a glance. What mining activity do you see?
** The ship’s destination and other details were identified using Marine Tracker. Following is a screen grab which shows all active vessels in the world at the time of writing. Green is for cargo vessels, red is for tankers, and orange is for fishing vessels.
Have other thoughts for Global Mining Co et al? Please comment! I won’t pay you, so you can experience firsthand what it’s like to be a sustainability expert.
Know any mining or other industry decision makers who might benefit from hanging around in the Matereal World? All are welcome in this world—I’m just a greeter.
An annual subscription to the Matereal World is available for approximately 1/3000th of what many companies pay for a single materiality assessment. (And if your corporate ethics handbook doesn’t forbid it, you can buy one subscription cut and paste for your whole team!)
Does seem an extractive way of getting gold studded sustainability advice!.
Thank you so much Lorraine, for making this about us all, and it being a public conversation.
I love the advice, and would add that (1) will require deep self inquiry by the leaders and decision makers to acknowledge the pain, suffering, grief, destruction, and harm created by industry, by people.
I don't know how you do it but you are amazing!