A group of companies making up a third of the global mining and metals industry on Wednesday committed to taking actions that will halt their negative impact on biodiversity by 2030 and support a nature positive future.
Sustainable mining platform ICMM – whose members count major global firms such as Alcoa, Anglo American, BHP, Glencore, and Rio Tinto – announced the new commitments at the annual World Economic Forum event in Davos.
“The mining industry owes its very existence to nature. At a time when the health of our natural world is in peril yet the demand for critical minerals is set to soar, we have committed to significant collective action to help create a nature positive future,” said ICMM President and CEO Rohitesh Dhawan.
“These commitments build on the significant individual goals and actions of ICMM members over several decades, including habitat conservation, species protection, and landscape restoration.”
In the statement, the miners outlined five main nature commitments:
• Protect pristine natural areas, including avoiding mining and exploration in World Heritage Sites or legally protected areas, a pledge they already made in 2018
• Make sure there is at least no loss of biodiversity at all mining sites by the time they close, compared to a 2020 baseline
• Collaborate across value chains to halt and reverse nature loss
• Restore and enhance landscapes around operating sites
• Act to “change the fundamental systems that contribute to nature loss”
“These commitments apply to activities across all four realms of nature – land, freshwater, oceans, and atmosphere – leveraging companies’ areas of influence – from their direct operations, value chains, and wider landscapes, through to creating the conditions required to achieve systems transformation,” the announcement said.
“They are supported by transparent disclosures on performance outcomes, including publishing the results of nature-related impact and dependency assessments, and setting targets to address these.”
The move comes as mining is emerging as one of the sectors with the biggest impact on nature globally, and one of those where the most efforts are being made to change behaviours in the aftermath of the 2022 Global Biodiversity Agreement.
Sam Lacey with UK-headquartered The Biodiversity Consultancy told Carbon Pulse last month that mining companies are among the industries looking at voluntary biodiversity credits as a means to go beyond offsetting in order to make nature positive claims.
“To help secure a nature-positive world, it will now be critical that ICMM’s members translate this commitment into truly nature-positive outcomes,” said Marco Lambertini, the long-time director-general of WWF International who this month has taken up the post as convenor for the Nature Positive Initiative.
“This means both safeguarding areas with high biodiversity value and contributing in their operations to measurable gains in the health, abundance, diversity and resilience of species, ecosystems, and natural processes.”
By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com
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