Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Joseph Ogachi on July 22, 2011 at 9:32

Thanks Ronald for sharing this with the group. Three issues come to my mind. (1) how would you access the agreement between the government and the mining firms; that way you can hold the entity to account for what they are legally supposed to provide. (2) the paper is based on the argument that the miners might possibly be doing something wrong;  but there might be something good the mining firms could be offering. How would the research bring out both sides of the coin? (3) because the aim is not to antagonize the locals and the mining companies, how do you propose to achieve the monitoring objectives without planting the seeds of discord that could hamper development projects in the area.

 

Permalink Reply by Ronald Busiinge on July 22, 2011 at 10:07

Joseph,

 

Am profoundly humbled by your quick comments. First, it is one of our deliverables to access the contracts between govenment and the resource companies and we are using a range of options to arrive at this. More important is underscoring the role if tri-sector partnering (resource companies, government and comminity) in accessing the contracts among other means that i do not want to discuss as of now. Besides, our intervention is designed in such a way that ideally we need to access the contract in order for us to monitor the contract. But, we have options of monitoring the work of resource companies even without a contract. Environmental Management Plans are in public domain and the activities of companies and their operations are "not only on paper". It is possible to monitor activities of the resource companies based on their practices on ground. Second, this is an action study to benchmark indicators, meaning that it follows some preliminary studies that were the basis to identify issues, upon which this intervention was designed. But in any case, the tool is designed in such a way that we monitor the positive and negative aspects with a view of maximising benefits to the community as well as entrenching a "win, win, win" scenario where all the aforementioned three parties win. Third, we are not the source of antagonism and we can never be party to such antagonism, our intervention is an attempt to offer solutions to an already existing problem. You may need to read a section on the statement of problem to realise that there are issues already and we are only attempting to sort them out. Once again, thanks for your comments and i believe after thoroughly reading through the work, you will have more detailed questions and possibly answers and we are looking foward for your comments. 

Permalink Reply by Joseph Ogachi on July 22, 2011 at 10:16

Thanks Ronald. I am sure you are on the right track..

Permalink Reply by Cindy Kroon on July 22, 2011 at 20:28

Dear Ronald - I just joined Pro-Act and I'm very happy to see your contribution here. I am mainly interested in the extractive industries sector, and thought it would be nice if you could post your message on www.goxi.org as well? I'm not sure if you are a member already, but Goxi is the Pro-Act for extractive industries practitioners. I am sure that the Goxi community will be very interested in your paper (because it is on mining) and will be able to give you comments. Many thanks! Cindy