
Rohitesh Dhawan
PRESIDENT & CEO: ICMM
‘There’s a need for reframing and a need for an honest conversation about where the responsibility of a mine starts and ends’
IT is hard to overestimate the importance of mining’s impact on society. Whether it be the industry’s difficulties in attracting and retaining talent or the increasingly expensive timelines in winning permits, the mining sector is at once in the crosshairs of environmental lobby groups as a bad actor and simultaneously the globe’s means of reversing climate change. Communicating the latter, mining’s role as a social and environmental good, is best made by actions over words. Enter Rohitesh Dhawan’s International Council on Mining and Metals, an organisation representing 24 CEOs of the world’s largest mining and metals companies.
Under Dhawan, the ICMM has lifted ‘big mining’s’ visibility, including a landmark commitment to sustainable development targets and other actions on diversity, equity and inclusion. Improving transparency is also part of the ICMM’s remit. In this regard, Dhawan has improved the council’s disclosure on tax and contracts. In August, the council signed a collaboration on reducing pollution by acid rock drainage. It also issued an updated policy statement on indigenous peoples which was one of several ICMM principles adopted by the UN Secretary-General’s Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals in September.
The UN also embraced the ICMM’s Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management and another standard on declining to mine World Heritage Sites. There are many rivers to cross, clearly. One of its members, Rio Tinto, recently reported setbacks in efforts to stop bullying and sexual harassment at the company. In October, BHP agreed a $29.93bn final settlement with public authorities in Brazil for reparation of Samarco’s Fundão dam failure. This is the press the ICMM is seeking to reverse.
LIFE OF ROHITESH
Rohitesh ‘Ro’ Dhawan came to prominence at KPMG as head of geopolitics and sustainability in mining. He was appointed CEO of the ICMM in 2021 following a three-year stint as MD of Eurasia Group. In addition to duties at ICMM, Dhawan is an associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a Fellow and faculty member at the Asian Forum on Global Governance. He also advises the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, Concordia, and Resolve, and was named one of South Africa’s climate change leaders. He holds a master’s in environmental change and management from Oxford University and an economics degree from Rhodes University.