It is during his keynote address at the Mining Indaba Conference on Mining in Africa, currently taking place in Cape Town, South Africa, that US Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment, Jose Fernandez, announced that Italy has become the latest country to join the US-led Mineral Security Partnership to promote ethical mining.
In his speech, Fernandez said members of the Mineral Security Partnership (MSP) – which, announced in June last year, now includes Italy, 11 other countries and the European Union – will soon announce details of their environmental principles. , social and governance.
“We want to involve communities affected by potential projects in the decision-making process. And if you were to say that we’re doing this to protect our bottom line, you’d be partially right. We have seen too many cases around the world, some happening right now in South America, where community opposition has led to the closure of otherwise profitable mines,” she said, adding however that the MSP also wants to protect the environment. . “Our partners will not make investments in projects that destroy valuable rainforests, that are not engaged in mine clearance, that require compensation from government officials. They just won’t. Their shareholders won’t allow it. Their customers will reject them and our laws will punish such conduct,” she said.
Fernandez said that since its work began less than a year ago, the MSP has reviewed 200 projects and selected 12 to work on, providing some examples of the work done so far. “Two East Asian countries are establishing a cooperation hub for critical minerals and metals where one country will share critical expertise with the other. […] We’re also looking at mid-stream computing in two key countries, one in Africa, the other in Latin America that could actually revolutionize their workforce development. The MSP partners are also bringing together a public-private consortium to develop a state-of-the-art processing facility in Latin America to form a complete value chain in that region,” she said.
Fernandez concluded that ethical conduct in mining is critical as the world races to implement an energy transition to halt rapid global warming.
The Investing in African Mining Indaba ends on Thursday. [Da Redazione InfoAfrica]
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