Regeneration & Resilience

New Guide Aims to Help Mining Industry Reverse Its Impacts on Biodiversity

ICMM’s ‘Good Practice Guide’ outlines a seven-step process — applicable at each stage of the mining lifecycle — to help companies establish baseline assessments, apply the mitigation hierarchy and transparently disclose progress towards their no-net-loss, or net-gain, goal.

Published 21 hours ago | About a 5 minute read

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The International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) — a CEO-led leadership organization focused on improving sustainable development in the mining and metals industries — has published new guidance that aims to help mining and metals companies achieve and maintain no net loss of biodiversity at their operations, and ultimately strive for net gain of biodiversity, as they work towards a nature-positive future.

According to WWF’s 2024 Living Planet Report, wildlife populations have seen a 73 percent average decline from 1970 through 2020 — largely driven by climate change, deforestation, habitat loss, hunting, overfishing and other environmental impacts of food production and other resource-intensive industries. While the global economy is dependent on the essential services provided by healthy ecosystems — including reliable access to clean water, erosion prevention, flood control, carbon sequestration and more — mining operations often intersect with areas of high biodiversity value and have also historically played a significant role in environmental degradation. Therefore, protecting and conserving nature is not just a responsibility — it is a business imperative.

Achieving No Net Loss or Net Gain of Biodiversity: Good Practice Guide outlines a seven-step process — applicable at each stage of the mining lifecycle from a project’s design to post-closure and production — to help companies establish baseline assessments, apply the mitigation hierarchy and transparently disclose progress towards their no-net-loss, or net-gain, goal. It is a technical resource designed for practitioners at site level and corporate professionals overseeing sustainability and biodiversity strategies to help scale and accelerate the implementation of these approaches across the industry.

Recent research has driven home the interconnectedness of our most pressing global threats — climate change, water and food insecurity, health risks and biodiversity loss — and the need to address them concurrently to make the headway necessary to ensure a livable future. Nature and biodiversity loss pose a significant risk to the wellbeing and livelihoods of people, ecosystems and our global economy — but slow widespread adoption of natural capital accounting has prevented most industries from understanding the significance of their natural collateral damage. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s COP15 summit in 2022 spotlighted the issue; and the resulting Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and a slew of new tools, frameworks and market-based mechanisms have spurred many companies and governments into action to figure out how to do their part to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, aiming for a nature-positive world by 2050. But concerted efforts remain siloed and piecemeal, further delaying meaningful progress.

Disrupting and destroying biodiversity is inherent in the mining industry, in particular. In 2023, a ‘regenerative remining’ initiative backed by Apple, Mejuri and Rio Tinto launched to reverse the environmental harm caused by past mining and support biodiversity and habitat rehabilitation at mine sites; but the broader industry has yet to get involved.

For its part, ICMM — whose members include over 20 of the world’s largest mining companies, representing a third of the global mining and metals industry — recognizes that protecting and restoring biodiversity at mining and metals operations is essential for the industry’s longevity, as well as its ability to contribute to the global goal of halting and reversing nature loss outlined in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework; “but we must go further,” asserts Hayley Zipp, ICMM’s Environment Director. “Building a nature-positive future requires multi-stakeholder collaboration, innovation and accountability. That’s why our members have committed to taking nature action across the value chains, landscapes and systems we operate in. We urge companies across the industry — and those managing significant land areas in other sectors — to take the lead in making commitments that help protect and restore nature for the benefit of all.”

Now, ICMM’s guidance builds on decades of experience and lessons learned by the organization’s members in rehabilitation, restoration and no-net-loss strategies. By integrating real-world examples and global insights, the guidance can help mining and metals companies — regardless of their size, maturity level or location — ensure their operations pose no threat to biodiversity.

The new guide aims to help ICMM members achieve their direct operation commitments set out in ICMM’s Position Statement: Nature. Guided by COP15’s Global Biodiversity Framework and shaped by leaders from across industry, civil society, Indigenous Peoples groups and finance, the Position Statement signifies a collective promise to contribute to a nature-positive future across four areas of influence: direct operations, value chains, landscapes and systems transformation. Commitment 1.3 of the Position Statement requires achieving no net loss or net gain of biodiversity by closure for all existing mining operations from a 2020 baseline or earlier, and for all new operations and significant expansions against a pre-operation or pre-expansion baseline, respectively.

“Achieving no net loss or net gain is not the endpoint; it is a milestone on the path to a regenerative relationship with nature,” says ICMM President and CEO Rohitesh Dhawan. “I encourage all ICMM members and the wider mining and metals industry to embrace this guidance as a tool to deepen their commitments to nature. Together, let us demonstrate that responsible mining is not just possible but essential for achieving a resilient and equitable future for all.”