Last month CMA hosted visitors from several African countries under the auspices of the Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program. The visitors participated in the program’s “Sustainability and the Extractive Industry” project.
Participants of the program came from 11 countries including Nigeria, Eritrea and Cameroon, and held positions in government, academia and the mining industry.
Stan Dempsey, CMA president, provided an overview of Colorado’s mining industry and described the various governmental and community stakeholders we engage with on a daily basis, including the State of Colorado and local communities in which our members conduct their operations.
Participants asked questions about mining in Colorado related to the group’s overall area of study that include:
- Enhance understanding of the underlying principles of ethical systems for accountability in business embodied in the FCPA and fair labor standards in the United States;
- Explore the nexus of land rights, ecosystem sustainability, and economic development;
- Examine the effect of transparency on trade, investment, and economic development;
- Highlight the mechanisms that enable citizens, media, and academia to foster good governance, ethical standards, and accountability at the local, state, and federal levels;
- Discuss collective land management and the responsibilities of community members; and
- Examine strategies to protect a community’s integrity from public and private sector developers and stakeholders.
CMA hosts groups from foreign nations several times a year. We appreciated the participant’s sharing of their experiences in their home countries as well as the candid discussions of issues facing mining in Colorado.
Finally, we were thrilled to distribute our popular “I Dig Mining” pins to our visitors; hopefully some of them make their way across the world!
