COLOMBIA

Background

Cerrejón Mine aims to make a lasting and positive contribution to the communities in which it operates. Cerrejón seeks to partly do this through the implementation of the Anglo American Social Way, their governing framework for social performance – through this proposed regional socio-economic development project. The Social Way requires all their mines develop a social performance strategy and collaborative regional socio-economic development planning and is seen as promising way to achieve this as indicated through their Limpopo Province, South Africa projects – undertaken by Dobbin International. This strategy should anticipate the longer-term social impacts and risks linked to the life of mine strategy, integrate ongoing human rights due diligence and outline the long-term socio-economic development objectives aligned with local and regional development plans. 

Historically, Cerrejón’s social economic development has been delivered through a variety of mechanisms including the Social Economic Development Plans (SED). However, generally within the mining industry SED plans are often short-sighted (5 years), not integrated with other sectors and local plans that are in themselves often deficient and result in low social and economic impact for the money spent. 

The process of determining the community investment initiatives undertaken involves engagement with local community representatives, municipal and provincial government departments as well as national institutions. However, the process has some shortcomings. These include: 

1. The engagement frequently leads to a program of projects that focus on infrastructure and mining and are not components of an integrated and coherent plan for all suitable productive sectors in the region of the mine (e.g., agriculture, energy, forestry plantations, tourism). Often these other sectors are poorly developed and far from reaching their full potential; 

2. The community development projects lack a long-term outlook (in the case of the SEDs – only a five-year planning and implementation horizon); 
3. The process draws on the region and municipal development plans that are often outdated and lack international-, national-, inter- and intra-department, and municipal- level linkages. Spatial analysis, spatial planning, spatial economics, and spatial strategies – especially related to the productive (as well as the “support sectors” – conservation, restoration, social and physical infrastructure” are often completely lacking and/or not well developed to understand the full potential of other non-mining productive sectors in the region of the mine; and 
4. The SEDs are not of the scale required to bring about substantive economic change in the area as these initiatives often focus on only mining related activities within the boundaries of the mine site or within a 50 km radius of the mine. 
5. The project also included detailed master plans for six cays in the greater Sabana-Camaguey archipelago and region. The master plans critiqued existing tourism development infrastructure and plans and found much of the development was destroying the very environment that made these areas attractive to visitors in the first place. Each master plan provided recommendations for enhancing visitor experience while protecting biodiversity. 

Consequently, the impact of these projects is reConsequently, the impact of these projects is reduced both for the community and the company. The community development projects have generally not resulted in increased security of social license, an improvement in social risk management, an improvement in business performance or a reduction in liabilities in closure planning. These SED projects are focused on mining-related activities instead of seeing what the broader socioeconomic and biophysical opportunities and constraints are within the region to achieve broad based, multi-sector, sustainable socio-economic growth across every sector (i.e., to unlock the broader regional inherent values of socioeconomic development in order to achieve long term sustainable development across every sector including mining). 

Objectives of DI’s Project 

The overriding project goal is to identify and assess the opportunities and constraints and develop a strategic action plan to unlock the full potential of Cerrejón Mine in the direct and indirect area of influence. The strategy focused on leveraging core investments related to the Cerrejón Mine as a “motor” for resilient sustainable development of the Guajira Department and region. 

The main objective of this project for the Cerrejón Mine Region (i.e., La Guajira Department) strategic spatial development planning project was to: 

• Compile, organize, manage relevant geospatial and non-spatial data, develop a series of analyses to identify opportunities and constraints, and develop a vision, strategy and investment action plan for Cerrejón Mine area of influence. 

Dobbin International undertook this project for Cerrejón Mine (shareholders are Anglo American, BHP Billiton, and Glencore) and brought their unique strategic spatial and economic planning approach based on years of experience for sustainable development at the region-level associated with extractives that includes enhancing the biophysical and socioeconomic conditions (water management, landscape degradation, in-migration) at the same time. 

The overall aim of this project is to support development of a more integrated, multi-sector, resilient, sustainable development strategy for Cerrejón Mine and the La Guajira Department in order to create broad-based regional socioeconomic, biophysical conservation and development and employment. Note existing government IDPs are often missing critical strategies and actions that in a coherent manner to unlock the productive sectors (i.e., agriculture, forestry, fisheries, tourism, etc) and focus mainly on institutional, training, and other “soft” (overhead) investments. 

The Cerrejon Mine area of influence strategic spatial development plan was built upon (and not replacing) existing national, provincial and district development strategies and is envisaged as a collaborative and sustainable partnership between the Cerrejón Mine, other private sector companies in the region, government authorities, NGOs, International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and independent organizations. The ultimate goal of this strategic spatial development planning project was to identify and bring about a diversified and resilient sustainable economy for the Cerrejón Region, municipalities, department and its communities both during and after mining activities, by: 

• Identifying strategic opportunities and constraints to improve economic, social, ecological and governance aspects of the traditional and local authorities targeted in the municipality; 
• Developing and promoting a shared development vision for holistic and resilient sustainable development of the department with an emphasis on the productive and “support” sectors and multi-sector growth and strategies; 
• Identifying and developing targeted strategic thrusts and potential investments in relevant sectors (e.g., agriculture, energy, conservation, tourism) with high potential and high return on the investment; and 
• Promoting partnerships to change the area’s development trajectory (involving, e.g., public and private sector stakeholders, communities, NGOs and IFIs – World Bank and IFC). 
• Developing a clear, and long-term regional SED strategy and setting up of an implementation vehicle (investment platform or “backbone” organization) via appropriate partnerships to ensure: 
  • Diversification of the La Guajira local economy and reducing dependency on mine 
  • Broaden reach, impact of Cerrejon SED interventions and ensure long term sustainability 
  • Leave lasting legacy for Cerrejon mine in region 

The scope of DI’s project promotes a holistic multi-sector and spatially informed approach to the strategic plan and process; the unique DI spatial and non-spatial planning and economic analyses process covers all existing and potential economic sectors in the Cerrejón Mine area of influence, including but not restricted to agriculture, forestry plantations, fisheries, conservation, restoration, social services, transport, energy, and tourism.

By improving certain roads accessibility to Macuire National Park is improved by many hours enhancing the ecotourism corridor and opportunities. Other sectors benefit substantially too including agriculture and energy.  

We combined our 12 crop suitability models to identify the areas within the Department where one could grow the highest number of crops at the highest suitability levels – the darkest green areas – in other words the “treasure map” for agriculture investors.

By combining our tourism, renewable energy (solar and wind) and our multiple agriculture crop models we illustrate that there is no conflict among these sectors and in fact, can now assist private energy companies to invest in better areas than previously being considered. 

The Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) information for the Department was out of date so DI undertook LANDSAT satellite image analysis (20m resolution) by obtaining new satellite imagery and prepared an up-to-date LULC classification so that we knew exactly the current land uses and land cover types and then were able to use this up-to-date information in our spatial analysis models and spatial planning processes. We were also able to interpret the satellite imagery to identify 7 natural biophysical units that we use as homogeneous biophysical “planning units” to focus our investments and actions in each.