The desk’s shelf
Sources and reading
The two public documents behind every note: the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (2020) and the ICMM Good Practice Guide.
The two documents this site stands on
The notes on this site quote two public documents, and only those two. One sets requirements; the other explains the sector’s good practice around them. Holding the citation base deliberately small keeps every sentence checkable: a reader who doubts a claim has at most two places to look.
Both documents live at public addresses, downloadable at no cost. The desk keeps local copies of the editions it cites, and checked its quotes against them on September 6, 2026.
Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management, August 2020
The Standard was published in August 2020 through the Global Tailings Review, an initiative whose public page records that it was co-convened by the International Council on Mining and Metals, the United Nations Environment Programme and the Principles for Responsible Investment. Its preamble states the goal of “zero harm to people and the environment with zero tolerance for human fatality”, and it organises safe tailings management into six topic areas and fifteen principles. Its public page counts 77 auditable requirements, and its annexes carry the glossary, the consequence classification tables and summary tables that the review note of this site reproduces in part.
The desk cites it as GISTM with principle and requirement numbers, for example Requirement 10.5 for the frequency of Dam Safety Reviews. The Standard’s public home is globaltailingsreview.org, where it can be read in several languages.
ICMM, Tailings Management: Good Practice Guide, May 2021
The International Council on Mining and Metals published this guide in May 2021. Its acknowledgements note that the writing team comprised representatives of member companies and associations rather than external consultants, and its foreword was written by Norbert Morgenstern, the geotechnical engineer whose lecture inspired the undertaking. The guide states plainly that it supports the requirements of the Standard: it adds sector practice on governance, engineering, water management, operations and closure, and it is the source of the closure planning list the first two notes of this site lean on.
ICMM keeps the guide at its own site, and the desk links the page that currently hosts the guide rather than a deep address that may move.
A second edition exists, dated February 2025
ICMM’s page now offers a second edition of the guide, dated February 2025, developed to strengthen approaches to the closure of tailings storage facilities, with clearer governance for closure and post-closure and better integration of closure planning into design and operations. Readers should treat ICMM’s page as authoritative for the current text. When this site quotes the guide, it quotes the May 2021 first edition it holds locally, and says so; where the second edition changes a passage this site relies on, the desk will re-verify and date the correction.
How the desk cites and checks
Quotes are short, appear inside quotation marks, and carry the chapter, principle or requirement number in the same paragraph or in the per-note source list. Passages were verified against the local copies on September 6, 2026, and both public pages were visited the same day to confirm the documents remain available and to confirm the existence of the 2025 second edition. The desk claims no affiliation with either publisher, and quotes under ordinary quotation practice.
One reading rule completes the picture: when the two documents are compared, the Standard wins. It sets the auditable requirements, including the consequence classification tables and the review frequencies; the guide explains practice around them. Whenever a note could be read as differing from the requirement text, the note quotes the requirement, and the guide is cited for context only. Readers who want a single bookmark should keep the Standard itself and treat this site as a lamp, not a road.
Reading order for this site
Start with what thickened tailings means, continue with the comparison of deposition methods, then the deposition plan and its connections, and finish with the review questions. The current ICMM guide page is at icmm.com/tailings-management.