Global Guide: Extracting Good Practices

A Guide for Governments and Partners to Integrate Environment and Human Rights into the Governance of the Mining Sector

By Environmental Governance Programme (EGP)

The joint Swedish Environmental Protection Agency – UNDP Environmental Governance Programme (EGP) launched a flagship publication on Extracting Good Practices: A Guide for Governments and Partners to Integrate Environment and Human Rights into the Governance of the Mining Sector during the Stockholm Dialogue on the Nexus between Human Rights, Environmental Sustainability and Conflict Prevention.

This guide seeks to support governments and other stakeholders to better manage the environmental, social and human rights aspects of mining in a way that rebalances relations in favour of more just and sustainable outcomes that benefit the country and local communities, including women and children, now and in the future. This publication also supports government authorities to actively engage the affected public to participate in rulemaking, licensing, and monitoring of the mining sector.

Society is calling for a net positive contribution from the mining sector over the long term. In the interim, the protection of the environment and human rights should be core minimum goals for the governance of the sector.

The Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals provide an opportunity to re-evaluate mining governance within its broader context. The SDGs’ broader framework implies two important messages for the governance of the mining sector: (i) the importance of rebalancing – giving equal weight to the management of the environmental and social impacts of the sector as has been given to economic impacts in the past; and (ii) the importance of interlinkages – the inextricable links among all three dimensions points to the necessity, but also the effectiveness, of managing these impacts in a more integrated manner. Doing so will move the sector closer to the long-term vision of a net positive contribution.