As society struggles to balance the need to mine for minerals required for the technology that permeates our daily lives and the harm mining causes to the environment, people and communities, the Global Reporting Initiative recently published the Mining Sector Standard, creating a reporting standard focused on the impacts of mining companies.
The Global Reporting Initiative is an international independent standards organization that helps businesses, governments, and other organizations report their impacts on issues such as climate change, human rights, and corruption. More than 10,000 global entities in more than 100 countries use GRI standards in their reporting. The GRI’s creation of the Mining Sector Standard is an important additional tool for mining companies, which establishes common metrics to assess transparency and fosters accountability for the environmental, community and worker impacts of mining. The standard also introduces site-level transparency, which recognizes that impacts manifest locally and that mining companies need to assess impacts and risks by location and specific minerals.
Stakeholders believe that using robust metrics to develop meaningful, comprehensive reporting helps provide increased transparency and accountability for companies operating in the mining sector.
Pat Zerega, retired senior director of shareholder advocacy at Mercy Investment Services, served on the independent multistakeholder working group that developed the standards, bringing the faith-based investor perspective.