The International Council of Mining and Metals (ICMM) has published a set of equivalency benchmarks of responsible production and sustainability for the industry.

The outlines have been consolidated after being compared against the requirements of the World Gold Council’s Responsible Gold Mining Principles (RGMPs), the Mining Association of Canada’s Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM), the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI), the Responsible Mineral Initiative’s Risk Readiness Assessment (RRA) and the Copper Mark with its own ICMM Mining Principles.

The three goals, the group said, include simplification for better understanding; efficiency of self-assessing and third-party validations; and transparency, or the promotion of it around mining and metals’ standards and validation processes.

ICMM said that while the standards share the objectives of improving environmental, social and governance practices at the operational level, there are still some points of difference. These should be looked at case-by-case.

“Differences occur for several reasons including that ICMM and other standard owners are distinct organisations with different memberships, mandates, and governance structures,” the group said.

“Standards that are geography or commodity specific are likely to emphasise particular environmental, social or governance challenges unique to that commodity or geography and the drivers behind how and why each standard was developed are likely to be similar, but not the same.”

The information is out now in English. In 2021, ICMM will release translated versions.

Source: icmm.com