GEMM brings together leaders and practitioners from diverse communities of interest to identify, explore and work together to respond to sustainability challenges in the mineral sector.  GEMM’s structured dialogues and web platform supports insight and innovation that leads to solutions.

Many who participate in the annual invitational dialogues have told us that GEMM is uniquely positioned to expand its impact by enlarging its platform to focus on the practical steps it will take within companies, communities and governments to implement and embed sustainability and responsibility in the resource sector.  Our response is GEMM_X, a suite of activities that will complement and integrate with the GEMM Dialogues including:

 GEMM_solutions – tightly focussed workshops on specific themes, topics or geographic regions, linked to the program activities of GEMM partners, that build solutions and pathways from ideas and insights.

 GEMM_intensives – customized sessions to develop and put to work the leadership insights and management competencies required to deal with external and internal dynamics.   These are aimed to help manage risk, create opportunities, solve problems, innovate solutions and grow networks.

GEMMx: Mt Polley’s Global Implications for Confidence

October 14, 2015

A multi-stakeholder dialogue to support learning and develop pathways for solutions on two topic areas:

• Water, watershed and cumulative impacts planning; and
• Tailings management costs and risk analyses issues and options

This is a  by-invitation workshop. Email info@gemm.ca.

GEMMx: Mexico, Canada and the Mineral Sector

October 20, 2011

Final Report

GEMMx: Ruggie Workshop on UN Guiding Principles

January 31, 2011

Final Report

Building Project Value from the Ground Up – Insights on the role of entrepreneurship and community dialogue in Mexico

November 21, 2015

With our colleagues at OTrade

As junior mining companies are being tasked with greater engagement with stakeholders how can this work to increase real project value? How do we move beyond the rhetoric of CSR to practical solutions that create lasting project value in our communities?

Diplomatic Mining: The Experience of Practitioners

April 30, 2015

Whether the issues are royalty policy or human rights, successful and responsible miners must work intelligently with their Ambassadors abroad and broader international stakeholders.   Don’t miss this highly experienced group of leaders and thinkers – CEO Dick Whittington, Former Canadian Ambassador Tim Martin and Steve D’Esposito, President of RESOLVE – as they share their experiences from the field on best practices and pitfalls.  Facilitated by Glenn Sigurdson, Global Energy, Minerals and Markets Dialog

Tailings Management Costs and Risk Analysis – GEMMx Workshop

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Key Observations

1. Need for focus on risk tools and approaches – from community and company tools to regulatory tools
2. Framing: the value of prevention rather than the cost of failure
3. Business costs motivate  and direct behavior of shareholders, managers
4. Need a better set of tools for integrating value and risks
5. Data availability for tailings facilities is sometimes a source of risk
6. Risk assessor and risk decision-maker must be kept separate

Questions for Further Consideration

1. How to make safety the primary design criterion? What is stopping it? How can we reinforce this with regulation?
2. Where does perpetual treatment fit into the precautionary approach?
3. What do communities need to be engaged and how?
   • How do we share knowledge and understanding? Access to tools?
   • Share risk and shared decision making – how are they related? Is there a role for FOV? Co. manage during operations?
   • How do we engage with communities around tailings – site, design, monitoring – what capacity building is needed?
   • Who else could help in designing engagement? Are there other disciplines for which we could learn?
4. How do we deal with uncertainties in the information and risks?
5. What is the potential for civil suits related to aboriginal rights?
6. When / how should exploration compromises deal with tailings related questions?
7. Could risk registers be made public? How could we make this process more transparent?
8.  Move towards aligning regulated requirements for tailings facility process with TSM protocols?

Landscape-scale Planning in the Extractives Sector – GEMMx Workshop

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Key Points from Small Group Discussions

Who can credibly initiate an integrated planning process?

1. Very context dependent – may need a combination of players to address credibility with all constituents
2. Indigenous peoples have initiated processes, but they are often not recognized and sometimes when people assert their plan/demands, they are criminalized or killed
3. Government has a responsibility to initiate and engage, but where the government is not trusted or trustworthy, this is often not possible
4. Those who initiate ideally need to have the influence, resources, capacity to shape the process well
5. Political willingness is key
6. Credibility of the organization may hinge on where they get their money

How should they go about it?

1. Relationships should start well before the project begins
2. Within a framework for planning and decision making that…
   • Is inclusive of everyone from all parties involved
   • Includes agreed upon terms for gathering information, planning, and decision making
   • Communicates information in an understandable way
   • Includes agreement on who and how to collect, communicate, manage, and own data
   • Includes the ability to effectively close a site as part of the discussion of the acceptability of opening a site
3. Collaboration is important – among all players and in the design of the decision making process
   • Power balance issue – described as communities being concerned that the process will only arrive at a “yes”, want assurance there is the possibility of arriving at “no” ; likewise, companies want assurance that communities are willing to engage, and not reject the project out of hand.
   • All the participants need to see each other as having a legitimate role in the process – having legitimate voices on the issues at hand
4. Need for mentoring and capacity development for data collection
5. Need for Free prior informed and continuing consent
6. Need to build confidence, which requires time, money, and energy
7. Need for industry to coordinate among nearby sites – who can lead this process?

What innovations in information collection and sharing can apply at a regional scale? 

1. Data collection process should be:
   • Collective
   • Based on trusting relationships
   • Within context of agreed upon information-sharing protocols
2. Important for information to be accessible and understandable to all
3. GIS as a promising way to organize and present information
4. Agreements about organization and accessibility of information should be reached in advance of landscape planning processes