The Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development Project was completed in early 2002 and the Global Mining Initiative Conference was held in Toronto in April 2002. Both were watershed events at the time as they marked visible commitments at the highest levels of the major international companies to the adoption of sustainable development concepts. These two activities in no way marked an end point. The opposite has proved to be the case, with numbers of lasting initiatives flowing from MMSD and GMI.

SMI had delegates at the GMI Conference and the learning experiences have proved to be invaluable. The first was the sheer complexity and range of the issues which were assembled under the SD banner. It was immediately apparent that many of the issues had an intense regional aspect and also aspects of scale. For example, the issues for the artisanal miner are starkly different form those faced by a large, modern mining operation.

Secondly, the term SD quite clearly meant different things to different people, groups and companies. This observation continues to be true today as a glance at company SD reports demonstrates – companies continue to interpret and present SD in ways particular to that organisation. The concept of a universally useful and succinct definition of SD within the minerals sector appeared to be both difficult and remote.

The GMI Conference demonstrated two gaps. The first related to the obvious difficulty of turning high minded principles into concrete actions which would make a difference to practice. The second gap was the one between the corporate level acceptance of SD and the lack of understanding at the operating levels of many companies.

The GMI Conference ended with a commitment on the part of the industry to advance SD within the collective industry, in the first instance through the International Council on Mining and Metals.

SMI emerged from the Conference understanding that it had everything to learn. It also was convinced that the industry was committed to the SD path and that it would engage with SMI on the journey. The learnings remain as valid today as they were in 2002.