| Insight
implementation should set up a multidisciplinary team within its organisation to ensure they have the right skill sets and departments speaking to one another. He said this paid enormous dividends for companies that did this this early on.
With member ICMM companies having in the region of 900 TSFs between them, and with this first tranche only covering 240 of those, Davis admitted that “there’s still quite a long way to go”. “We need to remain focused in a laser like manner on implementation and learning lessons,” he commented. Adam Matthews from the Church of England Pensions Board acknowledged the challenges of interpreting the standard and said that as judgements do have to be made it “underlines the need for cross-industry dialogue but equally informed with the independence of an institute”. In January 2023 UNEP and the Church of
England Pensions Board (representing) announced the formation of an independent Global Tailings Management Institute (GTMI) aimed at driving mining industry safety standards. Its core function is to oversee the implementation of, and conformance with the GISTM. ICMM has agreed to become a founding partner and scoping is underway to find a country host partner with tailings facilities.
Robust engagement Following the first disclosures from ICMM member
companies on their progress towards conformance with the GISTM, investors were encouraged to engage systemically with the mining sector (beyond ICMM member companies) on the application of the standard. In January 2024, the Church of England Pensions
Board announced that 77 major publicly listed mining firms, representing over half of the mining sector (by market capitalisation), are committed to implement the GISTM. This number includes 24 ICMM member companies (previously 25) which committed to implementing the standard when it was launched in August 2020.
In addition a further 36 companies are either committed to reviewing the GISTM with a view to implementing it or are implementing the Mining Association of Canada’s Towards Sustainable Mining Standard. Taken together these 113 companies represent just over 64% of the market by capitalisation of all listed mining companies, while those committed to the GISTM are almost 52% of the market. And this
leaves 126 smaller mining companies who have yet to confirm if they will adopt the GISTM. Adam Matthews from the Church of England Pensions Board said: “We encourage investors to be in contact with companies they have holdings in that are amongst the 126 companies who haven’t issued a formal response to the standard, and encourage them to make a commitment and clarity around the time frame in terms of their intention to implement.” Matthews encouraged robust engagement with these 126 companies and wanted to ask colleagues in the banking and insurance sectors what their expectations are in the provision of lending and insurance. “This is a clear present risk we’re trying to address
here and in relation to these126 companies, the more messages that finance as a whole is able to relay about the importance of addressing it, the better,” he said. The list of non-responding companies is now publicly available and will be update monthly on the Church of England’s website. Those that have made commitments will be tracked as to when they will seek to conform to the standard. Reflecting on the progress made so far, John Howchin, who is also the Global Ambassador for the Global Tailings Management Institute, spoke about the tremendous effort undertaken in a collaborative manner which demonstrates “what can be done when we all pull together and address issues in a hands-on way”.
Above: Protesting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil during February 2019 after the Brumadinho dam disaster © Rodrigo S Coelho /
Shutterstock.com
Global TSF Registry The creation of a global tailings storage registry is also underway. Working alongside ICOLD, a comprehensive publicly available inventory of TSFs is being developed. A launch date of September 2024 is anticipated and so far, more tailings facilities have been found and collated than managed before. This is anticipated as being the most comprehensive registry available, enabling all sorts of actors such as investors, civil society, and academics to investigate and address risk side of things. As of January 2024, the Global TSF Registry encompassed 73 countries and contained 14,144 TSFs
of which 12,767 are geo-located (20,822 TSFs have been identified in total but some disclosures are confidential). It has also been updated with 2023 company disclosures for Very high and Extreme classifications of TSFs. To give a sense of scale of the issue, a conservative estimate on the size of tailings in active, inactive and closed facilities worldwide is about 217km3 – equal to about 81 Vatican Cities piled up to just about the height of Mount Kilimanjaro, a significant volume of waste that would weigh about 282 billion tonnes.
References
All information for this article was obtained from the Investor Mining and Tailings Safety Initiative Roundtable. 24 January 2024.
https://www.churchofengland. org/about/leadership-and- governance/church-england- pensions-board/pensions- board-investments/investor-1
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