From steel production to gem cutting, the mining, minerals, and metals sector features a highly diverse collection of industries with different supply-and-demand dynamics. Attempts to address its environmental and social impacts have spawned more than 150 voluntary sustainability standards to date. While each standard has its own distinct focus, which might be related to a specific issue, material, phase of production, or supply chain, it’s common for different standard systems in this sector to overlap, particularly in terms of the requirements they audit at the mine site. Stakeholders are tasked with navigating the requirements of multiple standards at once, creating confusion around their effectiveness, and allowing less credible approaches to be held up as the equivalent to their tougher, more stringent counterparts.
Finding common ground in the mining, minerals, and metals sector
Introduction
Project details
Project title: Mining, minerals and metals partnership: Alignment and collective action to drive improvement
Lead organisation: ResponsibleSteel
Partners: Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), Towards Sustainable Mining (MAC-TSM)
Duration: April 2019 - June 2022
Funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO, through the ISEAL Innovations Fund
Lead organisation: ResponsibleSteel
Partners: Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), Towards Sustainable Mining (MAC-TSM)
Duration: April 2019 - June 2022
Funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO, through the ISEAL Innovations Fund
The challenge
The M3 Standards Partnership
Four leading standard systems in this sector—the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), the Toward Sustainable Mining standard (TSM), and ResponsibleSteel — came together under the umbrella of the M3 Standards Partnership to improve connections and consistency in the creation of more responsible mining and metals production. Since 2019, the M3 Standards Partnership has worked on developing and piloting practical solutions to increase cross-recognition and interoperability between their systems, starting with the creation of an Integrated Assessment Protocol. The partnership is also collaborating for increased alignment in various areas, such as Greenhouse Gas (GHG) accounting and meeting due diligence requirements.
M3 Integrated Assessment Protocol
The M3 IAP is a tool designed to allow mine sites to be assessed against multiple site-level standards in a single audit, supporting identification of alignment across standards, and promoting demonstration of conformity with multiple standards with greater efficiency and reduced cost. The IAP assessment criteria were developed by mapping the requirements of IRMA, RJC, and TSM against a detailed set of themes and subthemes. The tool was refined through one pilot conducted with an Anglo American Platinum Group Metals mine in South Africa and a second pilot conducted with ArcelorMittal Mining Canada. The M3 Partnership plans to expand this tool over time to include additional standards and intends to release updated versions of the tool as this work is completed.
Coordinated outreach
A key element of the M3 Standards Partnership was to explore ways to engage stakeholders in a strategic and coordinated way. Data protection requirements and the unique identities of the partners undermined the original intention to create a shared international database of stakeholders. However, a lot was learned from the efforts to coordinate stakeholder engagement, and the partnership was successful in creating a combined list of organisations engaged in each M3 partner organisation and in carrying out an initial analysis of sectors engaged, geographic coverage, and overlapping engagement.
Download project outputs
Summary report | Cross-sectoral learnings from the M3 Standards Partnership
Summary report | Cross-sectoral learnings from the M3 Standards Partnership
This cross-sectoral learning brief distils the in-depth reports and tools from the M3 Partnership that can be found on the M3 Partnership website or ISEAL website. This brief also reflects on the recommendations from the earlier 2018 research, testing and expanding on the recommendations made at the start of the M3 Partnership. This brief is meant to leverage the learnings from the multi-year collaboration of the M3 Partnership organisations and inspire sustainability systems working in other sectors.
Integrated Assessment Protocol (IAP) Description | M3 Partnership
Integrated Assessment Protocol (IAP) Pilots Report | M3 Partnership
GHG Project Report | M3 Partnership
Due Diligence Report | M3 Partnership
Summary of Project and Lessons Learned | M3 Partnership
Key Learnings from Recognition Process | ResponsibleSteel
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