As you know, GRI already offers a process for reporters to focus their activities through GRI’s ‘materiality test’. A simple survey by PDAC could establish some of the significant issues of interest to both smaller mining companies and their stakeholders. This would help elimianted a lot of the ‘noise’ of what must appear to be endless disclosure requirements and indicators scaring many companies.

There are some strategic choices PDAC and GRI need to consider, and a possible partnership is only one of them. It seems to me that a GRI-PDAC partnership mentioned during the GRI session is not really all that certain at this time. PDAC – perhaps taking also a page out of the Mining Associations of Canada’s Towards Sustainable Development (TSD) –seems to be considering a tiered reporting and certification program. The alignment of such an approach with GRI’s framework has not been fully explored/understood at this time, nor have the implications of using alternative approaches been properly evaluated. Also, I am not convinced that GRI would have much of an appetite to develop another/sub/sector supplement (if needed) focused on the exploration/junior segment. I imagine that GRI has only a limited bandwidth and its plate full… Not to mention that GRI’s sector supplements typically take many years to develop, pilot and finalize.

The business case is perhaps most evident to the larger exploration companies/junior mining companies. This is where I see some fertile ground for action. Some exploration/junior leaders – perhaps supported by PDAC (with support by Canadian Government?) – could road test sustainability reporting in a cohort setting, which could be facilitated/supported by an external consultants. This would not only be cost effective, but it could also help break the ‘curse’ of the largely misunderstood GRI process which has created an unintended barrier to reporting. It could demonstrate that such sustainability reports can be created with limited effort/cost, create some tangible value for the reporter, and provide an honest discussion of challenges and opportunities getting there.

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“Yes, there are a large number of small to medium sized exploration copnaies out therem, and not just in Canada. GRI is not a one-size-fits-all for the mining and metals supplement, and there is a significant requiremnt for a suitable tool for these exploration cpmapnies to use for reporting. Many do not have huge staffs or a great deal of capacity for reporting and most have tight cash flows. The issue is to identify what are the key indicators (GRI, KPI or wahtever) that are appropirate for exploration. The vast majoirty of projects never go beyond the grass roots: few reach a full evaluation program, and even fewer go to feasibility and beyond. Figures being cioculted a few years ago talked of odds in excess of 1:1500 for a project going forward and becoming a mine. With such a large number of exploration companies and projects out there, we should think how best to encourage them to report. Most owuld love to, but the complexity and reuirenments of GRI are just not within their cabailities. WHo is going to come up with a suiotable model?
PDAC performed a great service by drwaing attention to this under-noticed segment, and it has been a real eye-opener for many. I speak form over 40 years of exploration and kinjng, and helping prepare reports to GRI criteria for the last two years for my employer, and feeding information for several years before that to a parent company for incproation into their GRI report. Most of us would live to submit “One Report” capturing our sustainability / CSR / ecpnomic infomration in one docuemtnon line or in hard copy. The question is how do we do so in a simple and cost effective manner”