World Gold Council's Responsible Gold Mining Principles (RGMPs)
ICMM’s Mining Principles are aligned to other responsible mining initiatives through a shared objective of improving environmental, social and governance practices at the operational level. However, there are points of difference between almost all standards and initiatives.
The equivalency benchmarks will be reviewed and updated on a periodic basis. In some cases, an update will be made out of sequence, for example where a standard undergoes a significant revision.
It is the responsibility of benchmark users to ensure they are checking the latest requirements of each standard, in case changes have been made which have not yet been reflected in the benchmarks.
Recent updates to the Mining Principles include:
- Climate Change Position Statement – updated October 2021
- Transparency of Mineral Revenues Position Statement – updated December 2021
The purpose of this and other equivalency benchmarks is to:
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Transparently demonstrate to customers, investors, and other interested parties the extent to which ICMM’s Mining Principles are equivalent to the requirements of other standards and initiatives.
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Avoid the risk of different interpretations of equivalency by stakeholders, by coming to mutual agreements between ICMM and the owners of other standards and initiatives.
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Enable all interested parties to have access to a mutually agreed equivalency assessment, that would enable efficient joint third-party assessments of implementation progress where appropriate.
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Facilitate cross-recognition of companies’ validation by other standards and initiatives where the validation process of the other scheme is equally credible and robust as ICMM’s Assurance and Validation Procedure, to avoid duplication of third-party assessment work.
The Responsible Gold Mining Principles
The Responsible Gold Mining Principles (RGMPs) is a framework that sets out clear expectations for consumers, investors and the downstream gold supply chain as to what constitutes responsible gold mining. The World Gold Council (WGC) has set out the principles that it believes address key environmental, social and governance issues for the gold mining sector. Companies implementing the RGMPs will be required to annually disclose their performance against the RGMPs and obtain external assurance from an independent assurance provider. Assurance is conducted at both corporate and site levels, with corporate assurance focusing on policies and systems and site-level assurance focusing on the implementation of the policies and systems.
Basis for Assessing Equivalency
The assessment of equivalency has been made based on whether or not a requirement, or a combination of requirements from the RGMPs covers the same scope of activities and intended outcomes for each of the performance expectation associated with ICMM’s Mining Principles, including the individual company member commitments contained within ICMM’s position statements. This can be the case even if there are minor differences in the detail or language used.
Using These Tables for Joint Implementation or Cross-Recognition
These tables can be used to inform what an asset will need to do in order to meet the requirements of both ICMM’s Mining Principles and the RGMPs and could inform joint validation for both schemes (recognising that in all cases, users should refer to the ICMM Validation Guidance and Guidance on Implementing and Assuring the RGMPs).
Alternatively, for ICMM members which have successfully conducted assurance against the RGMPs at an asset in the last three years using the RGMP Assurance Framework, ICMM will ‘recognise’ this validation, so an asset does not need to repeat the validation for those requirements deemed equivalent in this table, for which it has already demonstrated conformance under the RGMPs.
In this case, the asset could refer to this framework to complete its self-assessment and third-party validation for ICMM’s Mining Principles which provides the equivalency assessment outcome for each individual RGMP. In the equivalency column of ICMM’s self-assessment form the asset can indicate whether the requirements of this other scheme ‘partially meet’ or ‘meet’ (including ‘exceeds’) any given performance expectation. The asset must provide evidence that it is in conformance with the relevant requirements of the RGMPs (ie site assurance has been conducted against the RGMPs) as listed in this table for that performance expectation. If the performance expectation is 'partially met' by the RGMPs requirements, the highlighted text and notes in the main benchmark table will say what additional evidence is needed to meet the performance expectation.