Jurisdiction

Jurisdictional context matters because mining assets usually depend on long-lived licences, predictable regulation, government approvals, access to public infrastructure, customs and trade settings, tax rules, security conditions and relationships with national or regional authorities.

Two assets can look similar geologically but carry very different diligence priorities if they sit in different institutional and political environments. Country-level indicators help make those differences visible during early screening, especially when comparing assets across many regions.

Global Mining Dataset provides jurisdiction context at country level. It is designed to support prioritisation and comparison, not to replace legal, permitting, political-risk or local stakeholder due diligence.

Country context is the anchor for jurisdiction screening. Each asset is associated with a country and, where available, a standard country code so country-level governance and fragility indicators can be compared consistently.

Country-level context is useful for first-pass screening because many mining risks are shaped by national institutions, even when the most important project-specific issues are local.

Governance indicators describe the institutional environment in which licences, contracts, public services, regulation and government commitments are managed.

For mining assets, governance context can be relevant to permitting confidence, policy stability, licence administration, infrastructure coordination, contract enforcement and compliance exposure. Strong governance indicators do not remove project risk, but weak indicators can signal where diligence should look more closely at institutional capacity and decision-making reliability.

The governance indicators are based on the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators. Scores are expressed on a 0 to 100 scale, where higher values indicate stronger governance performance.

Governance indicators do not capture every type of national pressure that can affect a mining asset. A country may have specific social, economic, security or state-capacity pressures that are not fully visible in a governance-only view.

The Fragile States Index provides a complementary view of these pressures. It is useful for identifying jurisdictions where social cohesion, public services, legitimacy, security or economic pressure may affect the broader operating environment.

Country risk is the main screening measure exposed in the Screening workflow. It combines governance and fragility context into a country-level risk score so assets can be sorted and filtered consistently.

The country risk score is directional: higher values indicate a more challenging country-risk context. It is useful for comparing large asset sets, but it should not be interpreted as a full political-risk rating or a project-level investment conclusion.

The jurisdiction score is a mining-oriented summary of the strongest jurisdiction drivers in the dataset. It places more emphasis on political stability, regulatory quality, corruption control and fragility because those factors are often more immediately relevant to early mining diligence.

The score should be read as a prioritisation signal. A high score means the jurisdiction context deserves closer review; it does not mean the asset is unattractive. A low score means country-level pressure appears lower in the available indicators; it does not mean the project is free from permitting, legal or local stakeholder risk.

Critical-mineral status is not a governance or country-risk measure, but it is often reviewed alongside jurisdiction data. It helps identify assets whose commodities are listed as critical or strategic by major policy markets.

This can matter because critical-mineral status may affect funding priorities, offtake interest, policy support, strategic partnerships and supply-chain screening. It does not mean an asset is permitted, economically viable or strategically important by itself.

Jurisdiction indicators are intended to answer a broad screening question: what is the institutional, political and state-risk context of the country in which this asset is located?

They are most useful when comparing assets across multiple countries, building a geographically diverse shortlist, or identifying where country-level conditions should be weighted more heavily in the next stage of review.

The indicators do not assess:

• Mining-specific legislation
• Royalties, taxation or fiscal stability
• Individual permitting requirements
• Licence security
• Foreign ownership restrictions
• Sanctions or trade restrictions
• Provincial, state or local political conditions
• Community relationships
• Asset-specific legal agreements
• Recent policy changes after the latest source data

These factors can materially affect an individual mining project and should be reviewed separately where jurisdiction is important to the analysis.

Jurisdiction screening combines country-level governance and fragility references with market-specific critical-mineral reference lists.

Jurisdiction indicators operate at country level. They provide a consistent first-pass comparison, but they do not describe the exact conditions around an individual asset.

Conditions can vary substantially within a country, especially in large, federal or decentralised jurisdictions. Mining-specific rules, regional governments, local communities, infrastructure access, licence terms and project agreements can all make an asset's real risk profile materially different from the national picture.

Governance and fragility sources also reflect their own methodologies and reporting periods. They may not immediately capture recent elections, conflict, regulatory reforms, sanctions, court decisions or major policy announcements.

Jurisdiction screening should therefore be used to identify where deeper political, regulatory, legal and local diligence should be prioritised, not as a substitute for that diligence.