Recently, an important anniversary passed quietly. Ten years ago, in Toronto, the Global Mining Initiative Conference, a path-breaking global conference on mining and sustainable development, wrapped up. The Conference was the culmination of a transformative global project called MMSD - Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development, and launched MMSD's report called Breaking New Ground. The culmination of years of effort, drawing together over 5000 participants from across the globe, and informed by 200 background research papers and expert opinions from all sectors, the MMSD was a multiperspec-tive conversation on how to maximize the contribution of the mining and minerals sector to sustainable development.What was remarkable about the MMSD was its industry leadership, but not industry control. While it began with the premise that mining is critical to development and to modern society, the final report immediately acknowledged the industry's interest in the conversation: "simply meeting market demand for mineral commodities," the Report notes, "falls far short of meeting society's expectations of industry' What was needed was a "serious change in the way industry approached today's problems." The challenges faced by the sector in securing social license to operate were only likely to grow. So the approach of MMSD was deliberately inclusive, multistakeholder, and research oriented. It was about "achieving practical results" informed by empirical evidence. To maintain independence, the project was housed at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London England (the "IIED"), and overseen by a 25-person Assurance Group of independent experts. A global multistakeholder project of that scale and scope had never before been undertaken.
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