PDAC: Community demands of mining companies to increase

Reporting from the PDAC conference in Toronto, the Mining Journal published the following this week:

Community demands of how mining companies share the economic benefits from natural resources will continue to increase, according to the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private lender.

The warning came from Tom Butler, the global head of mining at IFC who was speaking at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada 2013 convention in Toronto. Butler said the mining sector had done a great deal in managing social risks, but indigenous communities would expect more in the future.

  Nowhere was this more true than in emerging African and Latin American countries where democratic governments were becoming stronger, and an increasing number of people were becoming middle-class and educated.

"The challenge for the industry from these “drivers” is to deliver greater benefits to compensate communities in ways that they perceive to be fair,” Butler said. He highlighted Peru as one country where remote communities, aided by improved communications, were demanding more from mining companies.

“The world is connected and in a connected world companies need to communicate better,” he said. “We have seen companies struggle severely because they have not got their message out about the positive impacts of a project,” he said.