Responsible environmental stewardship is about protecting and preserving natural resources for the greater good of all our stakeholders. In this section, we illustrate our impact on natural capital and the value we create in integrating environmental stewardship into our strategic decision making.

While we harness natural resources, we endeavour to reduce the impact of environmental pollutants by:

• Ensuring all mining and related activities are appropriately authorised
• Complying with all statutory environmental requirements as a minimum
• Using energy and water as efficiently as possible
• Operating responsibly from the twin perspectives of compliance and natural resource use
• Actively participating in voluntary benchmarks such as the global carbon and water disclosure projects
• Developing innovative policies and programmes to address environmental impacts and the use of natural resources

Our all-encompassing group standards ensure we comply with legal requirements and use natural resources responsibly.

We have embedded management standards for air quality, water, energy, rehabilitation and mine closure, as well as environmental incident management and reporting, into each BUs activities. Our BUs also maintain ISO 14001 certification that outlines effective environmental management requirements.

Our operations in South Africa have environmental management programmes, as required by the MRDPA and the NEMA. These programmes ensure our long-term sustainability. The precautionary principle entrenched in the National Environmental Management Act guides us in evaluating environmental impacts of current activities and future business opportunities. In addition, our operations have at least one integrated water use licence.

OUTLOOK

Our environmental management challenges include constraints in implementing legislation regulated by the DMRE.

We are exposed to significant risks when permits are delayed. These permits include WULs aligned with mineral rights and environmental licensing procedures. Our endeavours are also constrained while we wait for the integration of complex proposed laws dealing with climate change, pollution prevention and carbon tax. We expect climate change action to restrict the use of fossil fuels by national governments, investors and financial institutions. This will intensify as we approach the Conference of the Parties (CoP) Session 26 in Glasgow, Scotland, later in 2021. We remain focused on transitioning our business portfolio and making it resilient to the 1.5ºC world.