Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative

The Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative (CMSI) is a collaboration between The Copper MarkICMMMining Association of Canada (MAC) and World Gold Council (WGC) to consolidate our different responsible mining standards into one global standard and multi-stakeholder oversight system.

The growing demand for responsibly sourced metals and minerals has led to a proliferation of standards that help companies demonstrate their commitment to responsible practices. However, this has also led to a complex and sometimes confusing landscape of standards for customers, communities, investors and other stakeholders.

Our vision is for a sustainable society, enabled by the responsible production, sourcing, and recycling of metals and minerals. Through this Initiative, we are aiming to simplify the current mining standards landscape and promote continual improvement of environmental, social and governance practices along individual metals’ and minerals value chains.

Our aim is for the Standard to be adopted by a wide range of mining companies – large and small, across all commodities and locations – to drive performance improvement at scale. It will be applicable to any facility, anywhere in the world that is committed to responsible practices.

Once finalised, the Standard is expected to be used by existing members of ICMM, World Gold Council and Mining Association of Canada, and participants of The Copper Mark. This broad adoption would give the Standard the widest coverage of any voluntary mining standard to date with implementation anticipated to include almost 100 mining companies across approximately 600 facilities in around 60 countries.

An independent entity will oversee the further development, promotion and maintenance of the Standard, implement the related assurance process and manage a platform for public disclosure of associated information. This entity will be governed by a diverse, independent Board with equal participation of companies and individuals from stakeholder and rightsholder groups across the mining industry and wider value chain.

Guided by ISEAL’s Codes of Good Practice, the draft Standard, governance model, assurance process, reporting and claims policy will be shared online for two rounds of public consultation. The first consultation is open now and will last for 60 days, closing on 16 December. There will be a second shorter period of consultation in 2025.

We’re interested in the views of a broad range of interested stakeholders to make this standard better. The consultation is available online in Arabic, English, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Spanish.