Strengthening local community benefits for all and mitigating adverse impacts on local ecosystems
The importance of environmental protection and social inclusion in extractive industries’ operations has grown over the last decades, from being a marginal aspect of operations to becoming decisive preconditions for obtaining the social license to operate. Environmental considerations are continuously evolving and affected stakeholders claim active participation in decision-making.
EGPS engages in consolidating environmental protection and community benefits while supporting workable solutions and remedies to mitigate the industry’s potentially adverse effects.
This includes supporting Artisanal and Small-scale Mining (ASM) communities to improve their working conditions and economic sustainability, while mitigating risks related to child labor, environmental hazards, and the sector’s proximity to illicit financial flows.
EGPS also develops cutting-edge approaches related to the sector’s role in the climate-change agenda through Climate Smart Mining and Just Transition, a program designed to supporting countries in their transition out of a coal-based energy matrix
Under this component, EGPS also provides advice to governments for improved assessment and mitigation of adverse social, health, and livelihood effects of extractives industries, including:
- Generating global and regional knowledge on environmental and social challenges in the sector such as deep-sea mining in the Pacific, abandoned mines in Central Asia, impact of lithium mining in Bolivia.
- Engaging in Artisanal and Small-scale Mining (ASM). EGPS finances the Delve platform, the first global database for ASM data, to provide complete, accurate, and reliable data necessary for any intervention in ASM, such as efforts to formalize the sector, to improve the livelihoods of poor people, or to empower women miners.
- Responding to social and environmental crises: EGPS created a targeted emergency response to help ASM miners and their communities to better cope with COVID-19 impacts.