living, which translates into employee demands for exceptionally high increases, intervention by the regulators, most notably the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy and the various environmental departments, and an extremely complex mining and environmental legal framework. Our approach is always to ensure that the clients understand the importance of engagement with all stakeholders, after a proper process of identifying the stakeholders has been carried out. Preengagement, ongoing communication and transparency are key tenets of our advice. Our basic philosophy is that, if a mine adopts a “radio silence” approach, or attempts to do things unilaterally, things can only end badly, and the “social licence” to mine can be lost in an instant. Technological advancements are rapidly changing the landscape of the mining industry. How do you stay ahead of the legal implications brought on by these changes? South Africa’s mining industry remains one of South Africa’s largest employers. In addition to being a significant employer, South Africa’s mining industry supports a number of parallel industries and funds both the local and national economies. This presents a significant challenge to the implementation of technological advances. Understandably, new technology is met with scepticism and significant concerns surrounding whether the introduction of new technology will result in job losses. New technology is vital to the future of mining in South Africa for various reasons, including cost efficiency, safety, and sustainability. Some technology, such as the introduction of hydrogen trucks, and specific types of mines, such as the old, abandoned gold mines, due to illegal mining. Illegal mining is carried out without any regard whatsoever to health, safety and the environment. For operational mines, there are many competing interests, which impact on environmental compliance. These competing interests include increased demands from communities to be involved in the mining operations in some form or another including direct employment, commercial opportunities, and benefits under the social and labour plans. As a result of failing infrastructure, mines have to incur additional costs relating to infrastructure, with the most notable, currently, being development of on-site electricity generation facilities including solar and wind farms. There are also strong demands for significant remuneration increases. All of these costs place pressure on environmental compliance, and where mines could, in the past, include discretionary compliance spend in their budgets, many mines have reached a state of minimum compliance spend only. Where mines are able to include discretionary spend, for example, on compliance audits (internal and external), this has, in our experience, significantly enhanced the ability of the mining industry to achieve better levels of environmental compliance. On sustainability, with the shift to a focus on Environment, Social and Governance (ESG), this has highlighted the need for sustainable operations, but it has also raised concerns because of the broad interpretational opportunities around ESG, and the lack of consistent metrics on performance against ESG principles. In our experience, there have been instances where spending on ESG has not been efficient or beneficial, and it is time for the mining industry to re-assess the metrics against which sustainability will be measured going forward. We are actively involved in numerous programmes at our clients in the mining industry which focus on environmental compliance and sustainability. We once again focus on these elements with a strong practical interpretation. To do so we need to know what is going on both in the law and at our clients, and we spend as much time in the field, at the mines, to ensure that we are continuously aware of the impact of the legal framework and the advice that we give. Infrastructure projects require balancing complex stakeholder interests. What is your approach to navigating these dynamics to ensure successful legal outcomes for your clients? South Africa’s mining industry requires a delicate balancing of a range of competing stakeholder interests, to be successful. This also applies to infrastructure projects which are initiated by mines, groups of mines, and by government in its public-private partnership initiatives. These competing interests include shareholder requirements, banking and finance pre-requisites, community demands, South Africa’s ever-increasing costs of The South African mining industry is regulated by a complex legislative framework, which must be clearly understood by any companies wanting to participate in South Africa’s mining industry Lawyer Monthly Legal Awards 2023 114 SOUTH AFRICA
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