Today, there are 2.2 billion people living without access to clean water and sanitation, a situation that is the focus of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6. It’s also the reason that, 30 years after its introduction, we still need to mark World Water Day on 22 March every year, to continue to promote change.
Water is vital to our business and our industry, as well as to all our stakeholders, the environment, and our host communities. Access to water is a fundamental human right and key to social equality and prosperity, and the vibrancy of the natural environment.
Our industry is a water-intensive one. And we expect water supplies around the world to remain under pressure due to the ongoing impact of climate change and the increasing number of extreme weather events. Based on the World Resource Institute’s (WRI) Aqueduct tool, we calculate that 83% of our operating sites are in water scarce or water stressed regions.
Our Sustainable Mining Plan (SMP) helps us to address these challenges. Water is one of the three global stretch goals that sit under its Healthy Environment pillar. The aim is to operate mines that use less fresh water in water scarce areas, with a goal of reducing the withdrawal of fresh water by 50% in water scarce areas by 2030 versus the 2015 baseline.
Water stewardship and management
To help us reach our goals and respond to the broader challenges, water stewardship is an integral part of how we operate across all our sites and we continue to increase our spend on improving water quality for our communities and the environment.
Our approach to how we use, manage, and care for water is guided by recognised international best practices for water management and stewardship.
Our own Group Water Management Standard provides further guidance for our work. The standard sets out minimum requirements for water management and incorporates leading water management practices, risk prevention, best mining practices, and industry lessons.
The standard also makes sure we incorporate water into the decision-making process at every stage of the lifecycle of each operation and ensures that is done in line with our Values, the Sustainable Mining Plan, and our Social Way. In 2023 we increased the implementation of the standard from 85% to 87.5% on average across our operations.
Progress
By the end of 2023, we had reduced fresh water withdrawals by 22% against the 2015 baseline that informs our SMP water goals. We are still on track to meet the 2030 target of a 50% reduction in fresh water withdrawals.
Our operations continue to improve their water re-use and recycling rates, reducing their reliance on fresh water. Group-wide water efficiency increased to 84% in 2023 (2022: 82%). We will continue to focus on efficiency at all our operations during 2024.
Next steps
This year, we will be extending our fit-for-purpose water efficiency programmes to more sites. We will work with them to implement the recommendations from our 2023 work. Together with the businesses, we will also be exploring the possibility of piloting a water quality data management system to create a ‘single source of truth’ for the Group.
We want to create a robust data storage and analysis solution so we have proactive responses to current and emerging water-related risks.