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International advisory reportREPORT OF THE INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY PANEL
August 2011
QMM AND ENVIRONMENT
Because previous Panel reports gave quite extensive attention to environmental achievements and issues, this year’s report adds only a few notes on this important subject, including:
a) The industrial environment: This seems generally under control. The problems of water level and filtering of effluent water seem to have been mastered. Nevertheless, a fatal road accident (not involving QMM) on the new mine-to-port road suggests that more may need to be done to separate pedestrians and carts from vehicular traffic. As the new road was constructed by QMM, it would seem advisable to proceed with construction of a dirt-surfaced pedestrian route parallel to the paved mine-port road to minimize the risk of further accidents on the highway.
c) Restoration and Net Positive Impact on Biodiversity: Restoration of the mined surface has begun. Rio Tinto’s corporate strategy of Net Positive Impact on the Biodiversity is soon to be published jointly with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and IUCN will assume responsibility for further evaluation and determination of compliance.
d) Rosewood: The illegal destruction and export of rosewood has become a major national problem with high environmental costs. It also entails a direct threat to QMM’s commitments to environmental offsets for the mine’s destruction of forest. In this regard, QMM’s offset strategy may need to be reconsidered if the looting of rosewood is not resolved via a political and judicial solution in the coming months.
e) Ste. Luce: Tenders have gone out to begin the process of baseline studies leading to the Social and Environmental Impact Assessment (SEIA) required to qualify for a mining permit at Ste. Luce. Although this process should take several years, global demand for ilmenite is projected to increase quickly and significantly and this may exert pressure to accelerate the schedule originally envisaged for Ste. Luce. At the same time, this is a much larger site than Mandena which must be expected to raise the similar considerations and problems but at greater scale. The Panel intends to focus attention on Ste. Luce during its 2012 review. In the meantime, we would encourage conversations between Azafady and QMM on social and environmental issues in Ste. Luce and on possible future partnership arrangements.