2470 INNOVATION AND ACTION FOR NATURE-POSITIVE MINING Integrating Economic Development, Environmental Protection, and Cultural Transformation Lusine Manucharyan, DipSBP, MISEP, CEnv, ¹Armenian Mining and Metallurgical Association, Armenia ² Zangezur Copper-Molybdenum Combine, Armenia Presenting author: lusine.manucharyan@zcmc.com ABSTRACT The demand for critical minerals is rising with the energy transition, digital technologies, infrastructure renewal, and population growth. Mining will remain essential, but its contribution to development depends on whether projects protect natural capital rather than treating environmental costs as secondary. This paper examines how responsible mining can move from mitigation and compliance toward restoration, regeneration, and nature-positive performance. It synthesizes international standards, including ICMM Mining Principles, Towards Sustainable Mining, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, IPBES assessments, and TNFD recommendations, and proposes a collaborative governance mechanism for governments, mining companies, financial institutions, scientific institutions, communities, civil society, and Women in Mining networks. The paper gives particular attention to biodiversity, closure planning, financial assurance, transparent monitoring, professional capacity, and post-mining land use. The IPBES 2019 Global Assessment showed that approximately one million species are threatened with extinction, while the 2026 IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment strengthens the case for measuring business dependencies and impacts on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people. These findings support a clear conclusion: doing less harm is not enough where ecosystems are already degraded. Mining policy should therefore require legally binding restoration obligations, progressive rehabilitation, naturerelated disclosure, inclusive governance, and early planning for post-mining economic uses. By connecting environmental stewardship with competitiveness, trust, and local development, the framework positions mining not only as a supplier of minerals, but as a sector capable of supporting ecological recovery and social resilience over the full mine life cycle. KEYWORDS Nature-positive mining; restoration; biodiversity; sustainable development; environmental governance; post-mining revitalization; collaborative governance; Women in Mining; TNFD; nature-related disclosure; IPBES 1. INTRODUCTION The world faces a practical paradox: the transition to low-carbon energy systems, advanced technologies, and resilient infrastructure requires large quantities of minerals, yet mineral extraction can significantly alter ecosystems and landscapes. Meeting future demand responsibly is therefore one of the defining challenges of the twenty-first century. Global environmental indicators show that mitigation-focused sustainability approaches are no longer sufficient. The IPBES Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services reported in 2019 that human activity has significantly altered most terrestrial and marine ecosystems and that approximately one million species are threatened with extinction. Later IPBES assessments, including the 2022 Values Assessment and the 2026 Business and Biodiversity Assessment, further show that economic activity depends on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people. For mining, this means that
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