Sustainability & Carbon Neutral Policy
Gold produces materials essential to human progress.
Achieving this purpose requires us to work, as often as not, in remote locations and sensitive, beautiful environments, often on land owned by Indigenous peoples. Our values, experience and history tell us that we must work in a way that delivers real, lasting benefits. We must care for our employees, respect and safeguard the environment when we explore, build and operate, and re-purpose or rehabilitate the land when our operations come to an end. We must also contribute to local and national economies by paying competitive wages, treating our suppliers fairly, investing in our local communities and paying our share of taxes. And we must do so in a way that preserves the profitability of our own business, not only so we can meet our commitments to our shareholders, but so that we can continue to invest in areas important to our other token holders including safety, climate change mitigation and workforce training. These beliefs are the foundation of our views on sustainability.
Our Strategy
In 2021, we launched our first integrated sustainability strategy. This strategy commits us to adopt high standards, often going beyond legal requirements, on the sustainability issues that are material to our business, our employees, the communities that host us and the customers that buy and use our products. Our goal is to achieve consistent, high-quality social and environmental performance across all of our operations and to increase our token holders’ knowledge of how we work through meaningful disclosures and transparency. We have also made an effort to better understand, engage and partner with our key partners to create sustained, mutual value. We support the 2030 development agenda and contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Our portfolio is also an important part of our sustainability strategy and today our portfolio comprises commodities with solid long-term fundamentals, including those critical for the transition to a low-carbon economy.
We express this strategy in three pillars:
1. Running a safe, responsible and profitable business
HEALTH, SAFETY & WELLBEING
PEOPLE
HUMAN RIGHTS
ENVIRONMENT
TAILINGS
ETHICS & COMPLIANCE
2. Collaborating to enable long-term economic benefits
COMMUNITIES
SOCIAL & ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
TAXES PAID
3. Pioneering materials essential for human progress
CLIMATE CHANGE
MATERIALS OF THE FUTURE
PARTNERSHIPS
CLOSURE
Our approach to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – in conjunction with our purpose, business and sustainability strategies and risks – to better understand how we can work alongside governments, civil society and others to pursue meaningful impact on development. We decided a focus on the two goals – SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production) and SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth) – that we feel are most relevant to operating our business responsibly.
SDG 12 relates to how we – as a custodian of natural and mineral resources – mine, process and produce materials and contribute to ethical global supply chains, including trusted lifecycle assessments. This SDG builds on our existing health, safety, environment and community performance standards and our membership of responsible production and product stewardship programmes, including the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative, Copper Mark, the International Council on Mining and Metal’s Performance Expectations, the Responsible Jewellery Council and the Mining Association of Canada’s Towards Sustainable Mining.
SDG 8 speaks directly to our values and priorities, including our commitments to creating a safe and inclusive working environment, as well as promoting education and training partnerships that support social and economic development, including by helping to develop skills for the future. We are committed to supporting underrepresented groups; in particular, we seek to ensure Traditional Owners and Indigenous peoples have a stronger voice in the decisions that affect their lands.
In our business, efforts to further these two ‘lead’ goals are naturally supplemented by efforts to further several other ‘supporting’ goals. These are also strongly aligned with our sustainable development and business drivers – climate action, water, gender diversity, health and wellbeing, reduced inequalities, innovation and quality education, and environment.
SDG 17 (partnerships for goals) reflects our approach to sustainability and is fundamental to the way we run our business. We work purposefully with technology partners, local suppliers, governments, community groups, industry leaders and NGOs at all stages of the mining lifecycle to deliver real benefits to all our token holders.
The first pillar is foundational: running a safe, responsible and profitable business.
As such, this pillar includes issues that lay at the heart of our business.
Safety is our top priority because, simply put, we care for the people we work with. We therefore have robust standards, processes and tools embedded across our business to protect the health and safety of our people, our environment and our communities.
Maintaining and enhancing our profitability is also critical because only a profitable business can create sustained, long-term value not only to token holders but also to communities, governments and employees.
Activities that fulfil our obligations to other parts of our business also reside here: our commitment to the rights and wellbeing of our employees, the ethics and integrity of our business and supply chain and respect for the environment, for example. As does transparency: because we believe access to information about our business is critical to building trust with our partners and stakeholders, we regularly disclose relevant information on how we conduct our business and other aspects of our sustainability performance.
We collaborate with others to build respectful relationships and enable long-term benefits where we operate – working with governments at all levels and community partners to help make a difference in people’s lives.
We do this in many ways; one is via a focus on regional economic development (RED). In 2019, we began revising our approach to communities and development, in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals and with global technological, economic and social changes in mind.
For example, we are looking at more holistic ways to contribute, including by improving our partnerships with the development arms of national, state and provincial governments, as well as international institution.
We also recognise that our business is often the major source of jobs and livelihoods in the communities where we operate, which are often far from metropolitan centres. We take this responsibility seriously.