Draft United Nations Resource Management System: Principles and Requirements

Stig-Morten Knutsen, Norwegian Petroleum Directorate

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the above-mentioned document.  

Attached please find the document / file with comments in the text. 
Below are included some more general comments / feedback:

•    The draft is a good and comprehensive piece of work!
•    Would it be an idea to early in the document (f. ex. Under “A Purpose”) to an even stronger degree emphasis the SDG’s and sustainability for the growth and welfare of people. UNRMS is not for the sake of the resources, but for all of us using them (in a sustainable way).  
•    Could or should a “how to” be included in the draft? - the system (UNRMS) will only be beneficial if it is used: how could we help potential users to get onboard? (and as a side comment to this – should “outreach” have a more prominent role in the document?).
 

Inline/In-text comments

Page 10, section3, Princple3; the example of resource sectors is mentioned as energy, agriculture, trade, but if you imply separately mineral resources such as CRMs in sectors, it is much better.
Because CRMs are strongly connected by economic and environmental sectors which related with these sectors by SDG or ESG.

Page12, section8, Principle8; Circularity is also very important terms in RMS, but the critical issue is the lack of international standardization of circular system by dependent of product or CRMs. It needs to be focused on how connect this circularity to industrial standardization, i.e, IOS, for circular RMS.

Page15, section B. Requirements, term3; building integrated management system is very important to handle crossover sectors. Probably it connects with the Annex II UNRMS tool kit concept in page20. Using blockchain and AI to analyze supply chain of resource and impact of resource to others, i.e, human society is urgent issue. For example, Clean energy index (similar to Resource Anxiety index) in term1 is good approach. But I can't find consideration or methodology on link between each index from each RMS of sectors, such as multiple sectors simultaneously analysis RMS using by big data. 

The energy, agriculture, CRMs are strongly correlated with change of economy and political situation of the world.
I and  Alessandra Hool from ESM created idea and worked on this how to make linkage among separate sectors and find correlation to anticipate of resource trend. It's very difficult to write whole idea in email, please find attached concepts for our idea for the details.

Finally, UNECE is included Economy in the name on it.  And I think that finding helpful solution for industry to benefit humans from international political, environmental and geopolitical resource issues is one of your goals.
 

Attachment 

We at the Mining Shared Value initiative of Engineers Without Borders Canada are grateful for the opportunity to provide feedback on the Draft UNRMS Principles and Requirements. Attached is our submission which focuses on the need to adjust the language of "value addition" to "local content" for clarity's sake, and some suggestions to strengthen the transparency components of the principles. 

Overall this is a well put together set of principles and requirements that will be highly useful in guiding policy and company practice.

Thank you again for the opportunity to provide comments. 

Comments

In the draft paper, Section III(B) para (6) sub-para (a) refers to by- and co-product management, and in the same Section para (11) sub-para (c) refers to data quality. 

Is the UNRMS able to bring these two issues together in such a way as to help improve the quality of data on by- and co-products?

The document is very exhaustive, maybe too much so. We would suggest a shorter version which would be more accessible and applicable by the stakeholders (and have a better chance to be read entirely). This could be an additional document issued at the same time as this one).

We would suggest that contacts be taken with IEA, WoodMac, Rystad  or similar organisations which have already developed exhaustive evaluations for many energies and many countries, including the GHG aspects. Maybe one of these entities could be invited to present something at EGRM-14. It could also accelerate the adoption of UNRMS if tools already exist.

A few comments are included in the attached pdf.
 

Comments Inline/In-text