UNEP produces impartial assessments, data and knowledge on the environmental threats and impacts of the extractive industry.
Environmental Assessments
To effectively address environmental challenges, they must be well understood. Extractive industries can be responsible for significant greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, arising from energy-intensive mining and processing operations, poor tailings management and weak environmental governance. Environmental assessments can provide scientific data that accurately capture the environmental impact of extractive industries at different stages of the value chain. This transparency can build trust, empower stakeholders to sound the alarm on environmental harm and better implement the environmental dimension of sustainable development through governance and planning.
Given the carbon-intensive nature of extractives, and consequently, their pivotal role in the energy transition, forecasting for climate risk remains pivotal for investors, banks and insurers, empowering them to manage their risks and meet their net-zero commitments. UNEP-FI recently published a briefing note on ‘Climate Risk in the Metals and Mining Sector’, which explores the potential impacts of climate change on these sectors, providing a solid basis for planning and decision-making.
Natural resources governance
The International Resource Panel conducts research to advise policymakers, industry and communities on how to improve mineral resource management. Their most recent report, “Mineral Resource Governance in the 21st Century” points to the enormous potential of the mining sector, if managed correctly, to advance sustainable development, particularly in low-income countries. The Global Resources Outlook 2024 looks at current consumption patterns and strategizes ways to make natural resources go further to meet human needs within planetary boundaries.
GEO-7
The seventh Global Environment Outlook (GEO-7), UNEP’s flagship environmental assessment, will look at resource extraction as a major driver of environmental change, particularly its effects on biodiversity loss and pollution. Changes in patterns of resource extraction, and particularly in the case of critical minerals, is examined as one of the main solutions pathways in GEO-7 to help with the transformation of the global energy system and also to build a fully circular economy by 2050. This report will highlight practical steps and policies that countries can implement to truly transform the global energy system, the global food system and the current linear economic model. GEO-7 will be launched in 2025 at UNEA 7.
Transparency and monitoring
By providing clear, robust data on extractive activities, transparency can build trust, credibility and accountability among all involved.
Through the International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO), UNEP provides open, reliable, and actionable data on methane emissions to drive transparency and enable governments, companies, and other stakeholders to take mitigation action. It does so by integrating data from its global series of Methane Science Studies, satellites via the Methane Alert and Response System (MARS), rigorous industry reporting via the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0 (OGMP 2.0), and from national emissions inventories.
Improving standards
The UNEP-led, GEF-funded planetGOLD programme works in partnership with governments, the private sector, and ASGM communities to make small-scale gold mining safer, cleaner, and more profitable. Learn more here.
Sand
Sand plays a strategic role in delivering ecosystem services and vital infrastructure for economic development, providing livelihoods within communities, and maintaining biodiversity. “Sand and Sustainability: 10 Strategic Recommendations to Avert a Crisis”, published in 2022, brings attention to the world’s most commonly used solid, material at 50 billion tonnes per year. The Global Sand Observatory is a UNEP/GRID-Geneva initiative that tracks and monitors dredging and extraction of sand, clay, silt, gravel, and rock in the world’s marine environment, aimed at developing knowledge and providing decision making support on the sustainability issue of sand extraction and use. Find out more about the Marine Sand Watch here.
Tailings Monitoring
UNEP works with GRID-Arendal on the Global Tailings Portal. This portal brings together all of the disclosures that mining companies have made about their tailings storage facilities. It gives communities, investors, regulators and the media unprecedented access to information about mine waste.
In addition, UNEP, together with Finnish Geological Survey (GTK) developed a report on knowledge gaps related to environmental aspects of tailings management. The report considers the regulatory, social and operational dimensions of the environmental aspects of tailings management for both large-scale and artisanal mining, including chronic impacts of the prolonged storage of tailings. UNEP has launched guidelines as well on the management of mercury rich artisanal and small-scale gold mining tailings -which support the Parties in meeting their obligations under the Minamata Convention on Mercury.
