Session 3: Taking stock of ASM market access
May 3, 2022 | 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
May 3, 2022 | 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
Description
Curbing de-risking enhancing access to finance amid an uneven recovery
As the 2021 Forum on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains highlighted, companies’ explicit avoidance of some mineral producing countries or informal sources of supply—known as ‘de-risking’—has vastly limited the positive impacts of due diligence in mineral supply chains. It is also clear that these practices have often come about as an unintended consequence of pressure on companies to clean up their supply chains. This session will take stock of both how this has come about as well as promising developments that could be leveraged to overcome this challenge. In a first instance, this means getting the unvarnished perspective of producing countries, including policymakers, on the ways de-risking is affecting them, particularly in supply chains that are dominated by ASM. Part of this task will entail examining systemic factors contributing to de-risking, including the state of legal access to markets for ASM, tarriff and non-tarriff barriers to access, negotiating the sometimes fraught interface between ASM and large-scale mining with a view to differentiating between downstream de-risking practices and upstream difficulties accessing markets legally. The session will also cover evidence and learnings on approaches that could help policymakers and other stakeholders address this critical issue, including using due diligence information to adapt banking compliance systems to service the ASM sector, convening actors from different parts of the supply chain to build trust and foster co-operation, and taking account of both informal fixtures of ASM supply chains like aggregators and local traders as well as the gatekeepers to formal supply chains like insurers and logistics companies as part of efforts to grow market access for ASM.
