About this project

Critical raw materials sustainability & resilience

In line with the UN sustainability goals and building on the success of the UNECE Textile & Leather traceability project, this project seeks to develop a traceability and sustainability framework for critical raw materials (CRM). This project supports the UN focus on extractive industries and builds on the UN/CEFACT role & capabilities to deliver digital standards for sustainable supply chains.

The purpose of this project is to combat greenwashing and uplift verifiable critical raw materials supply chain sustainability and resilience.

• Sustainable supply chains are designed to minimize environmental impacts and maximize human welfare.
• Resilient supply chains are designed to avoid risky dependencies and can withstand disruptions.

Both goals are met through digitizing traceability and transparency at scale. In order to scale from pilots to global scale production volumes, this project focuses on two key challenges

• Interoperability: There are different supply chain traceability platforms on the market. Since they will not lead the world’s supply chains, end-to-end traceability will depend on standards-based interoperability between platforms. This project will define interoperability standards and implementation test services in which supply chain actors can pick any compliant platform.
• Core Vocabulary: There are already hundreds of ESG standards or related criteria as well as several emerging regulatory criteria specific to geographic or industrial sectors. This complexity imposes challenges for supply chain actors who must understand how their domestic sustainability measures map to the standards or regulatory criteria of their export markets. This project will focus on the mapping of current ESG standards by developing a core vocabulary of criteria and a legal framework for mutual recognition.

Greenwashing

Greenwashing is a term used to describe a false, misleading, or untrue action or set of claims made by an organization about the positive impact that a company, product or service has on the environment or on social welfare.

The evidence from multiple research activities is that greenwashing is already endemic with around 60% of claims being proven to be false or misleading. But there is room for optimism because around 70% of consumers expect higher integrity behaviour and are willing to pay for it. There are two plausible pathways ahead of us.

To win the race to the top, fake claims need to be hard to make. The best way to achieve that is to make supply chains traceable and transparent so that unsustainable practices have nowhere to hide. But, to have any impact, the traceability and transparency measures must be implemented at scale. The world's supply chains must move beyond low-volume traceability pilots and "walled garden" proprietary solutions to the point where verifiable traceability and transparency information are available to motivate consumers for the majority of products on the market.

Therefore, scalability and associated evidence of high-volume production implementation is this project's key measure of success. We will be able to claim a moderate level of success for the pilot implementation phase if we have evidence that:

• at least 50 different CRM supply chain actors
• using at least 5 different software platforms
• across at least 5 different value chains
• spanning at least 5 different countries
• can reveal transparent supply chain evidence for at least 10,000 consignments.

The best way to achieve that is to make supply chains traceable and transparent so that unsustainable practices have nowhere to hide. But, to have any impact, traceability and transparency measures must be implemented at scale. The world’s supply chains must move beyond low-volume traceability pilots and "walled garden" proprietary solutions to the point where verifiable traceability and transparency information are available to motivate consumers for most products on the market.

This is still a tiny fraction of actual global trade volumes but is probably sufficient to prove that the framework is scalable.

Participation

This project will be of interest to primary producers, manufacturers, regulators, ESG standards authorities, certifiers, and ESG/traceability software solution vendors.

Under the UN/CEFACT Open Development Process (ODP), participation in this project is open to all. There are three types of participation:

• Observers: Anyone who is interested in following the activities and outcomes from this project but will not be actively contributing to the standards development work nor participating in pilot implementations. Observers may join the conversation on our Slack channel and/or subscribe to our monthly project newsletter.
• Contributors Anyone who is able to provide the skills and commitment to contribute to standards development. Participants in this category should either have deep business domain knowledge in CRM supply chain sustainability or technical skills in decentralized architectures and data modelling. As a contributor, you must conform to UN/CEFACT IPR policy and must join UN/CEFACT as a registered expert. Note that this will require the approval of your country's head of delegation.
• Implementers: Any CRM supply chain actor (e.g. producer, manufacturer, certifier, software vendor) that wishes to participate in early pilots and/or certify their software against the standards defined by this project.

Please email the project lead if you wish to participate as a contributor or implementer.

Reference material

• UN White paper on verifiable credentials for cross border trade - this technology is the most likely solution for highly scalable sustainability data exchange.
• All Members Year-End CRM Project Presentation

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are critical raw materials (CRMs)? Critical minerals are metals and non-metals, such as cobalt or lithium, that are considered essential to the economy and whose supply may be at risk due to geological scarcity, geopolitical issues, trade policy or other factors.

2. Why do CRMs require high levels of traceability?
Due to their scarcity and concentration in select geographic regions, many countries rely on the import of CRMs, creating a high supply risk. Critical minerals receive increased pressure for traceability in accordance with international climate regulation, and digital technology has been identified as a valuable tool to support these initiatives.  

3. What is the UN/CEFACT Critical Raw Materials Traceability and Sustainability Project?
Critical raw material (CRM) producers provide essential materials like lithium, cobalt, copper, and graphite to countries across the world. CRM supply chains are often long and complex, involving multiple organizations and crossing several international borders as materials move from raw material extraction to finished products.

Globally, sustainability data is held on various platforms using differing standards. CRM producers are increasingly being asked to meet a range of evolving domestic and international requirements to satisfy regulatory and consumer demand. There are many supply chain traceability solutions on the market, but most do not allow data to be shared between them. CRM producers need an efficient and trustworthy way to prove their sustainability performance along international supply chains.

The UN/CEFACT Critical Raw Materials Traceability and Sustainability Project (CRM Project) is connecting experts from across the world to research current international sustainability standards and reporting platforms. The project will use this research to identify ways to improve compatibility between current sustainability standards and digital tools and create a framework for international data exchange that increases trust and traceability.

With simple and secure methods to prove their sustainability performance, actors along CRM supply chains are better positioned to compete in global markets that prioritize sustainable goods, encouraging a wider adherence to responsible mining practices.

4. What is the CRM Project trying to achieve?
The CRM project seeks to make CRM supply chains more sustainable and resilient by improving transparency and traceability.

• Sustainable supply chains minimize environmental impacts and maximize human welfare.
• Resilient supply chains avoid risky dependencies and can withstand disruptions.

The CRM Project aims to create standards for:

1. Compatibility between digital tools and reporting platforms;
2. Identifying areas of consensus within existing sustainability certifications.

These standards will enable data to be exchanged internationally, making it easier to prove where and how critical raw materials are extracted and used.

5. Who is hosting the CRM Project?
The CRM project is hosted by the UN Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic-Business (UN/CEFACT).

Building on the success of the Textile and Leather Traceability project, the CRM project unites organizations from around the world, and all organizations are welcome to participate.

6. What is the timeline for the CRM Project?
The CRM project has been divided into several phases of work:

Timing	Project Stage
May 2023	Project Inception
June 2023	Call for Participation
July 2023 - January 2024	Business Requirements Research and Specification
November 2023 - February 2024	Development of the following deliverables: Draft Sustainability Vocabulary and Credential Schema, Test Suite, and Implementation Guide; Engagement with stakeholders to inform the above deliverables
March 2024 - September 2024	Pilots - Implementation and incorporation of feedback from stakeholders to refine vocabulary, schema, and test suite
July 2024	UN Policy Recommendation
October - November 2024	Public Draft Review
December 2024	Project Exit

7. How is the CRM Project aligning with existing initiatives? The CRM project embraces all environmental, social, and governance (ESG) platforms, standards, and regulations. Our environmental scan illustrates the broad range of platforms, standards, and regulations that inform the project work.

The CRM project will not create a new traceability platform, nor will it define new sustainability standards. Instead, this project is focused on increasing the compatibility and identifying points of consensus between existing tools and standards.

We welcome participation from CRM supply chain participants, technology providers, standards authorities, and regulators to ensure that their work is considered as the project examines tools and regulations across jurisdictional boundaries.

8. How is the CRM Project addressing legal considerations?
The CRM project will undertake analysis to understand legal and governance considerations related to supply chains. This research will include considerations of how audit and verification processes are connected and recognized across multiple jurisdictions.

9. What is the scope of work for the CRM project?
The CRM project covers a broad spectrum of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) concerns as they relate to both regulatory purposes and consumer demand.

Existing initiatives, such as the Global Battery Alliance, have identified a range of issues that are valuable to regulators and consumers. The CRM project will build on the work of existing initiatives to focus on areas of work that are of the highest priority for the global community.

The CRM project will not recreate or reinvent ESG standards or traceability solutions. Rather, this work will focus on mapping between existing standards and providing a framework for determining points of convergence. This includes primary production to finished product, encompassing all stages of supply chain exchange.

10. Which digital platform will the CRM project use?
The CRM project will not identify a single platform or technical solution. There are thousands of platforms for the exchange of sustainability data worldwide, and the challenge being explored cannot be solved with a single tool. Our focus is on the exchange of trusted data between many users across various platforms.

Technology vendors are welcome to participate in the project through voluntary contributions to standard development and implementation testing. This offers the opportunity to be listed as a compliant vendor by UN/CEFACT.

11. Why is the CRM Project focused on decentralization?
In the journey from extraction to final product, information about a critical mineral shipment crosses multiple countries, sectors, and technology platforms.

Successful global scale data exchange is reliant on:

• a range of interoperable tools, and,
• consensus on data standards and policies.

While the CRM project aims to identify tools and standards for critical raw material supply chains, there are examples of this model at work for other purposes worldwide today, demonstrating the viability of this model.

For example, a traveller with a Canadian passport can enter Australia without the need for an Australian passport. There are existing policies in place that enable the Canadian passport to be recognized by Australian border patrol. There is no need for a single, central database of global passports since the standards between Canada and Australia are mutually recognizable.

12. How can I participate in the CRM Project?
There are three ways that organizations across the world can get involved:  

• Contributors participate in meetings, draft key deliverables, and support policy recommendations.  
• Observers join meetings, receive emails, and participate in the Slack chat to stay informed on project progress.  
• Implementers will test and offer feedback on project standards and deliverables after drafts are completed.  

13. What is the time commitment for participation?  Participation in the CRM project is voluntary, meaning that we welcome as much or as little time as participants are able to commit. The average expected time commitment depends on the level of participation:

• Contributors – 4-8 hours per week.
• Observers – As needed.
• Implementers – 4-8 hours per week, during the implementation phase.

14. How will my contributions be used?
Contributors to the CRM Project will register as UN Experts. We are happy to assist you with this process if you are not already registered. All contributions made to this project are the intellectual property of the UN.

Ideas, deliverables, or language developed as part of this project cannot be commercialized or patented.

15. What value will I receive from participating in the CRM Project?
This project offers value to many different sectors, but will be of particular interest to:

• Primary Producers & Manufacturers: Digital technology has the potential to reduce the administrative burden of sustainability reporting, streamline business processes, and lower the cost of ESG compliance. Using interoperable technology, CRM producers can share information about their sustainable practices in seconds. By proving their ESG performance, CRM producers are better positioned to compete in global markets that prioritize sustainable goods.
• Certifiers, Auditors, and Standards Setters: As more companies are incentivized to comply with ESG regulations, the demand for sustainability audits will increase. Current certifications, standards, and audit reports will become more valuable as they become globally recognized.
• Software Providers: Technology platforms that are compatible with other platforms offer higher value to customers who need to exchange credentials internationally.