Mining

The world is finally waking up to the need for transparency in business deals. New EU transparency legislation was announced earlier this month and next month transparency will be a major theme at the G8 summit. This week the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative has its bi-annual conference, and the UK and France have just announced they will join the initiative. The big question is can greater transparency help sustainable development?

Political and business leaders gathering in Davos will discuss ‘resilient dynamism’, but their distrust of informal economies is a missed opportunity.

Lessons need to be learned to transform the African ‘resource curse’ into a ‘resource blessing’ and to mitigate against the negative impacts of large land-based investments on the continent.

When stakeholders at IIED's Fair Ideas conference in Rio discussed how the mining industry has fared in meeting the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development initiative (MMSD) agenda set 10 years ago, the challenge of implementation kept cropping up.

It is rare for a controversial industry to engage with its critics, seek advice and pledge positive action for sustainable development.

Ten years ago, the mining industry, in collaboration with the IIED, set out to explore how it could maximise its contribution to sustainable development through the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development (MMSD) project. So, what has happened since then? Where are we now?

Issues of transparency and anti-corruption are front and centre following recent events in the Middle East. The timing of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative 5th Global Conference last week could not have been better.