Jane Joughin
SRK Consulting (UK) Limited
Jane Joughin (MSc) is a Corporate Consultant with 23 years of experience providing environmental and social management consulting services to the mining industry. She is a professionally registered environmental scientist with the South African Council of Natural Scientific Professionals. She is a specialist in environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) and environmental and social management and auditing.
Most of Jane’s experience has been gained mining and mineral processing projects and operations, including smelter operations, in Africa and Europe. To date, she has worked on over 35 mine ESIAs and she has led or managed half of these ESIAs. Jane also has experience undertaking ESIAs for projects involving development of new dams, roads and railways.
Jane has undertaken environmental and social due diligence audits of numerous mining and mineral processing projects and operations, including smelter operations. She has also overseen many more environmental and social due diligence reviews undertaken by colleagues and associates.
Jane has a very good understanding of international law on environmental and social management and several years of experience in applying the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability. She also ensures she is well acquainted with relevant national legislation in the countries in which she undertakes work.
Permitting and compliance commitments – transparent agreements or nooses to hang yourself?
Over the last 25 years there has been an upsurge of environmental law. Most law is applied in a customised way to mining developments through approvals and permits. While mines generally do have the necessary approvals and permits to operate, compliance with the attached conditions is not always managed robustly. We often see mines with hundreds, even thousands, of obligations incurred through approval processes. Among these are obligations that are difficult or impossible to meet. While mines report on compliance to government and lenders and are subject to compliance audits, many don’t maintain a reliable obligations database, check compliance with all obligations and renegotiate impracticable conditions. This talk will explore how this situation arises, associated risks and what some mining companies are doing to rectify this as enforcement potencies increase and industry incidents lead to increased scrutiny. Other environmental and social obligations, such as those in minerals agreements and arising from stakeholder engagement will also be discussed.