Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good morning,

Let me start first by congratulating the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and thanking his Excellency, the Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources for convening this important meeting - and thank you so much for inviting me as the Director General of UNIDO.

UNIDO is the UN Organization that focuses on global sustainable industrialization, with headquarters in Vienna and 170 Member States. Especially developing countries, including major mining countries.

The mining industry plays a very important role in worldwide industrial production. The ores and metals drawn from mines are the basis of all industrial production. Without them, there would be no airplane production, no auto industry, no solar panels, no windmills – no machines can be produced without these basic resources. Without mining, our world would stand still.

Research by the World Bank reports that global industry will need more than three billion tons of minerals and metals to produce low-carbon technologies - cobalt, nickel, lithium. All this is necessary for the transition toward a sustainable world economy by 2050.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Great developments mean also great challenges. Extraction and processing of minerals currently accounts for about 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental impact of mining practices can lead to deforestation, contamination of water of land.

The health and safety, the labour conditions of mine workers is a major factor. Globally, over fifteen thousand miners are killed every year. And these are only official numbers.  So, development of standards in workplace safety, minimum wages, and establishing ecological standards are absolutely fundamental.

My thanks go to the Saudi government. They are recognizing these problems and challenges. There are solutions on the way to sustainable mining! Large mining companies are taking proper measures. In recent years, responsible mining became a major priority on the international agenda.

Increasing regulatory requirements through mandatory due diligence has become a new trend among most-developed countries to address trading with “Conflict Minerals”. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development – OECD – has introduced due diligence guidance on responsible supply chains.  The International Organization for Standardization and the International Labour Organization have conventions and standards for protecting the health and safety of miners.  But, the challenge is the implementation of these standards in least developed countries.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are faced with some central questions which we must all together find answers to:

First: how can the predicted doubling or even tripling of worldwide production be accomplished responsibly?

Second: a huge share of mining takes place in the so-called Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) sector.

The social and ecological conditions there, for eighty to one hundred million workers are, if I may say it generally, not acceptable and far too often outright exploitative: wages at the lowest level, barely any job security, no implementation of environmental standards – and even child labour.

Third: new due diligence regulations in industrialized countries will encourage world markets to withdraw from sourcing from unregulated ASM mining sectors.  However, many will not be able to comply with due diligence standards, and will not stop ASM miners from continuing working.

Therefore the question is:

How can we successfully have a transfer of innovation, of modern production standards, training of workers in the relevant countries: a new cooperation with the ASM sector?

A decisive factor is: how can we implement standards also in the ASM sector without millions of people losing their jobs? What kind of support can the least developed countries receive? And by this I mean support from the rich countries where the refining industries are situated, where the profit is made. We must together find an answer to these questions!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

UNIDO as the UN specialized agency for sustainable industrialization stands ready to  work with you at the Future Minerals Forum to advance not only dialogue but also actions towards a Global Alliance for Responsible Minerals. Innovation through technology, knowledge transfer, vocational training can be the vehicle for sustainable industrialization – responsible mining – in these countries.

We have to understand: mining is a global business with global effects on our planet, and a global responsibility! Mining has enormous economic growth potential for the economies of the future and a particular place especially in developing countries.

We have the knowledge and the technological solutions to overcome the challenges we face.

Thank you so much.