The Future of Materials Systems 2026

Benchmarking responsible mining standards Responsible mining standards have proliferated into a diverse array of initiatives, each with distinct scopes, whether commodity-specific, scale-specific or topic-specific.22 Voluntary environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards, due diligence guidelines, commodity-specific schemes, chain- of-custody systems, reporting frameworks and national mining codes co-exist across the sector, often addressing similar risks but applying different scopes, methodologies and assurance models. This diversity creates compliance challenges and makes it difficult for companies, investors and regulators to identify which standards are most relevant or credible for a given context. This can diminish their overall effectiveness and contribute to reporting fatigue. The burden falls most heavily on smaller firms, Indigenous Peoples’ organizations and producers in emerging economies with limited assessment capacity. This fragmentation of standards drives duplication and inefficiency, through overlapping audits, weak comparability of assurance signals for downstream actors, and limited alignment between private standards and public regulation. Example of ongoing cooperation: Consolidated Mining Standards Initiative BOX 4 The Consolidated Mining Standards Initiative (CMSI) is a collaborative effort involving mining companies, standards organizations, investors, civil society groups and international organizations, which aims to address the growing fragmentation of responsible mining standards. It responds to a shared recognition that the proliferation of voluntary frameworks has created duplication, raised compliance costs and reduced clarity for regulators and downstream actors. CMSI operates as a coordination platform rather than a new standard-setter. Participating organizations are working together to map and align a defined subset of globally used mine-site- level responsible mining standards that address environmental performance, social responsibility, human rights, labour conditions and governance. By fostering cooperation across institutions with different mandates and constituencies, CMSI demonstrates how the alignment of standards can reduce complexity, improve comparability and support more coherent and inclusive global materials governance, particularly for smaller operators and producers in emerging economies. Areas for further cooperation Design credible benchmarks to improve comparability, trust and usability across responsible mining standards.PRIORITY ACTION Consolidation efforts, including CMSI, represent an important step towards reducing duplication and improving clarity across responsible mining standards. However, consolidation efforts alone are unlikely to fully address the challenges of the complex, evolving nature of the current standards landscape. For example, there is scope for stronger international cooperation to boost comparability across standards that remain in use after consolidation. More consistent benchmarking between existing standards could help companies, investors and regulators better understand relative performance, credibility and assurance. In practice, this could involve assessing standards against a shared set of baseline performance dimensions, such as environmental management, human rights, governance, scope and assurance, using transparent criteria to highlight areas of equivalence, strengths and gaps (see Figure 11). This would complement consolidation efforts by improving coherence and comparability without requiring full alignment. Realising such an approach would depend upon cooperation among industry, standards bodies, civil society and intergovernmental organizations to develop a shared understanding of baseline criteria for credible responsible mining. Any such effort would need to be governed in a neutral, inclusive and transparent manner, avoid creating additional or duplicative standards, and be orientated towards supporting continuous improvement and potential regulatory uptake rather than acting as a one-off classification exercise. The Future of Materials Systems: Cooperation Opportunities in a Multipolar World 23