The Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) has published the second and revised draft of its Standard for Responsible Mining, which it released on Tuesday for public comment and a sixty-day review.The standard would form part of a multisector effort to certify the social and environmental performance of industrial-scale mine sites. This would be the first-ever global certification programme of its kind, planned to get under way later this year. The draft of revised standards reflected input from more than 1 400 points of comment contributed by over 70 organisations and individuals worldwide, including mining industry stakeholders and technical experts. It also included the results from two field tests conducted by the IRMA to substantiate some of the standards. The field tests comprised mine audits in the US and Zimbabwe, which took place in October, 2015 and March, 2016.
