Sustainable Activities Assessment Through Conceptual Sieving Method: Case Studies in Colombian Mining

Despite the importance that industrial activities have to society, for some years certain corporative sectors, such as mining, have faced strong criticism from various circles of global public opinion. This has hampered important industrial projects, generating great economic losses for companies and regions. While some localized studies indicate that in specific areas negative impacts of mining have been greater than positive ones, other analyzes highlight the opportunities for regional development that mining projects executed under the principles of sustainability represents. This work is based on the premise—according to definition of sustainability adopted here—that for a project to successfully contribute to the sustainable development of a region, it must ensure that its positive impacts last in the long term beyond project closure. Thus, it is crucial that companies can assess the potential of their sustainability activities to produce that kind of impacts. Through this work, Conceptual Sieving is presented as a tool for this type of analysis. Moreover, a pilot application is made to five mining projects located in Colombia. At the end, the results obtained from this application are discussed.