International Council on Mining and Metals

So what is a control? And this is where people get a bit confused.

Now, I personally like the International Council of Mining and Metals.

They've just released their 2026 version of the Good Control Management Good Practice Guide, and I think they have probably one of the best definitions of controls that are currently out there.

It's a physical object, human interaction, or a combination of them both that of itself directly prevents an unwanted event or mitigates its consequence.

One of the result- there were two results of that.

One was the, um, establishment of a London organization, ICMM, I think.

Yeah.

ICMM.

And we went along and said, "Tell us your big issues," and they sure did.

And since we weren't trying to sell anything, we were just there to listen.

Um, and the issues came, depending on, uh, the organization and depending on the geographic location, they were different, but some consistent themes emerged.

So we also had a good idea of what the Canadian issues were, and to some extent, the, the South American ones, or the Chilean ones, because we'd been active, the JK had been active in Chile since 1985.

You have your usuals coming in.

So, I mean, I think one of our opening keynotes is going to be Rohitesh Dhawan from the CEO of ICMM.

You have your likes of Dominic Raab.

So particularly if you're in the UK, you'll remember him from Appian.

So I think the consolidated mining standards are being developed or they're about to come into practice.

The ICMM is sort of leading that.

So I guess in terms of what some of the expectations will be there around the waste characterisation and the opportunities for waste valorisation may change.

I'm not saying I know what's in them, I'm just saying they may change.

Um, and we find that it's not only in the mining industry that this happens, it happens in other industries as well, um, which I, is a super interesting insight.

So another chapter, um, that we're working on, that I've been working on, is looking at whether ICMM, so International Council on Mining and Metals, whether their member mines are- Better able to reduce conflict deaths than non-ICMM member mines.

And what we find there is that it depends on the context.

So ICMM mines are better able to reduce the likelihood of deaths in areas where there are fewer protections for marginalized groups, um, and then that this effect attenuates as protections increases.

And so essentially it shows that firms can potentially mitigate national or community risk by being a part of these, um, associations that, you know, ensure that their members have certain standards that they have to live by.

Um, so yeah, that's the dissertation, two of the chapters of the dissertation in a nutshell, and very happy to dive into the third one today.