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Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI) Risk Readiness Assessment (RRA)

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:

The purpose of this and other equivalency benchmarks is to:

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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 Minerals Initiative (RMI) Risk Readiness Assessment (RRA) and the Copper Mark

The Responsible Minerals Initiative's (RMI) Risk Readiness Assessment (RRA) is a self-assessment and self-reporting tool for minerals and metals producers and processors to communicate their environmental, social and governance practices and performance. Its main objective is to promote a common understanding of good practices and a means to consistently assess risks and actions to improve performance in mineral supply chains. The RRA condenses over 50 international standards and guidelines into 32 issue areas and provides means for companies to complete self-assessments of their performance and provide evidence to substantiate their assessment.

The Copper Mark is an assurance framework to demonstrate the copper industry’s responsible production practices and industry contribution to the United Nations SDGs. The Copper Mark criteria for responsible production are the requirements defined in the Risk Readiness Assessment, including the criteria guide which provides a description of the performance determination and means of verification for each issue area.

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 RRA Norms covers the same scope of activities and intended outcomes for each of the performance expectations 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.

Guidance documents, such as the Copper Mark Criteria Guide were consulted and referenced, where relevant, to clarify definitions and/or the types of evidence required to demonstrate conformance with the expectations in the RRA Norms but were not considered to be elaborating on or establishing additional normative requirements beyond the language contained in the RRA Norms.

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 RRA Norms and could inform joint validation for both schemes (recognising that in all cases, users should refer to the ICMM Validation Guidance and RMI RRA methodology.

For ICMM member assets which have undergone third party validation through the Copper Mark in the last three years, ICMM will ‘recognise’ this validation, so assets do not need to repeat the validation for those requirements deemed equivalent in this table, for which the asset has already demonstrated conformance using the Copper Mark’s assessment process.

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 RRA Norm. In the equivalency column of ICMM’s self-assessment form the asset can indicate whether the requirements of the Copper Mark ‘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 RRA Norms as listed in this table for that performance expectation. If the performance expectation is ‘partially met’ by the RRA Norm’s requirements, the highlighted text and notes in the main benchmark table will say what additional evidence is needed to meet the performance expectation.

The Copper Mark equally recognises third party validations against the ICMM’s Mining Principles in its assurance process. For details on the evidence required, assets are required to consult the joint RRA-Copper Mark Equivalency Matrix and contact the Copper Mark.