The mining industry has no shortage of sustainability frameworks. What it lacks is alignment. Companies operate across jurisdictions with divergent disclosure rules, competing voluntary standards and growing scrutiny from investors, regulators and civil society.
Against that backdrop, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) introduced its first Mining Sector Standard – GRI 14 – in January, positioning it as a common reference point for reporting environmental and social impacts.
The ambition is straightforward: move the sector away from selective disclosure towards a more complete and decision-useful account of mining’s impacts. In practice, that means defining what should be reported, how it should be structured and, increasingly, where, including at the level of individual mine sites. The standard draws on established frameworks from multilateral institutions and industry bodies, but its relevance depends on whether companies treat it as more than a compliance exercise.
Mining Technology sat down with Gelkha Buitrago, mining lead at GRI, to find out more about how the standard was constructed, where industry resistance emerged during consultation and why site-level reporting has become a central feature. The conversation also examines whether GRI 14 is equipped to deal with a sector being reshaped by automation, electrification and digitalisation.
A recurring theme runs through the discussion: the balance between transparency and practicality. Operators argue that granular disclosure can expose commercially sensitive information or create asymmetries between jurisdictions. GRI’s position is that a multi-stakeholder process has already defined the boundary, and that what is considered sensitive today may become standard practice over time, as has happened in other sectors.
Ultimately, GRI 14 does not mandate operational change. It structures disclosure. However, Buitrago argues that visibility itself can act as a lever, forcing companies to interrogate their own impacts, benchmark against peers and respond to external scrutiny. Whether that process translates into materially different outcomes on the ground remains an open question – one the sector will now test in practice.
Alejandro Gonzalez (AG): GRI positions itself as a global benchmark for sustainability reporting, but there are currently regional disclosure regimes, competing frameworks and geopolitical divergence on what counts as responsible mining. So why should mining companies treat GRI 14 as authoritative rather than optional?
Gelkha Buitrago (GB): GRI 14: Mining Sector 2024 was developed building on authoritative and sector-specific frameworks from organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the UN Environment Porgramme and the World Bank, among others. Also, a robust and transparent multi-stakeholder process was followed to translate the principles of these authoritative sources into clear topics and disclosures.
This grounding in internationally recognised sources and public due process underpins its credibility as a global reporting benchmark for the sector.
While most major companies already publish sustainability reports, stakeholders remain concerned about companies ‘cherry picking’ – selecting favourable information rather than providing a complete picture. While many standards for responsible mining focus on specific commodities or stand-alone topics, GRI 14 sets out the mining sector’s most significant impacts and stakeholders’ expectations, offering a comprehensive framework that is aligned with the current disclosure landscape, and strengthens reporting quality and consistency across jurisdictions.
This is particularly relevant today. Organisations in the sector must navigate a complex and fragmented reporting landscape, shaped by varying expectations across jurisdictions and stakeholder groups. In this environment, using a globally recognised, impact-based framework provides a common reference point across jurisdictions, strengthening both credibility and comparability. The ability to respond to evolving requirements emerges therefore as a strategic necessity, and the GRI Standards give organisations a head start in this.
AG: Mining is politically sensitive, economically strategic and often contested. During consultation, where did you see the most tension? Were there areas where industry pushed back on the scope or depth of disclosure?
GB: The GRI Mining Standard guides organisations in identifying the topics that are material to their specific context. Depending on their activities, size, type and geographic location, different organisations may arrive at a different set of material topics. As a high-impact sector, mining is relatively mature in terms of corporate disclosure and a significant number of organisations already report on topics that could be considered sensitive.
During consultation, the most significant areas of tension concerned the level of detail required in disclosures, particularly at mine site level.
Introducing mine site reporting is one of the most important contributions of GRI 14, a very needed development to understand local impacts. It was the focus of many discussions and diverging stakeholders’ views, as some industry participants questioned how far disaggregation should go, and what information could reasonably be disclosed without creating operational or commercial risks.
To illustrate why this is the case, consider an organisation operating across multiple countries; an aggregated figure on total water withdrawal tells us very little on its own. To meaningfully assess the impact on water use, one would need to know the location of each mine and whether it sits in a water-stressed area, and how much water was withdrawn at each site, among other factors. GRI 14 includes a number of disclosures at the mine site level, with the aim of making reported information more decision-useful for investors, governments, civil society and other relevant actors.
Ultimately, the consultation process aimed to strike a balance between practical feasibility for companies and the need for meaningful, locally grounded transparency.
AG: Technology is transforming mining at speed. We are seeing autonomous haulage fleets, AI-based dispatch, digital twins, battery-electric trucks and remote operations centres running multiple sites from a single hub. Is GRI 14 built for that world?
GB: GRI 14 is designed to remain relevant in exactly that kind of evolving environment, because it focuses on wider impacts, rather than specific technologies. The current framework helps organisations to understand the impacts of these emerging technologies, whether these are impacts on water use and energy consumption due to the use of AI, impacts on workers’ employment due to automation practices, or impacts on local communities due to increased demand of critical minerals. A future GRI Standard on Digitalisation, currently under consideration, would complement the current suite, but organisations can already use GRI 14 to communicate the impacts of their use of emerging technologies.
AG: GRI encourages mine-site level disclosure, but operators often argue that granular reporting can be commercially sensitive. If one company discloses detailed site-level data but a competitor in another jurisdiction does not, does that create transparency asymmetry?
GB: The “line” is drawn through the public, multi-stakeholder due process that we mentioned before, which balances decision-useful transparency with what is feasible to disclose. GRI Sector Standards are developed with the active involvement of their industry, thus creating a level playing field for reporting.
The Sector Standard defines the most significant impacts that apply to the majority of mining companies. This helps create clarity around what should be disclosed, and makes it easier for stakeholders to assess both what is reported and what is not.
Returning to the example of site-level reporting, similar conversations have taken place in other sectors. In the textiles and apparel industry, for instance, the disclosure of supplier lists was once considered commercially sensitive, yet was also recognised as essential for understanding the local-level impacts of organizations' operations. Today, an increasing number of companies disclose this information as standard practice.
This suggests to us that what may initially be seen as sensitive business information can, over time, become accepted transparency practice as expectations converge.
While many topics in GRI 14 list site-level information as recommended reporting, for key topics it is already the norm; for example, in the management of tailings [Global Industry Standard for Tailings Management] and disclosing biodiversity impacts [GRI 101: Biodiversity 2024].
Finally, due diligence frameworks and regulations require companies to disclose detailed information on supply chain traceability, in which site-level data is critical. Over time, a similar convergence can be expected in the disclosure of site-level information across the other topics recommended by GRI 14.
AG: Electrification can reduce operational emissions at mine sites, while simultaneously strengthening the long-term viability of extracting and selling high-emission fuels. Does GRI 14 explicitly grapple with that tension?
GB: Carbon-intensive commodities must ultimately be phased out, but in the meantime, their operation and eventual closure need to be managed responsibly. Transparency plays a key role in ensuring this is done in a fair and equitable manner that supports a just transition, as this process can have significant implications for workers, communities and local economies. GRI 11 and GRI 12 – our standards for oil and gas and coal – address fossil fuels, making climate change the most prominent topic. Mining, however, is increasingly seen as central to the climate solution, shifting the emphasis toward ensuring that the rush to extract critical minerals does not result in excessive environmental and social harm.
GRI 14 solves this tension by bringing transparency to the forefront, requiring companies to disclose the environmental and social impacts associated with mining activities as demand for critical minerals grows.
This approach is reinforced by GRI’s broader climate-related standard: in 2025, we released GRI 102: Climate Change and GRI 103: Energy, which place the human impacts of climate change at the centre of reporting. They strengthen transparency around how companies manage climate-related impacts and plan the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Transparency therefore has a key role in ensuring that this transition is managed in a fair way that supports workers, communities and other affected stakeholders.
AG: Disclosure alone doesn’t change operational behaviour. If every major mining company reports fully in accordance with GRI 14, what changes on the ground? Is GRI 14 designed to transform mining practices or to make existing practices more visible?
GB: GRI is part of larger ecosystem and plays a unique role in the corporate reporting landscape by providing a common language and advocating for greater transparency and accountability regarding organisations’ impacts on the economy, the environment and people. GRI 14 is designed to make mining practices more visible, and experience increasingly shows that transparency of this kind can itself be a powerful driver of change across the sector.
This becomes visible in the reporting process itself: when organisations embark on their reporting journey, they also initiate an internal systemic change. They must fully understand the externalities of their operations and those of their business relationships, engage internally to collect data, aggregate, analyse and prioritize areas they will work on. They also need to consult externally with relevant stakeholders and internally with governance bodies to determine what to report on. There is growing evidence that sustainability disclosures lead to stronger risk management, greater operational efficiency, improved access to capital and enhanced regulatory readiness.
This process also enables companies to place their performance in a broader industry context. Organisations reporting with GRI 14 can benchmark their performance against industry peers, identify gaps in their practices and uncover opportunities for collective action at the sector level.
At the same time, the value of reporting extends beyond the companies themselves. When organisations report with GRI 14, a large and diverse set of stakeholders gains access to higher-quality information, enabling more informed assessments of companies performance. This allows them to meaningfully engage with organisations on both what is being reported and what is not.
Transparency appears therefore as one piece of a larger puzzle. GRI is part of a broader set of actors – regulators, civil society, investment institutions, rating agencies, among others – that, from different angles, seek to steer the sector towards more responsible practices. If every major mining company was to report fully in accordance with GRI 14, making existing practices more visible has the potential to fundamentally transform the sector.
