Mineral exploration and development can have a significant impact on the environment and local communities, in some circumstances extending well beyond the mine site. Poor environmental performance and consequent social impacts by some companies have affected the reputation of the whole industry to the extent that the principal public concern about mining is its impact on the environment. This is consistent with public attitudes about other major natural resource sectors such as forestry and commercial fishing._x000D_
Traditionally the community has relied on governments to set the benchmark for acceptable environmental and social performance through establishing and revising regulations governing the mining industry. This however assumes that regulations keep pace with community expectations. It also does not take into account those circumstances where governments can have conflicting roles as both watchdog and project partner._x000D_
Government regulations and industry self-regulation are not in of themselves sufficient for the minerals sector to demonstrate that it has adequately addressed environmental and social issues associated with the sector. For the minerals sector to improve its reputation it must first improve its environmental and social performance. To do this requires the sector to operate to acceptable standards of environmental and social performance and for the sector to be able to credibly communicate this to its stakeholders such as investors, non-government organisations (NGOs), customers, staff, regulators and local communities. Independent third party certification of environmental and social performance (certification'), already operational in forest and fisheries management, is proposed as a mechanism to enable the minerals sector to achieve this. World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and industry partners will be collaborating in a project to ascertain the applicability of certification' to the minerals sector._x000D_
A number of economic, social and environmental benefits are identified that could accrue should mining companies be able to differentiate themselves on the basis of environmental and social performance, an attribute evident in certification' schemes._x000D_
External audiences are seeking increasing levels of information and data on environmental and social performance of mining companies, be it local communities, investors, financial institutions or NGOs. Environmental and social reporting should be a key communications device that stakeholders can rely on as a reliable, credible source of information on environmental and social performance. WWF's contribution to the debate about environmental and social reporting has been to develop a process to assess the quality of environmental and social reports against reporting ingredients which WWF believe are important if a report is to be an accurate reflection of the reporting entities' environmental and social performance.