Mining regeneration can boost Global South: Bristow
- 3 December 2024
Exploration and development are “the only way for the mining industry to create real value and remain sustainably profitable”, and the path that affords the industry its best opportunities to deliver significant net social gains, Barrick chief Mark Bristow told Resourcing Tomorrow 2024 in London.
“The world needs a global strategy for investment in metals and minerals production growth to maintain its industrial progress while at the same time addressing the situation of the many countries still in the grip of poverty-level underdevelopment,” the gold and copper major’s CEO said in a keynote address.
“Widespread, unalleviated poverty, as I’ve said before, is at least as great a challenge to the creation of the world we wish for as climate change is.”
Bristow said the Global South hosted much of the undeveloped mineral wealth which would underpin the world’s future industrial and technological development, but its economic growth was constrained, in many cases, by conditional investment from wealthier parts of the world including, historically, from the mining industry.
“Understandably the South resents that the Global North, having grown wealthy on smokestack industries, now expects them to meet the North’s idealistic new-world standards, unfairly handicapping its ability to industrialise its own economies by fully exploiting its mineral wealth,” Bristow said.
“Clearly there is a pressing need to significantly increase production in the Global South of the metals and minerals needed by the Global North.
“However, the priorities of the North cannot be allowed to outweigh those of the South.
“The even-handed investment in the exploitation of metals and mineral resources is essential to the continued maintenance and infrastructure development of the advanced economies as well as the Global South’s ability to bootstrap its economic development and improve the lives of its people.
“The mining industry, world agencies, global investment funds and host countries need to play a leadership role in achieving the necessary ethical balance between the needs of the North and the South.
“Unfortunately, as we’ve seen again at the latest COP, both sides seem to think that this problem can be solved by handouts.
“Donations won’t help the many countries still struggling to emerge economically.
“They need investment and a lot of it.
“This is where responsible mining can play a meaningful role. It has, along with agriculture, been the kickstarter to the advancement of most of today’s developed economies and could also prove to be the same for the developing Global South.”
Bristow said the mining industry had historically been reluctant to spend money on exploration, particularly in what were perceived as high-risk jurisdictions, “which just happen to be where the best opportunities are”.
But, he said, discovery and development through either brownfield or greenfield exploration were critical to the industry’s capacity to regenerate resources and build real value.
Copper, he argued, was just one commodity sector where new investment, not just merger and acquisition activity to create bigger enterprises, was essential.
“The transition to clean energy is driving demand for this strategic metal to levels which will soon no longer be satisfied from existing production and, other than Barrick’s Reko Diq project [in Pakistan], there’s very little in the way of substantial new production in prospect,” Bristow said.
“Using gold and copper as a proxy for all metals and minerals, while production is being squeezed, there’s no shortage of metals and minerals in the ground.
“However, much of the metal and minerals endowment is concentrated in what are classified as low GDP regions. In other words, countries global mining companies have and largely continue to avoid because they are considered high-risk investment destinations.
“On the other hand, Barrick, and Randgold before it, have long believed in the old adage that if you’re searching for elephants you need to go to elephant country.
“This has enabled us to assemble a gold asset base that is by some margin the best in the business and to start building a copper portfolio that will soon also be world-class.
“Based solely on our organic growth capabilities we are forecasting a 30% increase in annual gold-equivalent ounces by the end of this decade.”
Bristow said the central African copper belt and Tethyan metalliferous belt hosting Barrick’s multi-billion-dollar Lumwana and Reko Diq copper projects, respectively, were just two examples of the spectacular resource wealth on offer in substantially under-explored regions.
“If you go to Reko Diq it’s like going to Chile 80 years ago,” he said.
“We’ve got copper porphyries on the surface … You can actually walk on the top of the porphyry.
“And so low strip ratios, relatively good grades; very, very low costs.
“Of courses there are still many copper deposits to be discovered in South America and particularly if you move up the western seaboard through into Ecuador and Colombia.
“These destinations all are challenging jurisdictions and so therein is the challenge.
“Responsible mining is a powerful catalyst in the struggle for social and economic development, to quickly and directly support entrepreneurs and communities, and bring stakeholders together for collective action.
“We are essential to the future of the Global North as well as the South by producing the metals and minerals required for the energy transition, while at the same time uplifting the economies and the quality of life where we operate in developing countries.
“If we’re going to deliver a planet for our children’s children’s children we’ve got to do things differently.”
