The Chamber of Mines of the Philippines (COMP) said its 19 member-companies will fully implement the Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) initiative, a global environmental, social, and corporate governance performance measurement standard.

In a statement over the weekend, COMP said TSM is a set of tools and indicators to ensure that key mining risks are managed responsibly and best practices are used at members’ mining facilities.

At present, the Philippines through COMP is the only country in Asia to subscribe to TSM.

COMP said member-companies will submit their self-assessment reports on eight TSM protocols for their 2023 performance.

These TSM protocols include safety and health; community and Indigenous Peoples outreach and social development; crisis management and communications; tailings management; water management; biodiversity conservation management; and climate change.

The report will be submitted via an online app called Mine Site Sustainability Audit (MSSA).

The mines will conduct internal audits and should be able to support their self-ratings with proofs and evidence.

COMP said 10 of the 19 mines will be subjected to independent external verification by highly qualified Verification Service Providers (VSPs) to validate the reports while the other nine will be validated next year.

The results of all self-assessment and externally verified reports will be made public.

“After we adopted TSM in December 2017, we embarked on a six-year preparation period that saw our members actively participate in the Filipinization of the TSM Protocols,” COMP chairperson Michael Toledo said.

“That period also saw the formation of our multi-sector Community of Interest Advisory Panel, the training and accreditation of our VSPs, the development and cascading of the MSSA, a self-assessment dry run, and the mock external verification of three volunteer mines: Rio Tuba Nickel, OceanaGold Didipio, and Philex Padcal,” he added. (PNA)