The secretariat of The Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) has confirmed that the second draft of its outlines, which is entitled Mining Standards 2.0, will be delayed after receiving more than 2,500 points of comments from 82 organizations.
Following the release of a first draft of Standard 2.0 in October 2023 for a 90-day public consultation, the secretariat said the floor opened to feedback, which it has now tallied.
“Although we had first anticipated the release of a second draft as early as Q3 2024 for a 60-day public consultation, such release is now expected for March 2025; and subject to approval by the IRMA multi-stakeholder equally-governed Board of Directors,” IRMA said.
Why is the process taking longer than planned?
IRMA granted extensions to organizations that asked for more time during the first public consultation (up to March 2024) to ensure all could contribute.
“The quality and length of most contributions required a longer processing time from our team of subject matter experts,” the group said.
It added that, during and after the first public consultation, IRMA received requests for additional engagement, including calls and in-person meetings, from a number of organizations (across NGOs, Indigenous rights’ organizations, mining companies, government agencies, and other industry actors). IRMA responded by engaging in all requests; this engagement occurred mainly April-July 2024, but also continued through November 2024.
“This lengthened process delayed our ability to prepare updated material and questions for our Expert Working Groups,” officials added.
A new consolidated draft was then submitted to the IRMA board of directors on 1 November 2024 for a six-week review period, aiming for their approval before the end of 2024.
Board members from the mining and the NGO sectors requested additional discussions about, and work on, the following topics:
- Rationale for, and listing of, critical requirements;
- Upstream and downstream sustainability due diligence;
- Free, Prior, and Informed Consent of Indigenous Peoples;
- Tailings management, especially with regard to the GISTM standard;
- Water management;
- Biodiversity offsets;
- Carbon offsets; and
- Air quality and dust management.
Finally, the fact that IRMA finalized and launched the first official version of the IRMA Chain of Custody Standard (with its associated Assurance Manual, and Claims Procedure and Communications Policy) over the course of the three first quarters of 2024 consumed attention, discussion, and refining time from both the IRMA Secretariat and the IRMA Board.
What’s next?
IRMA said its second round of public consultation is coming up soon.
“The IRMA Board, supported by the IRMA Secretariat, is working to finalize the new draft for a 60-day consultation period. This is now expected for March-April (NOTE: the Board agreeing to release the Standard for consultation doesn’t constitute endorsement of everything in the Standard. It’s an invitation to the world to help further improve the new draft),” it said.
Additionally, there will be materials released in support of the second consultation. They include:
- A public report on the first consultation period;
- A fully detailed log of all the comments that were submitted (confidential contributions will be redacted), and the response from IRMA;
- The full draft Standard, that includes:
- For each chapter: summary of the changes since the 2023 first draft; details on feedback received and proposed decision for every consultation question.
- Applicability to respective development stages (exploration to permitting to operations) will be integrated within the design of the chapters.
- An updated glossary.
- Updated annexes (including environmental quality tables); and
- Comparative tables between IRMA Standard V1.0 and this second draft, highlighting substantial differences.
IRMA noted it is committed to again offer opportunities for feedback from all stakeholders and Indigenous rightsholders.
“We aspire to process all the comments, convene expert working groups, and meet requests for specific engagement, during Q2 and Q3 2025, so that a final Standard may be adopted as final by the IRMA Board before the end of 2025,” the secretariat said.
“We thank you all for your patience; we remain committed to working transparently on this updated IRMA Mining Standard that many are eager to use and implement.”
A schedule of the IRMA’s working groups can be found on the group’s web site at responsiblemining.net.
Source: IRMA