News: Chemonics and Gran Colombia Gold Provide Insights on Creating Shared Value

Chemonics is proud to participate in the sixth annual Responsible Extractives Summit in London, which takes place June 29 and 30 in London. The summit brings together leaders from a wide range of organizations, including mining and oil and gas industry companies, as well as development firms and NGOs, and to discuss sustainability and social performance in the extractives sector.

On the first day of the conference, Chemonics was honored to present a panel entitled, “Focus on Shared Value in Capacity Building by Creating Good Working Relationships with External Organizations.” The panel included Peter Doyle from Chemonics, Jose Ignacio Noguera from Gran Colombia Gold, and Ramanie Kunanayagam from BG Group.

Mr. Doyle and Mr. Noguera outlined the experience of the USAID Colombia BioREDD+ program, which helped bring artisanal and small-scale miners into Gran Colombia’s supply chain through private operating contracts. Today, just over 50 percent of the ore processed by Gran Colombia Gold is sourced from these miners, opening access to these miners to new technologies to raise productivity and reduce environmental impacts. As a result, Gran Colombia and the local miners have created tangible shared value and now operate in a more secure and sustainable social and legal environment that has added stimulus to growing political will by national and regional governments to pull the sector toward greater legality, productivity, and environmental responsibility.

The panel presentation helped participants:

• Understand the role that access to finance plays in supplier development and integrate this into procurement functions
• Create a strategy to promote good business between local SME’s that will create long term shared prosperity with community entrepreneurs
• Develop partnerships and embed accountabilities to ensure projects continue to deliver benefits after cessation of mining activities
• Learn how to identify and involve partners and stakeholders to improve project success rates

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