use the different standards in order to optimally safeguard society and the environment, and contribute to sustainability.
A Note to the Reader Whilst we found varied literature describing the Standards’ development, intent and content, we found very few publications that evaluated the effectiveness of any of the Standards in safeguarding social and environmental impacts at mine sites. We therefore had to rely heavily on stakeholder opinion to evaluate the Standards’ performance in practice. Consequently, as far as is possible given survey respondents’ and interviewees’ requests for anonymity, it is important for the reader to note: • which stakeholders we were able to engage • the opinions we were able to include • the level of disclosure permitted by stakeholders as to their identity. Please see Chapter V for more information. Further, an extensive, open consultation was beyond the scope of this report and the resources available, given Solidaridad’s goal. Purposive and snowball sampling was used, and we were able to involve just 41 people, who had varying expertise on different standards. Their sum profile means that they cannot be said to be scientifically representative of opinion in this sector on the performance of these standards. We have presented stakeholders’ opinions where we have judged a stakeholder to hold sufficient understanding of the Standard for the opinion to be valid and useful. We also rely on reader ability to interpret the reliability of information provided as either ‘fact’ or ‘opinion’ based on how it is cited, and from whom / where it is cited. Lastly, to our knowledge, this is the first attempt to publish a benchmark of voluntary standards to safeguard environmental and social issues in the gold mining sector. Solidaridad chose to release this report to aid in public understanding of these Standards and of the need for effective tools to measure the impacts of gold mining. We urge other stakeholders to publish the results of any ongoing monitoring, evaluation and review of the Standards to build on this base. Perhaps those best suited to this task are the staffs of the Standards themselves, with input from third parties, such as the users of the Standards. Indeed, some of the Standards have done or will periodically do just this (e.g., IFC, RJC). We look forward to reviewing this future work.
Benchmark of Environmental and Social Standards in Industrialised Precious Metals Mining 7