The Art Of How In The Critical Minerals Era Mining the Past to Build the Future: Lima 1998–2026 Glenn Sigurdson, C.M.* *Member of the Order of Canada glennsigurdson.com, gemm.ca Abstract Mining projects struggle for many reasons — technical, engineering, financial and political. Yet one of the most consequential constraints is often overlooked: the path a project travels to reach an outcome. Geopolitical forces are now intensifying the pressure to discover, access and develop the critical minerals on which the world’s economies and technologies depend — compressing timelines and raising the stakes for getting the process right. This paper argues that the central constraint is not only technical or geological; it is organizational, relational and institutional. There is an important history to draw from. In the 1990s, a sustained body of work — from Canada’s Round Tables on the Environment and the Economy, to the 1998 Lima workshop, to the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development project — addressed a practical question: not simply what sustainability means, but how to build it. Building Consensus for a Sustainable Future: Guiding Principles was developed through a national, multi-jurisdictional negotiation involving more than five hundred participants, informed by extensive practice in complex public dispute resolution. Their importance lies not only in the principles themselves, but in the fact that the process was built in their image. This paper reconnects that body of practice to the critical minerals moment through the lens of what I have come to call The Art of How — the discipline of building clear expectations about how we are going to work together as the essential ingredient in achieving outcomes. It examines why sustainability is best understood as a strategy for working across environmental, social and economic currencies of value; why environmental assessment is best understood as an informing process embedded in inclusive and credible decision-making; and why the progression from consultation to consensus, consent and partnership requires structure, not rhetoric. It also considers the recognition that external fragmentation is mirrored inside organizations, where misalignment among functions can undermine commitments made on the ground. The World Mining Congress returns to Lima in 2026. The challenge is not to rediscover the importance of trust and dialogue, but to build the structures required to sustain them. Keywords critical minerals; sustainable development; consensus; environmental assessment; social license; Indigenous relations; organizational alignment; Peru 154
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