SDGs and CSR in Artisanal and Small-scale mining (ASM) activities from a Life Cycle perspective

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were built on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals and they define global sustainable development priorities and aspirations. This set of 17 targets aims to balance the... [ view full abstract ]

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were built on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals and they define global sustainable development priorities and aspirations. This set of 17 targets aims to balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social, and environmental dimensions. The responsibility of the achievement of these goals is national (e.g. Specific country-level initiatives), but the companies can play a significant role, e.g. complementing public expenditure. In fact, the private sector can proactively affect the sustainable development process and the “Corporate Sustainable Responsibility” (CSR) represents one of the main tools for this. The CSR can be described as a corporate self-regulation for including the responsibility related to the impacts on society, caused by the company activities, into the enterprise’s business model. In recent time, the corporate social responsibility has received an increasing attention from the corporate world and an increasing number of companies have engaged in CSR reporting in the entire business sphere, affecting both large multinational companies and small enterprises. Among the different sectors, the mining industry often plays a key role in the socio-economic development of numerous countries either with a positive influence (e.g. increase of the employment rate and wealth) either with a negative influence (e.g. environmental degradation, displaced populations, etc.). For these reasons, it is highlighted in this work the inclusion and the promotion of CSR and sustainable standards in the mining production, which is constituted by an industrial level and an artisanal level. The latter is the focus of this study and it refers to Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) activities, where individuals, groups, families or cooperatives mine with minimal or no mechanisation. Although the ASMs are characterized by a high percentage of informal activities they can play a crucial role in the achievement of the SDGs, especially for poverty alleviation, rural development and reverse land degradation. The main goal of this study is to investigate how can be assessed the sustainability in the ASM context for studying their contribution to SDGs achievement. It was decided to explore this issue using the Life Cycle Perspective through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The LCA methodology was implemented for the particular context of ASM (e.g. impacts of working environment). Besides the environmental assessment, a framework for assessing the social issues was implemented based on Social Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (SOLCA). The resulted framework obtained from combining the E-LCA with the SOLCA is a theoretical approach for studying the sustainability of ASMs. The future development of this study is the empirical experimentation of this model for assessing these two dimensions of sustainability, both the environmental and social performance of a Colombian ASM chosen as case study.

ASM – SDGs – CSR – Life Cycle Thinking