Chasing El Dorado

Chasing el dorado

Another significant challenge faced by Colombia was accurately portrayed in a recent article: “Proceeds from illegal gold mining in Colombia are estimated at approximately $2.4 billion, or three times the amount generated from Colombia’s cocaine industry. Like cocaine, illegal mining poses a litany of challenges: undermining the rule of law, eroding security, and devastating the environment.” (9)

Gran Colombia Gold, a large mining operation in Colombia, recently decided to use SenseMaker to tackle a particularly salient problem: illegal mining in its area of operations. In a part of the country that for at least 70 years has been under the influence of “informal” mining activities, an estimated 10,000 illegal miners in total were working. Before Gran Colombia Gold’s arrival, most of the population in Segovia/Remedios (Antioquia Department) had little access to clean water, energy, paved roads, education, or telecommunications infrastructure. After several years of the company’s operations, however, about 20% of mining activity in the region has been formalized. They have been contributing to local and national taxes, obtaining social security benefits and higher than minimum wages for their workers, and have been in compliance with work safety and environmental laws and regulations.

Yet, since the company arrived in the area, there have been eight armed blockades, effectively imposing de facto 45-day curfews, which have driven most local mom-and-pop businesses into bankruptcy. Regardless of as many as 1,500 police and army reinforcements being sent in by the Government of Colombia, it’s been impossible to prevent blockade recurrences.

Gran Colombia Gold, a Canadian company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, assembled a group of anthropologists and social science experts to devise a comprehensive strategy with the local residents aimed at nudging illegal miners towards formalization. It included:

• Signing collective formalization agreements
• Investing in roads, recreation, education, and energy infrastructure
• Fostering organic cacao production by small farmers
• Training and certification for school headmasters from several public schools
• Aqueduct and water treatment plant construction
• Reforestation schemes with native trees alongside river decontamination
• Cultural activity sponsorship

Still, resistance to change prevails among members of the community who consider “the way things used to operate” to be preferable. The company decided to use SenseMaker to assess the way their initiatives work and determine the level and quality of their impact. The goal was to map out which of the initiatives under implementation had had the most positive (or negative) impact, and have been more successful in nudging miners towards formalization, reducing violence, building social trust, and ultimately improving people’s lives.

The challenge meant identifying specific vectors aimed at beneficial, sustainable change in terms of violence prevention and mining activity formalization. This would be done by designing and building an interactive dashboard with specific measurable vector parameters for real-time monitoring of past, present, and future actions. In terms of Media & Strategic Communications, one aim is to use the resulting vectors to provide content to local, national, and international media. Like the Live Education Innovation Laboratory, this is an ongoing project, and the whole industry – not just in Colombia but throughout the region – is eyeing it carefully.

The Colombian Mining Association (ACM in Spanish) closely monitors the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in all large mining municipalities in Colombia. As recently as June 2020, it issued a report analyzing SDG compliance in the aforementioned territory. Of course, goals expressed as numbers are the bread and butter of the universal call to action for mass human endeavors like ending poverty, protecting the planet, and ensuring that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030. But in deciding how and where to invest, Gran Colombia Gold is increasingly paying attention to Dave Snowden’s body of scientific evidence. Evidence that when humans pursue specific measurable goals, and particularly when that goal is expressed as a number, intrinsic motivation is all but destroyed. In contrast, SenseMaker supports a co-productive, citizen-centered approach to monitoring, evaluating, and acting based on ‘moving’ narratives, not ‘objective’ numbers.

It’s safe to say that few tools are better adapted to the complexity media and communications are mired in, and deal with every day, than those afforded by “sense-making a la Cynefin.” This area of human endeavor is perhaps more in need than ever of such groundbreaking innovation since the Spirit of Truth visited our young Frenchman in his dreams 401 years ago. It is easy to foresee the enormous impact Cynefin can have on human rights, public health, education, responsible governance, environmental awareness, and sustainable economic development for millions of people around the world. I celebrate the Cynefin Revolution on its 21st anniversary!