Approaches to Understanding Development Outcomes from Mining
8 August 2013
Mining companies are increasingly expected to demonstrate the effectiveness and value of their socio-economic investments and how they contribute to community development. However, the impacts can be challenging to measure meaningfully in practice and there are few generally accepted approaches to doing do in the mining and metals sector. This report, one of ICMM’s earlier pieces of work on this topic, set out the methods available to measure human and social development impacts and how they might be applied to mining project investments.
Summary
- This report provides an overview of approaches for:
- Designing for outcomes – methods for aligning core business activities and social investments towards the achievement of human and social development goals.
- Tracking outcomes – methods for monitoring the outcomes of development and adapting programs and activities.
- Analysing outcomes – evaluation methods for the identification of a correlation between activities and outcomes and causal pathways to build an understanding of change.
- Each of these sections describes tools and examines their potential applicability to the mining and metals industry.
- The report is intended for those with a corporate-level responsibility for developing strategic approaches to social and economic development issues within mining and metals companies. It will also be of interest to potential partners who collaborate with mining companies at a corporate and operational level on initiatives related to social and economic development.