Resources, including minerals and metals, underpin the world’s economies for almost all sectors, providing crucial raw materials for their industrial processes. Despite efforts to decouple economies from resource use towards a circular economy, demand for extractive resources will continue to grow on the back of emerging economies. The report maps existing international governance frameworks and initiatives which have overlapping subsets that focus on delivering the 2030 Global Agenda for Sustainable Development.
In this report, the International Resource Panel (IRP) of the UN Environment Programme highlights that the mining sector, if carefully managed, presents enormous opportunities for advancing sustainable development, particularly in low-income countries.

As discussed in Chapter 5, extractive industries place large demands on natural resources such as land and water. Its activities can lead to polluting water resources, biodiversity loss and ecosystem destruction including land degradation and desertification. Therefore, there is a need to look at the dynamic relationships between mining, and land and water. This calls for a systems-thinking approach that accounts for the nexus between resources so as to steer policy efforts towards integrated natural resource management along the mining value chain.

The report maps existing international governance frameworks and initiatives which have overlapping subsets that focus on delivering the 2030 Global Agenda for Sustainable Development. It presents the practical actions required to improve the international governance architecture for mining to enhance its contribution towards sustainable development. It calls for a new governance framework for the extractive sector referred to as the “Sustainable Development Licence to Operate” which includes consensus-based principles, policy options and best practices that are compatible with the Sustainable Development Goals and other international policy commitments.

Minerals and metals underpin national economies, provide crucial raw materials for industrial activities, and are inputs to almost every sector of the global economy. Demand for extractive resources will continue to grow on the back of emerging economies with expanding and increasingly affluent and urban populations and a global transition towards low-carbon but metal-intensive energy production technologies. This is despite efforts to decouple economies from resource use and towards greater recycling.

The frequently severe and enduring environmental impacts of mining highlight the need to carefully balance such activities with stewardship of other valuable natural resources and the environment including ecosystems and biodiversity, and the rights of local people and communities.

Decision-making in the extractive sector is shaped by a complex array of governance frameworks and initiatives operating along highly globalized mineral value chains. There is an urgent need to coordinate and reform this governance landscape to address enduring challenges such as commodity price volatility, lack of linkages between mining and other economic sectors, inadequate management of environmental impact, and socio- and geopolitical risks of mining.

The report maps over 80 existing international governance frameworks and initiatives which focus on delivering overlapping subsets of the 2030 Global Agenda for Sustainable Development, but do not currently operate in a sufficiently coordinated or integrated manner.

In this context, the report calls for a new governance framework for the extractive sector referred to as the “Sustainable Development Licence to Operate” and includes consensusbased principles, policy options and best practices that are compatible with the Sustainable Development Goals and other international policy commitments.

The report discusses practical actions to improve the international governance architecture for mining to enhance its contribution towards sustainable development. The proposals include reaching an international consensus regarding the normative content and structure of the Sustainable Development Licence to Operate informed by expert inputs from a “Highlevel Panel on Mining for Sustainable Development”. It further considers the creation of an International Mineral Agency to share relevant information and data. Governments could also reach bilateral and plurilateral agreements regarding security of supply of raw materials and resource-driven development. Periodical reporting of progress towards sustainable development could be enabled through a Global “State of the Extractive Sector” review or
equivalent process.