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World Habitat Day

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World Habitat Day 2022

The United Nations’ World Habitat Day, which is the first Monday of October every year, reminds us of the world’s collective responsibility for the future of the human habitat. This year’s theme of ‘Mind the Gap. Leave No One and Place Behind’ analyses the global issue of growing inequality amongst communities and settlements.

It seeks to draw attention to the growing inequalities and vulnerabilities that have been exacerbated by the Triple ‘C’ crisis of Covid-19, climate change and conflict — issues that Barrick has been focused on for many years already.

Leave no one and place behind

At Barrick we believe sustainability aspects and impacts do not occur in silos, but rather overlap and interlink, and must be tackled in conjunction with and reference to each other.

We cannot isolate sustainability aspects and focus our attention in siloed thinking as this will only cause unintended consequences and impacts elsewhere. We call this approach Holistic and Integrated Sustainability Management.

The thinking of ‘Leave no one and place behind’ is well summarised in ‘The Barrick Approach’ which shows the interlinks between tackling poverty, to ensure no one is left behind, and biodiversity loss and building climate resilience.

The Barrick Approach
Leaving developing countries behind

Leaving developing countries behind

Operating on a global footprint, Barrick saw first hand how developing countries were quickly forgotten during the Covid-19 vaccination roll out. The availability and access to vaccinations within our developing countries occurred far later than the access to vaccinations in developed countries.

As the world tackles climate change, and is grappling with biodiversity loss, we risk further exacerbating socio-economic challenges and impacting the vulnerable if developing countries and our communities are not put at the forefront of this development, and without holistic and integrated sustainability management.

Barrick tackles poverty through:

  • Our Primacy of Partnership and sharing the benefits of our operations.
  • In 2021, $10.1 billion of economic value was distributed in our host countries of operations, including in-country procurement of $5.5 billion, $2.7 billion in payments to governments through taxes and royalties and $1.8 billion as payment to employees.
  • More than 80% of all procurement is to host-national companies, ensuring spend remains in-country and driving the multiplier effect of our spend as each host-national company employees further employees.
  • 96% of our employees are host country nationals, and 78% of our leadership team are host country nationals.
  • We further invested $26.5 million in community development projects, focused on education, access to health care, water, food security and local economic development. These development pillars aim to develop the sustainability of our communities, eradicate poverty, build community resilience and enable access to opportunities to improve the livelihood of those communities.

Protecting biodiversity is inextricably linked to the fight against climate change

World Habitat Day cannot be discussed without speaking to biodiversity, which underpins many of the ecosystem services on which our mines and their surrounding communities depend. Protecting biodiversity and preventing nature loss is also critical and inextricably linked to the fight against climate change.

Our approach is informed by international best practice, and we require all our operational sites to implement Biodiversity Action Plans (BAP). BAPs detail the flora, fauna and habitats on and around the site and outline the strategy we will follow to achieve a net neutral biodiversity impact. They also specify the resources required to put the plan into action and identify key institutional and local community partnerships to aid the implementation and review of the plan.

To reinforce our biodiversity commitments and translate them into clear actions to be taken on the ground, in early 2022, we developed a new biodiversity standard for Barrick. We call these actions Measurable Conservation Actions (MCAs), and MCAs are a key part of our biodiversity strategy. MCAs target the enhancement of Key Biodiversity Features and/or biodiversity of higher conservation value in an effort to achieve conservation gains.

  • An example where our MCAs are being implemented is the Garamba National Park in the DRC and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, located approximate 70 km from our Kibali Gold Mine.
  • Barrick has partnered with African Parks for the protection and restoration of this park, the oldest in Africa.
  • Just as critical to meeting biodiversity goals is to understand the relationship between the natural environment and the communities that depend on it. That is why our support also includes livelihood support for the adjacent communities.

In a year when headlines were dominated by Covid-19 and the COP26 climate change meetings in Glasgow, we showed leadership and demonstrable progress in areas such as poverty alleviation and environmental stewardship.

Greater Sage-Grouse habitat restoration and preservation