CRIRSCO Codes, UNFC: Do we need separate codes for minerals reporting by governments and industry?

Ed Sides Presents: The CRIRSCO Reporting Codes and the UNFC: Do we really need separate codes for minerals reporting by governments and industry?

Both CRIRSCO and the UNFC have been around for over two decades, but many people working in mining industry are not familiar with the UNFC. Many will be surprised that the EU’s recently finalised Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) has reference the UNFC but not any CRIRSCO aligned reporting codes. This has led some people in the mining industry to ask whether continued use of a CRIRSCO Template aligned reporting code is really necessary. The presenter will explain that such questions display a lack of the understanding of the characteristics of the two systems and the purpose for which they were designed. The presentation will assess the strengths and weaknesses of both systems in meeting the requirements of government land use and strategic planners and investors in the minerals sector.

It will be explained that the organisations responsible for the two systems, CRIRSCO and the UNECE, regard the two systems as complementary. To facilitate correlation between the two systems a ‘bridging document’ was jointly developed and released in 2015. During 2023 the CRIRSCO Template to UNFC Bridging Document was updated and a new version was formally adopted and released at the annual meeting of the UNECE’s Expert Group on Resource Management (EGRM) in Geneva in April 2024; together with a joint CRIRSCO-UNECE guidance note on its use. A brief overview of the 2024 Bridging Document and the Guidance Note will be provided along with comments on how these documents can provide support in the context of consideration of strategic projects as defined by the CRMA.