JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Four global metals and minerals mining organisations on Wednesday published a draft consolidated standard that covers a wide range of topics related to responsible mining practices.

The Copper Mark, the Mining Association of Canada (MAC), ICMM and the World Gold Council (WGC) are encouraging stakeholders to provide their views during a 60-day public consultation period that closes on December 16.

The initiative embraces a governance model, assurance process and related reporting and claims policy.

A sustainable society, enabled by the responsible production, sourcing and recycling of metals and minerals, is the initiative’s vision and its goal is to simplify the current mining standards landscape and promote continual improvement of environmental, social and governance practices across metal and mineral value chains – from mining to smelting, refining and beyond.

The aim is for this standard to be adopted by a wide range of mining companies – large and small, across all commodities and locations – to drive performance improvement at scale.

The standard’s important feature is that it is applicable to any facility, anywhere in the world that is committed to responsible practices.

Once finalised, the standard is expected to be used by existing members of ICMM, the WGC, the MAC, and participants of The Copper Mark.

This broad adoption would give the standard the widest coverage of any voluntary mining standard to date with implementation anticipated to include almost 100 mining companies across 600 operations in 60 countries, it was stated in a release to Mining Weekly.

The draft standard includes implementation of a grievance mechanism and each of its 24 performance areas has foundational, good and leading practice levels.

The process includes an advisory group made up of a diverse range of indigenous groups, downstream customers and multilateral organisations, with development of the standard involving a transparent process of two-round public consultation, the first round running online for two months and a shorter second round expected next year.

Consultation documents are available in Arabic, English, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish. 

Interestingly, the MAC brings with it metallurgical coal and mined oil sands members, The Copper Mark includes molybdenum, nickel and zinc industries, ICMM reflects a third of the global metals and mining industry, and the WGC is “shaping the future of a responsible and accessible gold supply chain”.