Introduction
The data displayed on the Material Insights platform is developed using a structured methodology designed by TDi Sustainability. TDi’s analysis methodology is adapted from the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2011) and Mitchell, Agle, and Woods’ 1997 theory of stakeholder salience. TDi’s team of skilled mining and minerals supply chain analysts conduct the analysis, assisted by digital and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to enhance the thoroughness of the analysis.
Using TDI’s AI-enabled Search360 web search tool, TDi first collects information on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues relevant to mineral and metal raw material supply chains.
The ESG issues have been selected for their prevalence in these supply chains, and categorised in line with the definitions in RMI’s standards. The ESG issues are split into sub-issues, called ESG indicators, that measure the state of an issue.
ESG Issues
| Category | Issue | Indicators |
|---|---|---|
| Environmental | Biodiversity, Protected Areas, & Productive Land | Biodiversity loss Threat to the integrity of protected areas and areas of high biodiversity value Habitat loss |
| Deforestation and Forest Degradation | Deforestation | |
| Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Energy and Climate Action | Strength of association with greenhouse gas emissions | |
| Mismanagement of hazardous substances | Uncontrolled disposal of hazardous substances Uncontrolled movement of hazardous substances |
|
| Physical Instability, Soil Erosion and Land Degradation | Habitat fragmentation Land degradation Loss of ecological function |
|
| Pollution | Air pollution Soil pollution Water pollution |
|
| Tailings breaches | Tailings breaches | |
| Threat to water balance | Water depletion Water flow change Water stress |
|
| Governance | Business Ethics | Bribery to conceal or disguise the origin of minerals, or to misrepresent taxes, fees and royalties paid to governments Forms of corruption not covered by OECD DDG Annex II, including financial crime Illicit financial flows Fraudulent misrepresentation of the origin of minerals (including smuggling) |
| Legal and Transparent Tax Paying | Non-payment of taxes, fees and royalties due to governments | |
| Legal Compliance | Fines and convictions Illegal operations |
|
| Money laundering | Money laundering | |
| Social | Child labour | Child labour other than WFCL The worst forms of child labour (ILO convention 182) |
| Community Health, Safety, and Development | Disease prevalence in affected communities Non-violent disputes or protests |
|
| Cultural Heritage | Community cultural heritage violations | |
| Employment Terms | Discrimination Non-conformance with access to adequate housing Non-conformance with fair wages Non-conformance with reasonable working hours Non-conformance with written contracts Workplace harassment |
|
| Forced Labour and Human Trafficking | Bonded / debt labour Forced or compulsory labour Human trafficking Modern slavery |
|
| Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining | Freedom of association/collective bargaining violations | |
| Land Acquisition and Resettlement | Community land and resource rights violations Economic displacement Involuntary resettlement |
|
| Rights of Indigenous Peoples | FPIC violations Indigenous Peoples cultural heritage violations |
|
| Serious human rights abuses | Gross human rights violations (against workers and community members) War crimes or other serious violations of international humanitarian law, crimes against humanity or genocide |
|
| Support to armed groups | Direct or indirect support to non-state armed groups | |
| Use of Public or Private Security Forces | Failure of public or private security forces to uphold the VPSHR (toward workers and community members) Direct or indirect support to security forces illegally involved in mineral supply chains (OECD DDG Annex II.5) |
|
| OHS | Occupational health and safety | Occupational diseases Workplace accidents, injuries and fatalities |
Each ESG issue is graded for the significance of its association with a raw material’s production and processing in order to enable objective comparison between materials. In the case of the recycled material profiles, the data collected specifically concerns pre- and post-consumer recycling stages of the supply chain.
Public issue reports are associated in TDi’s methodology with specific materials and ESG issues, and – as relevant – countries, creating a comprehensive database.
Data sources
Following the methodology, TDi’s analysts review issues originating from two data sources:
- Public reports
- Authoritative literature
“Public reports” refer to ESG allegations reported in association with a material from sources such as news articles, civil society reports, academic and peer-reviewed research articles.
“Authoritative literature” refers to a designated set of information sources with strong, widely accepted legitimacy in the minerals and metals sector. Examples include literature published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Energy Agency, the United States Geological Survey, the European Union Responsible Minerals Information System, and other similar sources.
Analysis
Following a thorough data scrape to turn up individual public reports and authoritative literature results, TDi carries out a structured analysis to score each data source according to three factors: gravity, evidentiality, and reach.
Gravity refers to the seriousness of the effect or impact of a unique incident that is the subject of a public issue report. Two factors comprise the gravity of an issue:
- The scale of the impact, which can be a spatial scale (i.e., its geographical spread), or the number of people or non-human individuals impacted, or a combination of both
- The permanence of the impact
| Impact Scale Rating | Short term (1) | Medium term (2) | Long term (3) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Very serious (3) | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Serious (2) | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Somewhat serious (1) | 1 | 1 | 2 |
Evidentiality measures the extent to which factual evidence has been presented to support an allegation in a report. The methodology applies a differentiated score to public issue reports based on their evidentiality.
| Score | Evidentiality description |
|---|---|
| 1 | Vague or general allegations or claims lacking specific detail, direct/indirect accounts of events, verification and references to source information. |
| 2 | Evidence is presented, but the evidence does not conclusively support the assertion of an issue, and the source of information has not been triangulated/verified. Evidence is limited to testimony by allegedly affected individuals and secondary reporting from other sources. |
| 3 | Direct evidence has been presented that strongly supports the assertion of an issue, and the source of information is conclusive and has been triangulated. |
Reach, finally, is the measure of the publication type and its influence among stakeholders, translating into the traction of the public report.
Reach is not only defined by the number of people who are likely to encounter the news (i.e. the readership of the publisher) but also by the influence of the publisher. TDi’s Search360 tool returns public reports published by sources ranging from blogs and social media to peer reviewed journals and government reports. The reach factor applies a differentiated score to measure the overall impact of a report based on its uptake by publisher and publication type. For example, peer reviewed academic articles will have a high reach due to their influence, and despite potentially being only accessed by few readers.
Results: Scoring and rating ESG issues
Finally, TDi’s analysts apply a scoring per public issue report based on a 1-3 rating of the gravity, evidentiality, and reach factors. The combined score is used to calculate a final score determination per report.
The rating of each ESG issue is then calculated using a standardised risk pyramid approach to determine the thresholds. At the end of this process, each numerical score is translated into a grade of very low, low, moderate, high, or very high, based on the overall distribution of scores in the dataset. From this analysis, the result is a characterisation of the relative strength of association between a given material and ESG issue.
Data displayed on Material Insights is quality controlled by TDi Sustainability, with input from the Responsible Minerals Initiative and from industry experts for each specific material.
Limitations
The rating for each ESG issue category is based on published reports relating to the supply chain of the material, according to English-language reporting since 1 January 2017. As a result, there may be gaps in data collected, including from non-English language reports. Further, the data is based on allegations contained in public reports, rather than established fact. The actual impacts of any given issue can therefore be more or less severe than reported.
The date of the most recent data update is featured on each material page.