Governance and accountability
Our President and CEO is ultimately responsible for environmental and social management with our Group Sustainability Executive and our Director, Reclamation and Closuretaking a lead in driving the implementation of our environmental and social policies, the associated procedures and overall performance – including for closure planning.
The Group Sustainability Executive is supported by regional-level environmental leads as well as dedicated site-level environmental teams who drive implementation at the operational level, and our social teams who help drive develop programmes throughout the mine life that deliver positive social closure.
Policies and procedures
Our approach to mine closure reflects our ambition to share the benefits with stakeholders. Even in closure, our goal is to maximize the value for the local community. How we manage both the environmental and social aspects of closure is set out in our Closure Standard – which was refreshed in 2022. This requires us to:
- Apply a mitigation hierarchy to manage our negative environmental impacts, so we avoid these wherever possible and minimize those which cannot be avoided;
- Minimize our use of water and control our impacts on water quality;
- Engage with stakeholders including local communities to support sustainable management of water resources for the benefit of all local users; and
- Use energy as efficiently as possible.
To deliver on our commitments under our Closure Standard and applicable regulatory requirements, we establish closure plans for all our mines before construction begins. These plans outline the steps to be taken throughout the mine life to deliver an effective and environmentally sound end to operations, including rehabilitation of the surrounding area and protection of water resources. These plans are regularly updated, and a proportion of each mine’s annual budget is set aside and ringfenced each year to ensure all closure obligations are met.
All operational sites develop detailed and quantifiable concurrent rehabilitation plans each year and we report annually in our sustainability report on the total amount of land disturbed and not yet rehabilitated at our mine sites.
Our closure plans identify steps to be taken throughout mine life to deliver safe and sustainable closure from an environmental perspective, as well as elements of social closure. The plans are designed to be iterative and agile, while considering long term principles, and are regularly updated.
We regularly undertake Closure Cost Assessments to review and update each operations closure costs and update budgets and financial planning. These reviews are undertaken both internally and by external consultants and reviewed by our auditors.
Key targets and metrics
- Proportion of operational sites achieving annual reclamation targets.
- Annually we also report:
- Total land disturbed and not yet rehabilitated
- Total amount of land newly disturbed
- Total amount of land newly rehabilitated or divested
- Total land disturbed and not yet rehabilitated