Focus on Sustainability: A Look Behind the Scenes at How We Developed Our Sustainability Strategy
Sustainability has always been a core part of how we do business at Calibre. Our focus on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles has helped us to deliver sustainable value for our shareholders and local communities. We’re proud to have established a strong commitment not only to responsible mining, but also to upholding stringent environmental and ethical practices that have the potential for global impact.
While sustainability has been part of our journey since the beginning, in 2021 we launched a comprehensive process to establish an official strategic direction for our sustainability efforts and initiatives.
“We had some initial meetings with the sustainability team, and quickly reached the conclusion that, in order to perform well in sustainability, what we needed was a long-term strategy,” says Petri Salopera, Senior VP of Sustainability at Calibre Mining.
We also knew that developing the strategy would have to be a participatory process. “What was clear from the beginning, was that this couldn’t just be an initiative of the sustainability team,” Petri adds. “It had to be a company-wide commitment, and every department needed to feel that it was their strategy as well.”
The sustainability team organized an extensive company consultation process, and then decided to go even further, including a wide range of stakeholders within the mining industry and local communities, too. Finally, after months of consultations, discussions and listening to a wide variety of perspectives, we identified our key areas of sustainability focus and set out to solidify our goals within our official strategy.
Here’s a look at how the strategy-building process unfolded, and how it has served to shape our sustainability efforts and successes over the last three years.
A participatory process
We kicked off development of our sustainability strategy with internal consultations – including two focus groups with Calibre’s leadership team and an employee survey. “Each department had a chance to highlight their views on sustainability and ESG,” says Petri. “Then we gathered that internal information to use as part of our strategy building.”
We then moved on to external consultations. “We reached out to representatives from civil society, and from various institutions, all of whom shared their views on Calibre, the mining industry and corporate social responsibility in general,” Petri says.
We also conducted interviews with local authorities, and with international institutions, to ensure we developed a broad external view on what was expected from a company of our size and in our location. In total we conducted 31 interviews, and they provided some invaluable insights. “What was positive was discovering, through our consultation process, the view that a mining company can be an engine of development,” says Petri. “And not only that we could contribute to our local communities, but also that we could help the whole country to elevate its environmental standards.”
Pinpointing our areas of sustainability focus
After concluding our consultations, we were able to determine our core areas of sustainability focus based on stakeholder priorities. These include biodiversity, water and waste management, climate change, collaboration with Indigenous communities, and making connections between local efforts and key global issues. We aligned our priorities with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and committed to upholding human rights through respectful processes and ongoing due diligence to ensure we do not cause harm or become complicit in violations of the rights of third parties. These focus points are now reflected in the sustainability initiatives we run in all of our regions.
Having the strategy has enabled us to focus on developing initiatives that help to realize our long-term vision of maximizing the positive impacts of our presence, and minimizing or properly addressing any negative impacts of our work on communities and the environment. “Most of our initiatives have a long-term view on sustainability,” Petri says. “The strategy has helped us to select longer-term projects versus those with limited endurance.”
One example of this is our reforestation project. Since starting operations in late 2019, Calibre has produced 462,393 trees to support Nicaragua’s reforestation effort, which not only positively impacts the local community, but also helps to address the global issue of deforestation. “It’s been invaluable to have a clear vision that we, as a mining company, can contribute to the solution for this local problem, and that we can also make a global impact,” Petri says.
Another initiative we’re particularly proud of is the way we have ensured significant, respectful engagement processes with Indigenous communities in all three of our regions. “We uphold a strong view that consultation needs to happen early and throughout the life of our projects, it needs to be culturally sensitive, and it needs to be a process which is done in the right way,” Petri says. “Engagement in the sense of inviting them to be part of the development of our business, but at the same time the contributions that the development of our business can give to the communities, and how we actually make them part of that development path that we visualize as a company. Because our success becomes the success of the community.”
We’ve shared updates on many of our sustainability initiatives in our latestsustainability report and through our social media channels. And we love to talk about our work in wildlife conservation, Indigenous relations, educational opportunities in our local communities, as well as worker rights, benefits and safety. These are the kinds of initiatives that fill us with pride, and drive us to do as much as we can to make positive contributions wherever we work.
Adding regional perspectives
When we started on this strategic planning journey, Calibre had operations exclusively in Nicaragua. However, six months into it, we acquired Pan Mine in Nevada, so we added a second phase of consultations to our process to ensure the developing strategy would reflect regional differences. “Most of the priorities did make sense for Nevada and were the same concerns we heard in Nicaragua,” Petri says. “But we did add one or two additional items to the strategy based on our interactions in Nevada.”
These included concerns around the remoteness of the mine site, which meant housing was required for on-site team members. “There was a concern for the well-being of our workers and staff, but also for the local towns, too, and so we addressed that,” Petri says.
Recently, we conducted a third phase of this consultative process and sustainability strategy development at Valentine Mine in Newfoundland, Canada. “Newfoundland is very aligned with what we have in place for Nicaragua,” Petri says. “The focus is still on water, local communities and biodiversity, as well as on employment opportunities, and opportunities for local businesses. The main difference is how we will achieve our results – and who we will partner with to do so.”
Measuring our progress
Since launching our sustainability strategy in 2021, Calibre has produced an annual sustainability report designed to measure and share our progress on all of our ESG activities aligned with leading international frameworks such as GRI and SASB. “From the very beginning, we were clear that we needed to measure our success,” Petri says. “We use both quantitative metrics and qualitative measures to evaluate our progress.”
Much like our sustainability priorities, our KPIs, too, were developed in consultation with our stakeholders. “You cannot simply impose your own metrics as a company,” Petri says. “Especially with community-based projects. You need to involve others to make sure your metrics are right, and to be successful in meeting your objectives and targets.”
Over the years, our strategy has evolved to reflect shifting priorities and progress. We have adopted and comply with the Responsible Gold Mining Principles, and have made a commitment to uphold the Mining Association of Canada’s Toward Sustainable Mining protocols. And while the end results are something we’re incredibly proud of, we’re also pleased with the process itself, and all that we’ve learned from it. “Having gone through three different processes to refine our regional strategies has made the overall process more robust,” Petri says. “It has also made it very clear that participation is key. The results of a participatory process are so much more valuable than a process without participation.”
Ultimately, the sustainability strategy connects back to our overarching business strategy, and is core to the way we operate at Calibre. But it’s also given us a business edge. “From the environmental and social perspective,” Petri says, “having a robust sustainability performance not only allows us to operate in three jurisdictions, it also allows us to grow.”