Standards and the Extractive Economy
The SSI Review: Standards and the Extractive Economy, a joint report from the State of Sustainability Initiatives and the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development, examines the intersection of voluntary sustainability initiatives (VSIs) and sustainable development within the mining sector.
The report highlights environmental, social and business-related impacts associated with mining activities and the different types of upstream and downstream VSIs in the sector. It highlights the variety of commodities mined, from precious stones to sand and gravel, and how different VSIs can achieve different results. It identifies collaboration as essential to working toward the interoperability of VSIs, both up and down the value chains and across various sector-focused themes.
The report also provides a systematic analysis of 15 major sustainability initiatives in the mining sector, including standards relating to artisanal and small-scale mining, and presents a snapshot of the mining and minerals sector by commodity type.
This report was published in 2018 with data inclusive from 2015 and 2017.
40.5 million
An estimated 40.5 million people were directly engaged in artisanal and small-scale mining in 2017, up from 30 million in 2014, 13 million in 1999 and 6 million in 1993.
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Timeline of standards in the mining sector
This visual representation details the timeline creation of the 15 standards covered in this report. The past decade has given rise to a common interest among diverse stakeholder groups in using private voluntary standards as instruments for addressing a wide range of social issues such as the social licence to operate, anti-corruption, fair-labour conditions and the avoidance of conflict— not to mention environmental protection.
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Social, environmental and business criteria of standards in mining
This graph represents the social, environmental and business dimensions of the 15 standards covered in the report. The y-axis, completeness of content, shows aggregated scores for how much content was included in each initiative, with equal weight given to each dimension. The x-axis, level of obligation, shows how the initiatives differ in their use of standards in terms of the level of compliance each initiative demands of its adherents, ranging from optional to obligatory.
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Summary of assurance, responsiveness and engagement index results
We detail how the 15 standards in the report measure up to the assurance, responsiveness and engagement indexes. This is part of our innovative CARE analysis, which analyzes how initiatives contribute to sustainable development. You can take a deep dive into the methodology on page xiii.