Artisanal mining engagement: An enterprise affair

Large scale mining projects share land with artisanal miners, who are inherently local extensions of communities that may have been working the land before the large project arrived.  As an extension of neighboring communities, effective engagement and collaborative support of ASM contributes toward earning social license for a large project.  Large scale miners engaging ASM is strategic, contributing to value based on values.  As a strategic activity, engagement with ASM is inherently cross-disciplinary, coordinated in order to build trust, collaboration and joint value.  Supporting the professionalization and broadly collaborating with artisanal miners on shared land with large projects is not charity or PR, neither of which build long-term trust and sustainable business value.

Recognizing that artisanal mining engagement is strategic, an accountability that resides at a leadership level, this article describes various cross disciplinary activities in an organization that support the overall strategy of building value through trust and collaboration.  As with other business processes, cross-functional integration and collaboration is critical for success when thinking about specific responsibilities.

To that end, key functional focus areas include:

Operations/Engineering/Geology

Collaboration with artisanal miners on various operational considerations makes sense.  

With ASM being an early indicator for exploration, are there collaboration opportunities that accelerate exploration, while also supporting the path toward earning social license?  Large projects can add value to artisanal miners in different ways, ranging from engineers who can collaborate toward well designed safe tunnels through to various operations personnel who can train and support artisanal miners on a variety of best practices, including good mining practices and the use of PPE.

Finance

Collaboration with artisanal miners on shared land delivers value while requiring funding.  

From a finance competency perspective, modelling theories of change that outline relationships between social value and economic value that is delivered, is essential for focusing strategy on specific deliverables and opportunities that are on the table.  Finance does not model economic implications of engagement in isolation, but works with leadership, social team members and other key functional areas in order to develop and deliver a robust picture of impacts and value that result from supporting ASM professionalization.  

Once specific approaches are understood and agreed on, appropriate budgets and cost tracking mechanisms are needed to fund the work.  Recognizing finance's broader accountability on budget management, ensuring fit for purpose funding of collaboration and support of ASM as well as broader community engagement activities is a natural responsibility for the function.

Lastly, investors understand that potential conflict is converted into collaborative productivity when artisanal miners are engaged toward mutual value.  Finance is a key stakeholder in investor outreach, sharing the nature and status of ASM collaboration in ways that pique investor interest.  

Sustainability/Social teams

Social teams coordinate broad-based community engagement and outreach, and artisanal miners are often key stakeholders that extend from communities.  Ensuring that ASM is reflected in key stakeholders, resulting in solutions that make the most sense, is part of the broader work of social teams.  Helping to coordinate other functions that support artisanal miners in the context of well managed change is a natural extension of social team activities and accountabilities.

Sourcing

As operations teams work with artisanal miners in transitioning work toward good practices, the need for a variety of equipment, including basic mining equipment, PPE and equipment that supports tunnel design, may be in play.  As with any other procurement, sourcing teams have a role of ensuring that the right equipment and supplies are procured in the right way at the right time.  The fact that artisanal miners are legally separate and distinct from large mining projects may change detailed requirements of sourcing processes that are normally internally geared, requiring flexibility of practice so that the legally separate and potentially informal nature of artisanal miners does not get in the way of procuring what is needed.

Human resources

Can artisanal miners fill potential roles inside of large mining projects?  Conversely, how are roles inside of larger companies impacted by the strategic need to support ASM professionalization?  Opportunities around people need to be vetted in disciplined ways given operational and financial considerations.  Recognizing that staffing decisions that support interactions between internal mine personnel and external artisanal miners may include legal considerations, a disciplined HR process for managing and delivering against these staffing needs in the context of intended relationships is appropriate.

Legal

Putting cooperatives, companies or associations in place that are part of the basis of formalizing artisanal miners requires legal activities.  More broadly, codifying the long term LSM-ASM relationship and how artisanal miners are supported may involve legal elements and service level agreements.  Local artisanal miners likely do not have access to legal resources on their own, but the lawyers working in large mining companies may be able to support these legal needs, which facilitates the path toward formalization while also giving the large mining project the opportunity to influence legal development toward win/win designs.

Project/site leadership – Governance and ultimate accountability 

As with any strategic business activity, the role of leadership is to ensure value and integrated focus on the relevant goals of the area.  In this instance, do all functions understand the value of collaboration with artisanal miners in the area?  Do all functions understand how value will be generated as a large project supports professionalization?  Are various parts of an organization collaborating toward success, ensuring that functional integration points are seamless?  Recognizing budget and broader strategic fits for this work, leadership accountabilities in a large mining project are similar to what they are for any other important focus of the mine - ensuring success that sustainably optimizes value.  Part of this is cultural, building value for community and ASM interactions, part of this is integrated business practice, building bridges that allow the full team at a site to collectively deliver value.

In summary

Artisanal miners are strategic stakeholders for large mining projects where land use is shared.  Engaging ASM strategically is naturally cross-functional, with opportunities across many functions for adding value and contributing to building trust and collaboration.  As with any material strategic consideration, governance is essential for integrating deliverables around this work and for focusing it on the ultimate goal of successfully building trust.