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Статья

5 Сен 2024

Автор:
BHRRC, Global Witness, Human Rights Watch, Public Citizen, SIRGE Coalition, T&E, others

Letter: Civil society organisations and unions express renewed concern over Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative to four mining organisations

"Civil society elevates concerns over the Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative and the risk it will drive a race to the bottom by the mining industry at the expense of communities ", 5 September 2024

"25 NGOs, community organisations and unions, have written to four mining organisations – ICMM, the Mining Association of Canada, The Copper Mark, and the World Gold Council – to raise renewed concerns about the industry-led effort to develop a new mining sector audit and certification scheme: the Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative. Signatories includes the Business and Human Rights Resource Center, Earthworks, Global Witness, Human Rights Watch, IndustriALL Global Union, Public Citizen, the SIRGE Coalition and T&E."

The letter goes as follows:

Rohitesh Dhawan, President and CEO, ICMM.

Pierre Gratton, President and CEO, MAC.

Michèle Brülhart, Executive Director, Copper Mark.

David Tait, CEO, World Gold Council.

Dear Mr. Dhawan, Mr. Gratton, Ms. Brülhart, and Mr. Tait,

In September 2023, our network of community organizations, labor unions, and Indigenous, environmental, and human rights groups wrote expressing our concerns over your efforts to create a new mining audit and certification standard through the Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative.

One year later, we are even more doubtful that the Initiative will develop a rigorous standard with meaningful participation from mining affected communities, workers, labor unions, and nongovernmental organizations, that holds companies accountable to a high level of social and environmental performance.

People and the environment suffer when companies are left to self-regulate with weak voluntary standards. Voluntary standards and certification schemes, regardless of their strength, will never be a substitute for mandatory legal frameworks, accompanied by strong enforcement capacity.

We recognize that strong voluntary standards can help drive improved mining industry human rights and environmental performance if they have the level of transparency and rigor necessary to provide credible information and require companies to continuously improve based on independent audit findings.

Strong voluntary standards that support such progress contain the following minimum criteria - noting that mining companies must be accountable for compliance with these requirements, and not just States or other entities:

  1. A multistakeholder co-governance model with equal decision-making which gives equal power to rights holders, NGOs and workers through co-creation of the system at the outset and ongoing equal governance;
  2. Clear-cut, full protection of Indigenous Peoples and their rights, including the right to self-determination and the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), as put forward in UNDRIP, for which mining companies and States are both accountable;
  3. Evaluation of mining operations based on robust standards with comprehensive, detailed criteria based on best practices for upholding Indigenous Peoples’ rights, labor rights, worker health and safety, and human rights; ensuring responsible environmental safeguards to protect water, land, ecosystems, biodiversity, wildlife and health; and securing financial guarantees for safety, closure and reclamation;
  4. A design that fosters and maintains continuous progress, disclosure, and transparency of activities by participating companies;
  5. Strong mechanisms to ensure audit robustness and credibility, including requirements for on-the-ground audits, independence of audit firms, financial separation between audit firm and mining company, auditor training, public publication of detailed audit results, quality audits with sufficient time to interview workers and rights holders, encouraging their participation through independent outreach by the auditors, and time-bound corrective action plans based on audit results that are informed by rights holders; and
  6. Robust, accessible and safe grievance mechanisms for rights holders to report and remedy harm, and for those to be managed independently

There are existing standards, notably IRMA, that meet many of these criteria.

The participating schemes in the Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative have so far failed to meet many of these criteria. Notably, it is not co-created between business and rights holders. Instead, it merges existing schemes, developed and led by industry, where evaluations have repeatedly demonstrated an absence of multistakeholder shared co-governance, divergences in assessment quality, and dearth of transparency..."

"In your response to our September 2023 letter, you acknowledged that this approach ‘results in an inherent asymmetry.’ The proposed ongoing consultation of Industry and Stakeholder Advisory Groups—which organizations from civil society, labor and private sector have exited over legitimacy concerns—and public comment opportunities on the draft Standard are insufficient to address this fundamental misalignment..."

"We believe this process to be deeply problematic and are concerned that it runs the risk of creating a race to the bottom at a time when the mining sector so urgently needs to make significant improvements to its social and environmental performance. We request your organizations and those associated with the process to evaluate whether the Consolidated Standard effort is fit for purpose as a system that drives improvements in more responsible mining practices. We request a response from your groups on the content of this letter and welcome the opportunity for dialogue on the serious concerns raised in it..."

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