 Hello everyone and thank you for joining today's webinar. Before we get started we have a couple small housekeeping matters. I'd like to remind everyone that the Zoom Q&A feature is turned on so the audience please feel free to submit any questions you have through the Q&A feature and we'll try to take them towards the end. We will record this presentation this webinar and post that on the IA website afterwards and we will now go ahead and begin with our first speaker. We'll have a welcome from Luke LeBuff on behalf of the ESG Task Force of the IA's Critical Minerals Working Party. Luke is the Director of International Affairs and Trade Division for the Land and Minerals sector at Natural Resources Canada. Please go ahead Luke. Thank you Casey. I'm sure it's all news to many of you here today but it is worth repeating that the energy transition is highly minerals and metals intensive. This has generated a global rush to secure supply chains and to ensure that these supply chains are resilient to disruptions that could slow progress to meet net zero emission targets. At the same time this global surge in interest to secure supply chains for the energy transition has raised the profile of ESG characteristics tied to the global extractive sectors and related supply chains. Canada's own critical mineral strategy is underpinned by the importance of adhering to the highest ESG standards at all points of the supply chain. So we are very pleased to see momentum on this work continue to increase and we are very supportive of the work that the IA is doing in this area and of reports like the one that we will hear about today which really helps to drive this work forward. The report of the IA on critical mineral supply chains and ESG explores how the ESG impacts of mining and processing operations can limit the critical mineral supplies needed for clean energy transitions and outlines five key recommendations for policy makers to ensure that critical mineral supply chains are sustainable and responsible. It also includes deep ties into six priority areas that have important implications for supply including security, water, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, human rights, communities, and corruption. The report was released in mid-December alongside an update of the IA's critical minerals policy tracker which now includes over 200 new policies, laws, and regulations as well as a special focus on policies aimed at ESG issues. The IA Office of Legal Counsel will be guiding us through the key findings of the report and the updates of the tracker today. Following their presentation, we will hear from a panel of external partners to offer diverse perspectives on a variety of aspects of the report and they will share their thoughts on potential directions for future work by the IA on this topic. We will then finish with Q&A sessions from the floor. So, given that we have so much to discuss, let's jump right in. Without further ado, I will pass the floor back to you, Casey, and our colleagues from the IA Office of Legal Counsel. Thank you and have a great webinar. Thank you for those opening words, Luke. And as you noted, we'll now do a brief presentation introducing the IA's report on sustainable and responsible critical mineral supply chains and the critical minerals policy tracker, which were released last month. And following the presentation, as Luke mentioned, we'll have a panel discussion, so please submit any questions you have on both the presentation and the panel that we'll come to towards the end. And now we'll just share our slides, but in the meantime, just to introduce the presenters. So, I'm Casey Michaels in the IA's Office of Legal Counsel, and I'm joined by my colleagues, Joyce Ravocca and Alex Hagerty. And we'll also be joined by my colleague from the OECD, Louis Marchel, who will offer a perspective from the OECD as a contributor to this report. Next up. So, we've started this report, and the underlying question that this report is built on is the question of the connection between ESG sustainable and responsible supply chains and energy security and mineral security. So over time, we've started to see growing pressure to develop new mines and processing facilities and refinings and refineries to support the clean energy transition. And this brings increased pressure on the environment, workers, communities, indigenous people, and on society. Alongside efforts to reduce demand and increase circularity, which can have, which can reduce pressures for the need on primary supply, it's also imperative that the entire international community work to mitigate and minimize these harms and potential harms to people and the environment. And one of the things that we tried to do in this report is we've tried to delineate or really delve into the specific ways that these ESG issues and failings can lead to supply problems. So we've listed a few here on this slide. To begin with, they can serve to limit market access and create legal barriers when regulatory requirements cannot be met. So essentially reducing the amount of supply that can be available if there are limitations that require certain high-level ESG performance. They can also, ESG risks can discourage investment in new projects. They can also damage the reputation of companies whenever there are large incidents, which can deter both investors and buyers. ESG issues can also increase the likelihood of opposition from local communities and other stakeholders for particular projects that are going forward, which over time can pose a major issue for supply. And of course, there are acute supply disruptions that are associated with incidents. So for example, if a facility has to shut down due to environmental permit issues, or to an incident, a safety incident, that obviously has direct and immediate implications for supply availability. So altogether, these potential supply risks can also limit the ability of the market to scale up clean energy technologies at the rate and pace that's required to meet global climate goals. And therefore, limitations on ESG can directly impact energy security. I'll pause here just for a moment, because I think that Louis from the OECD wanted to add a point or two on this topic. Yeah, thank you very much, Casey. And thank you for inviting the OECD. These are really recommendations that we would fully share. And actually, focusing more specifically on some of the points that you have raised here, we are already facing some situations in the global markets where the lack of ability to secure the social assistance to operate is creating major disruptions. I don't need to elaborate too much on the situation of a couple of major mining investments in Latin America, and particularly in copper. We're also witnessing tensions in other supply chains. And a broader point, I think, that we are very keen to make here at the OECD is really to underline to what extent and increasingly the lack of ability to demonstrate responsible sourcing can actually create particularity. And we're seeing this at the moment in supply chains of minerals coming out of conflict-affected and high-risk areas, where this lack of transparency is actually deterring not necessarily investments, but buyers of those minerals. So the particularity can also come from this specific aspect. So we're extremely glad that the IEA has reached out to the OECD and a number of other organizations to make sure that all those perspectives were taken into consideration and factored in. I think that it's probably one of the most concerning aspects that we would foresee, the lack of social acceptance in OECD countries, as well as in non-OECD countries. And hopefully those recommendations that will be presented will help create that trust more broadly and globally to ensure that mining investments are accepted locally. Thank you, Louis. So this is really the backdrop for the report. So this context is the main cause for the entire energy community to take interest in minerals, ESG issues in mineral security. And on the next slide, we have in the report identified five high-level recommendations for policymakers that can help governments to take positive action, proactive action to reduce ESG risks. So the first is to ensure that legal and regulatory protections for the environment, workers, indigenous peoples, and communities are supported by sufficient means of implementation and enforcement regimes. I mean, really the first port of call on most ESG issues is what do the legal and regulatory protections already require and are they adequately enforced? And there's a lot that can be done to ensure that those legal systems are fit for purpose and are being actively used. The second recommendation is on public spending and on the way that governments use their various incentive mechanisms to encourage the development of better practices and incentivize good performance. This is very much embodied by a lot of the things that came out of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act. But at the same time, there are many governments across the world that we found in some of our work that are starting to use public spending to encourage improvements. That could be in the realm of research and development support, but also in developing other types of improving ESG standards in other ways. The third area is on strengthening the collection and reporting of granular and standardized data. One of the things that we discovered, one of the key findings of this report, is the relatively low level of data on most ESG issues. Some of them, particularly on the GHG side, are relatively well represented. But some of the other ones, we found it very difficult to get a snapshot exactly of how the industry is doing. And we think there's a lot that could be done to improve the quality of data to a better enable progress tracking. Fourth is on the point of transparency throughout the supply chain. This is really measures that ensure companies enhance traceability, undertake due diligence, and report publicly on risks and negation actions. Because ultimately, it's not enough that companies are undertaking the right measures. We also need to be able to demonstrate that so that purchasers and other players throughout the supply chain can see that. And finally, there's an important role for standards. And there's also an important role for policymakers to support the development of initiatives that allow companies and help companies demonstrate that their operations are sustainable and responsible. So there is a link to the transparency point here, but this is a distinct point in the way that there needs to be a common understanding as to what good ESG practice looks like. And I'll hand it back over to Louis briefly on these points as well. Thank you, Casey. Just to add a couple of thoughts to the points that you've just laid out. Looking at public spending, we also are mindful that this should also extend into public spending to support governance institutions in host countries and producing countries, because obviously, there's going to be a stark increase in the money investments in a number of developing countries that will not necessarily have the capacity to welcome those. So it's really important that we think about how collectively public spending and development assistance can be channeled to those countries. Of course, this will benefit those countries, but this will also benefit investors because they will be faced with civil servants that have the capacity to process their applications and to demonstrate that they actually understand and are able to monitor the development of the projects. Just looking at recommendation three and four, I mean, this comes down ultimately to a very important point that I already raised in the previous slide is the ability or collective ability to build trust around the mining sector and mineral supply chains in order to bring investors and companies and international buyers on board. One of the key obstacles to investment in trade and mineral resources in particular in high risk jurisdiction is precisely the lack of trust for a number of reasons. And so the points here is really to be able to demonstrate that it is actually possible to measure improvement over time of a number of key metrics that are really key in the mining sector. On point number four from the OCD standpoint, we would also like to stress again that of course, traceability is an important aspect, but it should not be confused with due diligence. Traceability supports due diligence. It's also supported by developing a number of developing technologies, but technology cannot be the panacea. And as we often put it, companies and stakeholders will always need boots on the ground to be able to monitor development of the working conditions of the minerals. This is really again something that we want to emphasize as well as the responsibility of companies. Ultimately, and that relates to point five. Industry initiatives are obviously very welcome. They can help share costs, they can help leverage commercial positions of a number of companies in mineral supply chains, but ultimately, it's really important that companies understand that they retain responsibility for the impact of their operations. One last point also on those industry initiatives that we actually tend to work a lot with. One key point is to what extent those initiatives are credible. This is work that is ongoing on the OCD secretariat along with other partners developing criterias for credibility of those industry initiatives and standards is really paramount for us. And we believe ultimately this will help stakeholders and the wider public opinion to make their own determination on the effectiveness of these industry initiatives. One final point for us. It's really important that everyone understands obviously ESG is of the utmost importance, but we need to have high ESG ambitions, but we also need to be able to have a roadmap for how we can achieve those ambitions. If expectations are set to high at the beginning, the investments will not flow in and companies and stakeholders will not be able to leverage those investments to improve the situation on the ground. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you, Louis, for those perspectives. We'll now go through the next few elements of the report. So what we did, we created, we developed these five key recommendations at the high level, and then we sought to apply them to specific ESG risks. And I'll now for the next slide, hand it over to my colleague, Alex, to take us through that. Yeah, so we focused on a couple of few areas that are important for, that have important implications for the security of supply. And these fall broadly into three buckets, environmental, social, and governance buckets. And just to say that we've chosen these risks through our conversations with people, they've been identified as important for supply security. But this isn't to say that there aren't other important risks that are also important for supply security and also just important for high ESG standards in general. Next slide, please. And so we've applied our five recommendations to each focus area, adjusting those recommendations to be more specifically applicable to each focus risk. This is just a snapshot of examples of how we've applied the recommendations to each focus risk across the recommendations. So for example, you can see for legal and regulatory protections, specifically for water, we recommend that where it doesn't already exist, policymakers should include targets for water quality, use and effluence that improve over time, as well as include do a review of how stringently those are implemented. And for our recommendation on public spending for the risk of GHG admissions, we recommend strategic investment decisions, which are tied to the reduction of emissions or energy use intensity. And if you look in the reports, I won't go over all of them because it's quite a lot, if you can imagine this whole table filled in, but you'll see each of our five recommendations applied to each key issue area. Next slide, please. And again, I won't go into depth into every focus area, but I do want to do a bit of a deep dive into one example focus area to provide a snapshot of our analysis. So as I mentioned before, we chose six key focus areas, one of which is biodiversity. Biodiversity can be impacted through mining and processing activities as they are often destructive to the surrounding ecosystem and require land use changes. So of course, this is dependent on the type of mine, the geological mineral source and the geographical context. And we can see that biodiversity is emerging as a very important contributor to supply risk. Already we can see that there are examples of biodiversity creating supply disruptions, as can be seen from these examples on the table. And as we develop more mines for the energy transition, this will be increasingly important, but data is largely lacking on this risk and how impactful it can be. One of the few analyses done at the moment is from SMP, which is this table in the top right, and it shows the portion of all mines in key biodiversity areas for transition risks in different countries. Next slide, please. And so how are companies performing when it comes to addressing and avoiding biodiversity impacts? From IEA analysis, current company reporting doesn't allow for an industry-wide assessment of the progress towards addressing and avoiding biodiversity risks, but from the data that we can obtain through public company reports, we can see that among the top 20 mining companies, or sorry, among the top 10 critical mineral companies, most nickel producers have announced a public commitment to follow a mitigation hierarchy approach, which is a way of addressing biodiversity risk compared with about half of the top 10 nickel, lithium, and cobalt companies. Though, of course, context is crucial for this risk, so it might just be the case that nickel operations are more likely to be located in high biodiversity areas, but even so, overall, only a quarter of these companies have no net loss or net positive impact commitments. And looking at company reported metrics, only a few, a select few of the top 20 major companies and critical minerals report on biodiversity metrics, and these often only cover land rehabilitation or land disturbed, although this is consistent with the global reporting initiatives, current standard on biodiversity, and this is in the process of being updated and published, so hopefully we will see more metrics reported on. And for land rehabilitated, we can see that it's remained mostly flat over the past few years, and that land rehabilitation per revenue decreased from 2020 to 2021. And notably, many companies didn't report any biodiversity metrics at all, and less than half of the companies assessed reported on land impacts, so there's definitely still room for improvement. Joyce, over to you. Thank you, Alex. In the report, we also looked at how voluntary standards and on policies treat each focus area, which I'll be discussing in the next few slides. First, we looked at the commitments in mine site level standards. You will see these on the slide, namely Coppermark International Council for Mining and Metals Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, or IRMA, and towards Sustainable Mining, TSM. To protect biodiversity in particular, most jurisdictions already legally prohibit mining in legally protected areas, so on that first level that you see there, all four standards already cover this and require this as a commitment to all their members, and it's the same for the second level that you see, which is requiring utilization of mitigation, hierarchy, like Alex mentioned. As for the third, until January of this year, the three standards, Coppermark, IRMA, and TSM, require this, and now ICMM requires it as well, to require a commitment to no net loss. And Coppermark and IRMA, uniquely to them, require their members to maintain benefits of ecosystem services, respect key biodiversity areas, and encourage their members to have a net positive impact for the mine site. And what does this mean for the security of supply? So we can see that consumer countries evaluating mineral imports can consider based on these standards and reporting on these standards, whether mining operations have taken steps to prevent any adverse impact, and also prevent supply cuts due to stoppages or even more stringent regulations, and they can assess risk per project accordingly. To conclude this slide, we found that there is a role for standards, and they help drive regulatory goals towards improved protection and mitigation of supply risks. So this brings us to regulations around the world, and our report does go through some regulations in each key area. And these are just a few sample regulations that we talk about in our report, and it's also found in our critical minerals policy tracker, which brings me to the next slide. Our critical minerals policy tracker was launched in 2022, and it has, and over, and in December 2023, we updated these, we updated these to have to include even more policies, generally focusing on encouraging sustainable and responsible practices. The policy tracker includes policies in these three key areas. The first is ensuring reliable and resilient supply. The second is incentivizing new supplies, and third is sustainable and responsible supply. So because of this report, we did have a lot more of the third in these policies in the tracker. And so for our update, we have a broader country scope. We now cover over 35 countries when in the past we had around 25, we have more than 500 new entries. And we have seen these general trends in recent policies on critical minerals. There are new strategic plans in mining. There are more sustainability due diligence laws that cover mining. There are more reforms of mining codes around the world, tax credit scheme, and cooperation, international cooperation agreements, and these include bilateral agreements as well between countries. So we'll send the link to our CMPT on the chat, and so that you can explore the data and policies more. And that concludes our presentation on the report. And the CMPT, I'll hand it over to UKP for the next part of our webinar. And thank you for taking us through some of those key points. I hope what you all got a picture from is that this report is quite rich. We touched on only biodiversity when there's actually six key topics we've dealt into. And I encourage everyone to take a look, and this is really meant to give you a bit of a flavor of what's in that report. We'll now turn to the remainder of this webinar. We will open to a panel of civil society, industry, and government experts that are here with us today. I'll let each of them introduce themselves as we go, but we'll hear first from Marina Routa from IGF, and then from Mathieu Salomon from NRGI, and then Mona Tadou Breton from the French government, and then from Henry Fleury from Glencourt. So let's start with Marina, please go ahead. Thank you, Casey. Can you hear me? Yes. Good. So thanks for inviting us to this webinar, and of course for benchmarking IGF's mining policy framework in the report. My name is Marina Routa. I'm a senior law advisor for the IGF. The IGF is an Intergovernmental Forum on Mining and Sustainable Development. More than 80 countries rich in mineral resources are members of the IGF, and they're represented by their mining authorities. Now focusing on the report, well, we thought the report is very comprehensive and rich as you were saying, and it links to the traditional sustainable development challenges of the mining sector into the critical minerals discussion. So congratulations on that first. And I will want to focus on the, because I cannot focus on everything, it's pretty comprehensive. So I will focus only on one part of the report that mentions the significant pressure that governments are receiving to expedite permitting processes so that they can respond to the demand of critical minerals. So we see also there is a current focus on reducing permitting times. It is an old pressure within the policy of to attract investment governments need to reduce permitting times. And in consequence, there is a temptation to relax environmental, social and governance protections in law or in practice. We see it has now resurfaced with critical mineral strategies. However, we have seen that relaxing protections have proven to be an obstacle to mining operations too. For example, where Louis was mentioning a mine without proper consultation might in the future close due to a protest. See Panama's copper mine. We have one of the largest scale copper mines, a critical mineral. Also 4% of the GDP of the country being closed in 2024 because process at the granting of the concession many years ago were not followed. And today's society has decided that they would rather protect their Mesoamerican biodiversity corridor than having an open feed mine in the middle of their jungle, which is absolutely fair. But this is a decision to be made during the permitting process and not after a six billion investment with a fully operating mine, which has now to close close with billions in closing costs plus international arbitration demands. And of course, a disruptive supply of copper to the world. So we see the report rightly highlights the importance of having legal regimes that are fit for purpose and that are effective. This is not slow. It is about reviewing legal systems and making sure robust and effective protections for the environment workers, indigenous peoples and communities are there. We see the report also then kindly benchmarks with the IGF mining policy framework. This is a mining governance standard, unique and different from other standards because it's not for industry, it's for governments and mining governance. It makes recommendations which are international good practice in laws, policies and implementations. I mentioned that it's good practice and not always best practice because we're speaking about producer countries many times developing countries. The standard is driven by IGF members, so it's not the secretary yet, it's the members that drive it. It was born in 2010 and it was reviewed and updated last year. So any government, for example, that it's preparing their strategies on critical or strategic minerals can follow it and assess their laws, policies and standards. It has six thematic dealers, many of which are mentioned in this report. It was mentioned as part of the risks. So laws, policies and institutions has inside the permitting system. So how to assess your permitting system, the financial benefits goes deep into how to design fiscal regimes and distribute the financial benefits. So economic benefits, for example, the report mentions communities and human rights. We have recommendations specifically on this issue. Environmental management, we divided in water, biodiversity management, air and noise, waste management and emergency preparedness. And this report, IA's report mentions water, greenhouse emissions and biodiversity. And then we have two more pillars. One, it's specifically on mine closure. It's called post mining transition. So we look at the transition to closure and then ASM. So artisanal and small-scale mining, we kind of do an assessment or recommendation specifically for this scale of mining. We had a 2023 update because there's new issues coming in these last 10 years, including climate change, transparency, which is mentioned as the risk of corruption in this report, and then gender equity, which are transversally included. And we added that before we didn't have that this was a request from mining authorities, the institutional arrangements. We have two documents. One is the NPF itself, which for lawyers is like the Constitution, very short and sweet. And a recommendation for government would be, for example, require mining entities to consult indigenous peoples when mining activities may affect them, obtaining free prior and informed consent when applicable. In this case, for example, we are following ILO convention 169. And then there's guidance note with further information, including also international standards that are applicable to industry, but may be positive for governments to look at. So we offer our members impartial assessments based on the NPF. We've done 17 of these since 2013. It is a thorough process that had helped governments realign their priorities based on their objectives. And we understand that there is now a new momentum for members and for every country to revisit their legal system due to the pressure of critical minerals demand. So we invite governments when considering to shorten their permitting timelines, and in general, prepare their critical mineral strategies to assess their laws and policies and institutions thoroughly to respond to this demand. And the NPF is in our website to help you. And coming back to the report, producing countries should balance the expectations of the investors and consumer countries with the amount of time really needed to review environmental and social impact assessments and other permitting documents. If not, we will risk the protections as well as stopping productions in the future, like the case of Panama. IAE is right in highlighting the importance of ensuring legal and regulatory protections. And we hope to support governments in this endeavor. Thank you. Thank you, Marina, for that intervention. And thank you also for reminding everyone what IGF stands for, to save us on that long acronym. And now we'll turn to Mathieu Salomo from the Natural Resource Governance Institute. Thanks a lot, Casey, and energy, natural resource governance institute, another acronym. I'm Mathieu Salomo. I'm leading on our anti-corruption work. NRGI is a sink and do tank working on extractive governance. First, I would like to thank the organizer of the webinar on behalf of NRGI for inviting me to, and inviting us to review this report and now to join this panel. It's really encouraging to see the IAE engaging more with civil society organization. So we really commend the IAE for such interesting, constructive and concrete report, which we're sure has been enriched through considering comments and expertise from civil society. The five recommendations put forward extremely relevant, as well as a six focus or risk area identify. In the interest of time, I'll keep my comments focused on three quick points. The importance of enforcement of independent monitoring and of assessing addressing corruption risk. First, enforcement. By enforcement, I mean increase capacities and resources for relevant agencies. It's mentioned in the report, but it's something that would give more emphasis. With that strong enforcement, good laws don't mean anything. This is especially relevant for recommendation one of the report on robust legal and regulatory protection. I saw that the slides now present the recommendation in a way that put more emphasis on enforcement, and it's good. We've seen major anti-corruption cases fall apart recently in the mining space, such as the UK case against ENRC, which sends, we think, the wrong signals, the wrong message about accountability for wrongdoing. And government and including IAE members need to step up their game on this. We were glad to see legal framework as a first recommendation, as monetary approaches should always be prioritized over voluntary ones from our experience. We'd welcome more analysis and comparison between legal frameworks and voluntary standard from the IEA, since you ask what IEA could work on more, and especially on the implementation enforcement of these legal framework and voluntary standard and on their impact on practices improvement. My second point about independent monitoring, link to enforcement independent monitoring will also be key if one wants the recommendation put forward in the report to have impact. And so one aspect that could have been given more emphasis in the report is the importance of civic space. For example, recommendation five of the report on the development of credible voluntary systemability standards. For us, the inclusion of civil society groups and other impacted actors, such as communities, indigenous groups, trade unions, is fundamental to credibility and avoiding greenwashing. This is a principle embedded in existing initiatives in the space, such as the EITI, the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, Strong Civil Society Protocol. So this shouldn't be controversial. The need to ensure companies engaged with civil society could also have been emphasis in recommendation number two, for example, on the report on public spending and crunching better practices. Although not the focus of this report, private investors probably have even a stronger role on this question and recommendation two. And final point about the importance of corruption risk. On corruption, especially really good to see the challenges acknowledged in the report, especially in the context of a transition in a rush and the potential consequences underlying legal liability, delays, disruption, not to mention the ways in which corruption will prevent justice in transition. Strengthening transparency around contract and beneficial ownership is key and producing countries and companies must act on this. The EITI 2023 standard has welcomed new anti-corruption requirements. But as mentioned in the report, overall different mining standards could be strengthened when it comes to anti-corruption requirement. To include, for example, a requirement on political contribution, transparency, low-being, beneficial ownership of subcontractors, or use of intermediaries, for example. At an EITI, together with partners, we have published a number of recommendations to support anti-corruption in transition mineral supply chain, which should provide some important ideas on where to focus efforts. I'll put the link in the chat. I think the final point I'd like to make is on the interconnectedness of harms in the mining space. At EITI, we have designed a corruption diagnostic tool which has already been used in key transition mineral locations like the Philippines, Guinea, Chile. Drawing on this work, we've recently developed new modules on issues such as links between corruption and social environmental impacts. And we'd encourage anyone who is interested in understanding this issue and how to address them to get in touch with me. Drawing the links between these issues, and in particular how the gene governance of governance is foundational to the ENS of environmental and social, maybe could have come through a bit more in the report and maybe a fruitful future area of work for the IEA. But that doesn't prevent this report of being incredibly useful guidance for decision makers in this space. And we look forward to seeing how the recommendation are taken up. Thanks. Thank you, Mathieu, for that intervention. And we'll now turn to Mona Tatou Breton from the French government. Yes, thank you, Kéfi. I am Mona Tatou Breton, Deputy Head of the Mineral Resources Department at the Ministry of Ecological Transition in France. First, I would like to thank the IEA for this work that summarized the challenges that societies are facing, and especially policy makers and companies on securing minerals for energy transition. As a government, our objective to secure our supplies for energy transition are strongly linked with the objectives of the respect of high ESG standards. Companies also understood that addressing those aspects goes with the mitigation of supply risks. Improving the environmental, social and governance standards is a continuous process. We thank the IEA on bringing governance, industry and NGOs together around this webinar, as we need a collective effort to go further. As a policy maker, maybe I can give some details on how we already address some aspects of the recommendations of the report and how we can go further. For the first aspect, which is ensuring robust regulatory regimes, at the French and the European level, in general, we have now a set of regulations addressing the risks listed in the second part of the reports, for example, water, gas, emission, etc., which applies in Europe, and we completed this regulation by due diligence measures based on the OECD guidelines since 2017. This was followed by battery regulation and now CRM Act. I'm talking only about regulation concerning critical minors, but there are many other regulations that apply for other industry sectors, but also for critical minors. Concerning the second aspect of recommendation of the report, direct public spending, for example, we launched recently a fund dedicated to security of mineral supply that will finance extracting, transformation and recycling projects, and ESG criteria are key elements when selecting and evaluating the project. The ESG criteria for the fund will not rely only on single private standards, but on a set of requirements resulting from a combination between local regulation and international standards. Concerning tracking and monitoring performance and making supply chains more transparent, those two aspects go together and there is still a lot to do. We agree on the observation of the report regarding the lack of harmonized and publicly available data to assess ESG performance of assets. We need to work together with other stakeholders at international level on metrics and methodological guidance, like what it is done at the EITA, the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, maybe also in the future at the ISO level or other international level where we can bring together consumer and producer countries. This work is essential for more transparency and which is crucial for the implementation of due diligence measures. Concerning the support for standards system, standards can give clearly visibility to consumer and help companies to highlight their efforts. At the European level we push for a recognition system which can evaluate the adequacy between the European regulation expectation and the criteria evaluated by the standards to give a guarantee to downstream companies and to finish there is also other aspects that can also be addressed when talking about sustainable supply, I think about substitution and recycling. I know that the OECD is working on that and which is complementary to this work. I would like also to thank the IEA on highlighting the social aspect of ESG addressing community's concern is key for acceptance of the extractive industry. The international forums are a good place to bring together consumers and producer to think about feasible and fair regulation, standards and practices and the IEA can play a role on that. Thank you. Very many thanks Mona and we'll now do our pass it over to the last of our panel Henry Fleury from Glencourt. Please go ahead. Hi everyone. What a pleasure to follow after all my great fellow panelists with some really interesting interventions. I also want to thank IEA for inviting us to participate in this. There's some kind of really key points that were highlighted in the introduction about where we're kind of in a new world here. When Casey and Louis you're talking about the need to pay attention to ESG issues and mineral supply chains in order to secure your social license to operate etc. One part of me was thinking well you know that's been there for a long time that's always been important but I do think things are different now because we're talking about scaling up critical materials and we are talking about a lot more attention from supply chain and stakeholders and we're also talking about having not doing things the way we have always done them. In the past maybe we accept a certain levels of ESG performance for our energy needs with various sectors and today you know we want to do things differently so I do think that the scene setting here is really important though of course the issues are not necessarily new in themselves. So I'm Annmarie Flurry. I work at Glencore on responsible sourcing with the Cobalt and Lithium trading teams so I'm very much in the weeds of engaging with the supply chain and with stakeholders on ESG needs and we're talking about transparency communicating and also the standards. Before joining Glencore I worked for a standard and assurance scheme in the jewelry supply chain so that's going to be the topic I'm going to focus a little bit more on today. For those of you who are not so familiar with Glencore you may already know Glencore as a mining company or a trading company of mineral commodities including many of the critical ones. Glencore is also of course a refining company and a big recycling company as well including biggest e-waste recycler in North America. So working in many different parts of meeting our critical raw material needs and a big player in Copper, Nickel, Cobalt and now starting as well on the Lithium side. So as I said I'm going to focus more on the voluntary sustainability standards recommendation in the report with maybe just one comment on as others have said here the richness of the report overall and its contribution to our thinking in this space. Joyce talked a little bit about how standards are a useful benchmark for what good ESG practice looks like and we can talk specifically about how what this looks like for companies operating in the supply chain. So earlier we talked about what good practice looks like for policy making but I'm going to talk about the standards in the context of companies operating from mining through to energy providers, client-facing companies. I spoke earlier about us as a society you know wanting to see and wanting a lot more transparency and different practices to maybe what we've seen in the past and this is where the voluntary standard schemes can really come into play because generally they involve third-party assurance and reporting and so they're about checking and communicating that information to the outside world. I think the first point I want to make is that I think it's fair to say a lot of companies in the supply chain and certainly I would say so in case of Glencore really believe in these voluntary standards as a tool that can help drive much more effective demonstration of ESG practices as well as driving ESG practices in themselves. So sometimes they're described as a market tool and this is where they could really help drive change. The paper outlines several credibility criteria around what credible voluntary schemes look like and they are all excellent points. I would agree with everything that's in there that the need to align with relevant international frameworks, the need for clear scope, the need for transparency to be part of the scheme, the quality of assurance within these schemes and Matthew talked earlier as well about the importance of multi-stakeholder participation in the schemes and how they run which I think Matthew said you know we would this is not a controversial comment we would all agree and I would say that as well. There are maybe two things I would have slightly elaborate on or add on as in talking about these voluntary schemes. I guess that the first one is since we're talking about criteria it's implicit that we aren't necessarily talking about a one size fits all and the reason I raise this is because when we look at the mineral supply chain landscape of ESG standards particularly the mining ones at the upstream end of the supply chain I think it's fair to say that it's a fairly busy landscape and in engaging on this topic you do hear some people saying we really need a one size fits all in this space. I would argue that that's not necessarily the thing that is going to best drive improved practices and more transparency. Different stakeholders involved in the mineral supply chains have different needs and drivers for what they look for in these voluntary standards and again I would argue that we are perhaps best served by not necessarily just a one size fits all. Now that's not to say that as I said earlier it is a busy landscape I don't think there's any benefit in calling for new standards in what's already quite a busy space but certainly looking at alignment and interoperability with what's out there is something that could help a lot in pushing for better uptake and adoption and implementation and perhaps in some cases convergence as well though by virtue of saying I don't think a one size fits all I would not argue for a convergence across the board everywhere necessarily. So that's one kind of additional consideration and following on on that point the other consideration would be about interoperability between the standards as a criteria. Now this is something that I'm putting forward very much from the perspective of companies that would be implementing these voluntary schemes. Again companies will usually have multiple needs that they have to meet through the adoption of these schemes and so being able to have some interoperability so you're not essentially adding them the same thing multiple times within short time frames is something that's really important to be able to drive uptake so that's the other point I would add something to consider. So two quite detailed points under one of the recommendations of the report maybe the other thing I'll mention is that different organizations have done some work on this and one I'm particularly familiar with is the COBOL Institute who has been running a consultation process on the voluntary scheme ESG schemes and will should be completing the work shortly so watch this space on that topic. Thank you Ann Marie looking at the clock we're almost to our allotted hour we're able to go a few minutes over I think Ann Marie may have to leave immediately we have a bunch of really interesting questions so we're going to try to take a couple of them at least before we close so two questions I want to pose to the panel is the first there's a really interesting question about the what how do we handle the distrust between communities and and the mining sector and the mining industry in general this is obviously a big problem for communities and a second question that I'm quite interested in there was a comment about there's about the importance between big mining and small mining and ASM artisanal and small-scale mining so like there's right some of the things we're talking about apply very differently when we're talking about very large companies very large projects compared to small independent companies and then even even more so when we're talking about the particular challenges of ASM so given the amount of time if any of the panelists want to speak to either of those questions perhaps Ann Marie since you need to leave early if you want to respond to either of those if not we can pass to other on the panel I don't have a good answer for you Casey I'm thinking of the the question on ASM in particular but you I mean you raise a very good point because in some ways the ability of larger companies to engage in tools like voluntary schemes is much higher than the artisanal informal sector which by its very definition is not engaging as easily in informal processes I know others on this panel can also contribute this because I don't have any easy answers unfortunately in this space other than to say that the players in the supply chain downstream and upstream policy makers regulators all the stakeholders civil society have to take this point into consideration when looking at how to drive the best ESG practices because when we talk about a just transition designing systems that will exclude the artisanal sector entirely would be counterproductive and and kind of make just transition and not seem long so maybe yeah I haven't answered your questions I can see how they put their hand up and hopefully you can can add to that thanks for that Henry I saw Marina's hand and then Louie so Marina please go ahead thanks Casey yes we have an ASM program a artisanal small-scale mining is ASM in IGF and we are working hopefully coming up with a publication on case studies on ASM and critical minerals these are critical mineral source through ASM we've been trying to gather data there is data that is being gathered by some partners so we are looking into that and so we look it as two fold one is the opportunities for the ASM sectors there's some countries that are very focused on artisanal and small-scale mining and there's no large-scale mining and on the other side it's a bit prepared the governments for so what traditionally was gold rushes for critical mineral rushes so we want to have a bit of focus on on that too so please check again it's the mining policy framework has the six six pillars the six one is ASM and that's on governance of this sector and of course I'm sure that Louie will have something to say on ASM too yes please Louie go ahead yeah thank you I mean indeed ASM is really one of the key aspects that we've been looking at consistently since the beginning of our program and I think a lot of our efforts has been to demonstrate in particular to global industry that ASM and large-scale mining supply chains are more than often and more than we think interconnected so I think it's really important to keep that in mind and not believe that you can isolate that isolate one from the others which in turn means that you really have to pay attention to of course transparency and integrity in ASM but also likewise in artisanal and small-scale mining you can't have the same kind of policy responses for both I think that was well captured in the in the guidance that's certainly something that we always flag and insist on but thanks for raising that point because I really want to emphasize that the the share of artisanal and small-scale mining production in global supply chain of critical minerals is only increasing and it's it's coming into lithium where a number of private sector actors used to believe that it would never so I think it's it's really something that people need to pay attention to just quick word on the distrust I think this is really the key aspect of everything that we're talking about today it's distrust you can find in producing countries but you can find as well in consuming countries so it's really hard to provide a comprehensive response to that again from our perspective everyone's ability to openly acknowledge the issues and share as much information as possible on the various risks identified and then the strategies of the companies to mitigate those risks having frank conversations about those aspects meaningful stakeholder consultations this all those tactics need to be leveraged in order to build the trust that we'll need to make the mining sector one of the key contributions to the to the low carbon economy in the future thanks thanks for that Louis given that time we'll go for maybe one more question and then we will close we had a really fascinating question from one of the attendees essentially calling attention to the urgency of the need for critical minerals for the clean energy transition this is a point that the IEA has made very strongly that we if we're the world is to meet its global climate goals we need significantly more supplies of many of the minerals we're talking about to support those clean energy technologies and how do we balance that against the fact that permitting takes time and that if we want to do this the right way at least what we've seen in the past you know 20 30 years is that it does take some time and even then we haven't been fully successful so how I want to ask a question for any of the panelists who wish to to respond to that how do we address that need for urgency without letting standards fall I know I know Marina spoke about this a little bit but I think maybe my others might want to come in I saw Louis and then Matthew yeah I'll speak short because I've been talking a lot and then Matthew can can join but I think there's been a recent wave of data points that actually stress that a lot of big money projects have been delayed quite significantly because of everything that we're talking about so social license to operate and all these aspects so it would probably be wrong to believe that you can actually fast track all of this because if you want to fast track it now you'll pay it further down the line so that balance is extremely important perhaps one aspect of the response is to be able to look at the demand side also there's a lot of pressure to open new mines for sure and we all agree on that but in order to mitigate some of that pressure you can also look at how ways through which you can reduce the demand and to make sure that you know you don't believe that the only viable option is to fast track everything and open as many mines as you can those mines will be needed but if you fast track that you'll face you'll face challenges and issues further down the line for sure not not too much to say to add Casey to what Louis just replied I mean basically studies show that the stronger governance in a country then somehow fast the faster than the licensing and the time between exploration to exploitation so it's maybe counterintuitive but the stronger standard you have somehow the faster you will manage to get the miners out of the ground and on the question about the trust just to comment quickly on that I think it's a process it needs to be what is important is that it needs to be obviously acknowledged in the mistake of the past is one thing but then it's about fact it's about acts it's about how company behave it's about how government behave and it's it starts from the consultation and the and the consent of community around the mining site but it goes until the end of the value chain of the decision chain of mining so it's not it's not the one-off process it's just it needs to be a continuous process of engagement of consultation of better benefit sharing better opportunities and so on so it's going to take time I think the the distrust somehow is not only with communities I remember in in September last year at the IEA Transition Minerals Summit there was a lot of complain about companies not finding young people to hire to become mining engineer so I think the distrust is not only with communities not only with consumer country as we mentioned but also with citizens who don't necessarily wants to go and work in the mining industry thanks thank you metia and as we're now a little bit over time I think we'll go ahead and close I did just want to finish with one last question that I think I'll take the prerogative of the as the moderator to answer myself we had a question on what role do critical minerals have in ensuring a just energy transition and a people-centered transition and I just want to say that at least from the IEA's perspective and I think all the panelists will agree that a there are no people-centered transitions that don't have sustainable and responsible critical mineral supply it's absolutely critical the two are linked and we see them that way so I just wanted to say at least from our side there's no ambiguity there and with that I want to thank all of our panelists and I'll turn it over now to Pascal Lafond the chief legal counsel of the IEA who will close this out thank you thank you very much Casey and and hello everyone it's going to be very difficult for me to sum up because there were a lot of excellent points which were made what I think struck me was the broad consensus around these virtual table among various participants governments civil society industry think tanks international organizations and broad consensus on on the five recommendations that were in the report and I would like to thank the team here Casey Joyce and Alex but also all the reviewers all of you who contributed to the success of this report and broad consensus on the importance of trust Matthew just mentioned it again we are lawyers nobody's perfect and we know how important it is to make sure that when an investment or a host country welcome an investment how important it is to make sure that this investment is going to last a few of you have highlighted some examples where the mines had to close with possible arbitration and huge costs not only for the host country financial cost reputational costs but also for the local communities so I think it's absolutely vital that the legal environment and the regulations and this is why we try to address in our report and continue to do so allow these investments to work for the benefit of all I liked what Matthew highlighted in terms of enforcement independent monitoring and addressing the corruption risk I think this is something that is part of the broader question of trust which is key to take into account and I think there is also a broad consensus on how much there is still to do in ESG I was following from a distance the debates in Davos last week and I was struck by the fact that how little ESG was discussed and put on the table so the IEA will continue working with you we're delighted to have you with us on this project I would like to thank the governments of Australia of Canada thank you Luke as well for chairing the ESG task force you're doing wonderful work but also Japan and the US to fund us otherwise we wouldn't be able to do that back and I hope we can continue that inclusive work between all of us I thank you again very much for the very productive debate today and wish you a very good rest of the day or evening wherever you are thank you Casey thank you Pascal