The Copper Mark published its first M&E Report in May 2023.  This report covers the first three years of the implementation of the Assurance Process, and measures progress toward meeting the goals identified in our Theory of Change. The report includes baseline information on which future reports can be measured.

After publishing this initial report, guided by the ISEAL Code of Good Practice for Sustainability Systems, we revised several key documents, policies, and procedures to strengthen our assurance framework. Importantly, since 2024, Copper Mark Participants have been assessed against version 3.0 of the Risk Readiness Assessment Criteria Guide, which includes more rigorous criteria and extends coverage beyond copper to nickel, molybdenum and zinc. In the same period, we also revised the Copper Mark Assurance Process, Grievance Mechanism, Theory of Change, and M&E System.

We anticipated that these revisions, while necessary, would not allow for consistent data collection. While developing a planned follow-up M&E Report these data collection issues became clear as we sought to assess the Copper Mark’s impact at assured sites — which had nearly doubled in number since 2023 and included copper, molybdenum, nickel, and zinc operations. It became apparent that the Copper Mark could not draw broad conclusions about our impact due to the revisions to underlying documents, policies, and procedures detailed above. These limitations were exacerbated due to sector-wide data gaps and the difficulty of separating our attributable impact from broader background trends.

Independent Field Study of the Copper Mark’s Impact in Antofagasta, Chile

Due to the anticipated challenges noted above, and guided by the ISEAL Code, we supplemented our M&E effort by commissioning an independent field study to test the Copper Mark’s Theory of Change by investigating our impact in Antofagasta, Chile, a key mining region and home to several Copper Mark assured sites.

As part of the study, investigators went into the field to tour sites and conduct 90+ interviews, workshops and group discussions with stakeholders at production sites and affected communities. The report on the field study, which outlines positive impacts, areas for improvement, and recommendations for the organisation, is published here:

• Report: Independent Field Study of the Copper Mark’s Impact in Antofagasta in English and Spanish.

The M&E reporting challenges and findings from the field study have given us important insight on how the organisation can improve its approach to impact monitoring, evaluating, and reporting. The Copper Mark remains committed to monitoring and evaluating our impact, so as to guide the future development of our operations and improvements to our assurance framework.