This guidance highlights the key issues, benchmarks, and standards in four main areas of environmental management in mining—water, biodiversity, waste management, and emergency preparedness and response—and governments' role in ensuring that each is managed in support of sustainable development.

The mining sector will play a key role in the transition toward a low-carbon future.

In a region already considered the world's most water scarce and where, in many places, demand for water already outstrips supply, climate models are predicting a hotter, drier and less predictable climate in the Middle East. By redrawing maps of water availability, food security, disease prevalence, population