The Mining Association of Canada’s (MAC) Water Stewardship Protocol is the newest addition to its Towards Sustainable Mining® (TSM®) initiative and will be phased-in over the next several years, with public reporting scheduled to begin in 2021. Water experts from across the industry worked diligently to develop a set of performance indicators to measure water governance, operational water management, watershed-level planning and water performance and reporting at the mine-site level. This Protocol will strengthen the standards included in TSM and will guide the development of water stewardship practices in a manner that will go beyond legal compliance.
The new Water Stewardship Protocol is based on the Water Stewardship Policy Framework and provides a tool for companies to measure implementation of the framework’s commitments. The Protocol is comprised of four performance indicators:
- Water Governance
- Operational Water Management
- Watershed-scale Planning
- Water Reporting and Performance indicators
