Our business and sustainable development
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Mining activities have inherently positive and negative social and environmental impacts on the communities that surround mining operations. Negative impacts are typically mitigated through, and positive impacts enhanced by, social and environmental management programmes. Positive impacts by the Group’s operations have included job creation, skills development, education and health investments, as well as business development and infrastructural provision. Negative impacts of mining typically include:
- social impacts such as the proliferation of internal settlements as job seekers move into areas adjacent to the mine;
- complaints of increased crime;
- environmental impacts such as noise, water pollution, boreholes running dry, and dust; and
- loss of agricultural land for subsistence farming.
André Britz capturing data from a continuous water monitoring point
OVERVIEW OF OUR BUSINESS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Mining is by its very nature not sustainable in perpetuity, as we mine ore bodies with finite lives. By mining, however, we extract metals society needs in order to address, among other things, air quality, and various medical and technological issues. Through our business we are able to employ a significant number of people who are often sole breadwinners, improve people’s skills levels, generate wealth for our shareholders and pay taxes to the State. Many of the benefits and skills created by mining will outlast the mining activities themselves. Therefore, although mining as an activity is not sustainable indefinitely, the opportunities we create for individuals and society however are.
Anglo Platinum’s operating mines are based in South Africa, which presents a unique sustainable development context. South Africa is a developmental state that experienced years of selected development during the apartheid period. This led to imbalances in South African society which the present government is attempting to rectify through numerous transformation programmes. To address many of these social imbalances in the mining industry, government developed the mining charter and its associated scorecard, which require mines to meet certain employment equity, and employee and community development targets, by 2009. Many of the Anglo Platinum social and employee programmes detailed in this report have been designed and implemented to meet the requirements of the mining charter.
South Africa is also a water-scarce country and in areas such as the Eastern Limb of the Bushveld Complex, years of underdevelopment have created imbalances in water resource distribution. Under the apartheid government, many traditional communities were forcibly moved into former so-called independent states. This led to high population densities around many of Anglo Platinum’s mining operations, such as those around Rustenburg and the Eastern Limb operations. High population densities and scarce natural resources have led to competing demands for access to natural and other resources, such as land, in these areas. These competing forces have led to conflicts between the Company and the surrounding communities, eg communities around Mogalakwena. The MPRDA, under which mines are governed, fully embraces the concept of sustainable development in section 37, where it references the National Environmental Management Act’s definition of sustainable development as “the integration of social, economic and environmental factors into planning, implementation and decision-making so as to ensure that development serves present and future generations”. The MPRDA requires all mining operations to have social and labour plans and environmental management programmes in place, and to comply with, and publicly report on, progress towards meeting the requirements of the mining charter. The Group uses this report to provide feedback on our progress towards meeting the charter.
Although Anglo Platinum is primarily South African-based, we still have to address many global sustainability challenges, such as climate change and the protection of biodiversity. Therefore, both South African and global sustainability issues are discussed in this report.