Communities
Our approach
Our standing social performance requirements, who holds them, and how we record and track a commitment made to a community.
The principle
A mining activity occupies ground that people use, and its effects are borne locally while its benefits are frequently distributed elsewhere. That asymmetry is the reason social performance requires a framework rather than goodwill. Ours is designed to do three things: to establish what the effects are before they occur, to give the people affected a route to raise what the assessment missed, and to record what we promised so that it can be checked.
Key facts
Commitments register
We record commitments with an owner and a date, because drift is the common failure mode.
Impact assessment
We integrate impact assessment into permitting and closure planning, not beside them.
Cultural heritage
Where work uncovers an unrecorded heritage site, work stops and we secure the area.
Monitoring
Engagement, grievances and commitments are recorded and monitored, and the results are reported.
Requirements
The commitments register
We record a commitment made to a community in a meeting, in an environmental instrument or in an agreement, with the person who made it, the date, the substance and the date by which it is to be met. We review the register on a defined cycle and report the status of each commitment to the community concerned. This exists because the most common failure in community relations is not refusal but drift: a commitment made by one person, in one meeting, that nobody subsequently owns.
Responsibilities
Responsibility for stakeholder engagement, for the handling of grievances, and for communication and outreach appropriate to the communities concerned is assigned within the Group and named in the governing policy. So is responsibility for the social performance arrangements, for implementation of the policy and for supporting impact assessment and reporting. Our operations teams are responsible for applying the policy in daily activity and for commitments made to communities in respect of their operations. Responsibility for identifying the legal requirements that apply, and changes in them, is assigned in the same way.
Monitoring
Responsibility for monitoring and for reporting its results is assigned within the Group and named in the governing policy. Monitoring covers the engagements held and the matters raised, the grievances received, the time taken to deal with them and their outcome, local employment and local procurement, community investment activity, and stakeholder feedback.
The standards applied
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights; the IFC Performance Standards, in particular Performance Standard 5 on land acquisition and involuntary resettlement, Performance Standard 7 on Indigenous peoples and Performance Standard 8 on cultural heritage; the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct; and, as a structuring reference for the presentation of information, ESRS S3 on affected communities.
Raising a concern
Employees, suppliers, communities and any other party may raise a concern through the confidential reporting channels. We provide for anonymous reporting, and we do not tolerate retaliation against a person who raises a concern in good faith.
