From site to landscape – how the mining sector can scale up nature conservation

There is a growing recognition across the mining sector that protection of nature can’t stop at the site fence. Industry guidance, emerging regulatory requirements, and companies’ own ‘nature-positive’ commitments are all shifting the focus towards acting at the landscape scale, as a necessary condition of nature recovery. 

But companies are generally less experienced in navigating landscape-scale conservation than in addressing their impacts at the site level. Expectations are often unclear, and what constitutes credible action is still evolving. Mechanisms for monitoring outcomes are still developing, and responsibility for delivering results often needs to be shared among many actors within a landscape. As a result, companies face greater uncertainty, and a higher risk of poor outcomes or accusations of greenwashing. 

To explore these issues, we are working with the Nature Positive Landscapes Initiative (NPLI), a convening and enabling organisation that brings stakeholders together to define, clarify, and test the transformational approaches industry requires to contribute to the global goal of nature positive. Following initial guidance from NPLI making the case for a nature-positive mining sector, we have worked with the initiative to produce a paper on landscape-scale conservation in the mining sector.  

Looking beyond the mine site – the case for landscape action 

Many mining companies recognise the importance of addressing their impacts on nature and reducing the associated risks they face. Practice in managing site-level impacts in the sector is advanced. That practice is now being extended to the landscape level: for example, the nature position statement from industry sustainability body the ICMM contains commitments to identify and address “shared landscape-scale material risks and opportunities”. 

There is a clear case for such commitments. Compared with immediate site-level activity, landscape-level action has the potential to better address the impacts companies have on nature, thus helping to address reputational and regulatory risks. Societal and regulatory expectations around what nature positive means extend further than simply addressing site-level impacts. 

In addition, mining operations often depend on healthy landscape-scale ecological conditions, including stable hydrological regimes and seed supply for mine site rehabilitation.  

What counts as landscape-level action?  

Once the business case is understood and accepted, companies need to decide on what their landscape-level action looks like. Our paper with NPLI suggests:   

• Actions should go beyond existing site-level commitments (including commitments to rehabilitate the site). Landscape actions are not a ‘rebranding’ of impact compensation measures, such as the use of offsets.
• Actions taken should deliver measurable benefits, grounded in evidence and responsive to updated information about their performance.
• The type and scale of outcomes for nature should be aligned with landscape-scale objectives and priorities for conservation – and, where feasible, with global goals.  

Actions that address landscape-level pressures driving biodiversity decline may be entirely new or may extend existing site-level initiatives. In some cases, companies may also pursue opportunity-driven investments – for example supporting the creation or expansion of protected areas – that improve the overall state of nature in the landscape. 

Demonstrating outcomes  

The credibility of these efforts for the companies involved depends upon them resulting in positive outcomes at the landscape scale that are both measurable and can be attributed to each companies’ efforts. That calculation depends on three elements.  

The first is a clear landscape boundary, in line with the scale of key ecological processes and pressures.  

The second is appropriate priorities and targets, ideally based on robust existing plans, such as those linked to National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans. In some cases, global goals such as the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) target to restore 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030 can also be translated to the landscape scale, although this can be challenging in practice. 

The third element is to clearly define the responsibility for contributing to and delivering those outcomes. In mining landscapes, relevant stakeholders may include mining companies, governments, land managers, civil society organisations, and value-chain actors such as financiers and downstream purchasers. Given the number of actors involved, collaboration is essential and should begin early.  

Challenges companies face 

Addressing these three elements will help ensure that companies can be confident that they have made a fair and credible contribution to landscape-level conservation outcomes and can stand behind related claims.  

But considerable uncertainties still exist, with a lack of clear guidance and detailed specifications for credible landscape action making companies reluctant to act.  

In our paper with NPLI, we have set out an agenda to put in place the guidance needed for mining companies, and other sectors with significant impacts on biodiversity, to take landscape-scale conservation action. Guidance is needed to:   

• Translate global biodiversity goals into landscape-scale actions. Differing ecological conditions and pressures on landscapes makes this challenging. Data constraints create further complexity. There is a need for clearer ways to translate and compare contributions across actors and sectors, to enable corporate landscape action to be aggregated as contributions towards the GBF.
• Agree principles for making claims regarding landscape outcomes. Large numbers of actors are responsible for outcomes at the landscape level. Clear distinctions need to be made regarding participation, action, and outcomes. There is a need for better methods to link observed landscape change to specific actions and actors.
• Advance monitoring systems. To demonstrate positive outcomes at landscape scale, monitoring systems should be sensitive to change, fit for context, and supported by governance arrangements for data sharing. There is currently limited consensus on which indicators and institutional arrangements are most appropriate for tracking landscape-level change.
• Establish appropriate governance arrangements. Landscape initiatives often involve multiple actors, including financiers and downstream consumers, and may operate in land- or seascapes companies do not directly control. More work is needed to develop effective governance models for these complex collaborative processes. 

Next steps – for companies and researchers  

A two-pronged approach is needed to make progress on how the mining sector advances landscape-level conservation.  

First, mining companies need to participate in pilots of coordinated conservation programmes. Well-designed pilots offer an efficient way to test frameworks and approaches and will generate vital lessons in working with a range of stakeholders across varying ecological conditions.   

At the same time, more work is needed at the science and policy levels in developing the methodological approaches, industry standards, and regulatory frameworks to standardise and systemise landscape-level conservation action.  

Without such guidance, there is a risk that companies in the mining sector and beyond will be reluctant to act, in case they find themselves accused of greenwashing.  

At The Biodiversity Consultancy, we are working on both levels, combining scientific and policy development expertise with deep sectoral expertise. To find out more about how we can help or to contribute to addressing these systemic challenges, email Laura Sonter, Director – Science & Policy: laura.sonter@thebiodiversityconsultancy.com  

Category: Insight