Barrick Mining Corporation (ABX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

The objective of today's engagement is to present our 2020 Sustainability Report and have a conversation with you as stakeholders around our sustainability strategy and how this drives performance and delivers on the concept of growing the path. Getting this right enables us to not only deliver on our commitments to be responsible stewards of our environment, nurture and bolt on our relationship with our employees, communities and host countries, but to ultimately [ general ] on our vision to become the world's most valued gold miner. That is what we refer to as growing the path. The more we grow it, the more we have to share. Sustainability and all its components is the very foundation of how we conduct our business. And for me, it's been so since we started Randgold Resources back in 1995. Learning everything we do and have done is what informs our future plans and priorities, and we will be sharing that with you as well. Like the rest of the world, COVID-19 has changed the way we do things, and it's something we have had to learn to [ get well ]. We, however, do not treat it as an excuse to dial back any of the momentum we have gained as a company on sustainability commitments. Caring for the well-being of our employees and communities is a key characteristic of the Barrick DNA. Our financial strength, well established prevention practices and procedures and the experience we gained from dealing with 2 [indiscernible] pandemics around our African operations stood us in good stead as we face this new and unprecedented challenge. The strong partnerships we have developed with our host countries and communities have enabled us to quickly understand their needs during this pandemic. In addition, having forums such as our Community Development Committees in each operation has enabled us to have a conduit to the community to transfer as well as receive information and ensure agile management of the situation. With me today, I have a number of members of our sustainability team from all regions across the group. For us at Barrick, sustainability and ESG is not a corporate compliance function, that's something which is integral to every operation and part of our business and is owned by the teams who run our businesses across the world. Grant Beringer, our executive for sustainability, leads that team and he will do much of the talking. But before handing over to him, I would like to talk to you about sustainability strategy. Whilst there will be time to ask questions at the end, I would encourage people to submit questions as we go through the presentation via Webex -- the Webex Q&A platform, please. Also, please note -- take note of the top [ quarterly ], which is available also on our website. To be world-class, you have to be global. And to be global, [ while ] needing to be able to operate in different geopolitical regions, adding and maintaining a social license, which is key to any activity relating to gold mining. This all goes to our sustainability philosophy and strategy, and it is something we believe separates us from the rest of the industry. Sustainability has long been a strategic business priority for Barrick. As I have already explained, it is entrenched in Barrick's very DNA and integrated across our organization and informs every decision we make. There are 4 key pillars to our strategy. To create economic benefits is the first. We do this by focusing on quality mining assets and sustainable profitability, and this allows us to pull and act as partners with our host governments, communities, employees and business partners and other stakeholders. That means hiring and buying locally; paying the right amount of tax in the right place at the right time; putting communities in the driving seat when it comes to their local development through the Community Development Committee or CDC model we deploy at all our starts; and in some cases, mostly in the African and Middle East region and more recently at [ NGM ], joint ownership structures with governments. Number 2 is to protect health and safety. We put in place the policies, procedures, systems and standards to improve risk awareness and prevent accidents. When incidents do happen, they are investigated thoroughly with supervision from executive management and the lessons shared across the group. In African and Middle East region, it also means investing in programs to tackle HIV and malaria, both on site and within our communities. Number 3, the respect of human rights. Respect for human rights is a foundational value at Barrick. We work across a diverse range of [ surgical ], economic and political contexts, and we are very much part of the fabric of society in the communities and countries we operate in. We know our activities and the activities of those with who we do business can both promote and negatively impact human rights. We acknowledge our responsibility and the opportunity to contribute to realizing human rights for people around the world. And finally, minimizing our environmental impacts. We know that as a mining company, our activities do impact, both positively and negatively, the environment. We also believe that as a modern mining company, we must [ advantage ], mitigate and repurpose those impacts. We know that our strategy works not only because we have been doing it for more than 20 years in the former Randgold Resources, but also that we are seeing it pay dividends in our year-on-year performance as Barrick. This slide summarizes some of our key achievements over the past year. In terms of environmental incidents, we again had 0 Class 1 environmental incidents and have driven [ caused ] new incidents down from more than 30 to 8 from [ 3 merchant tides ]. We have also worked hard to improve our water use, recycling and reusing wastewater wherever possible. In 2020, we had a 75% reuse and recycling target, and we achieved 79%. Our operational starts now have fully functional Community Development Committees and key to listen to and jointly develop plans to encourage our communities to benefit from and be part of our businesses. A standout achievement has been our progress with regards to climate change. We have updated our emissions reduction target to 30% by 2030 against our consolidated 2018 baseline. Grant will talk to our carbon strategy in more detail later in this presentation. Linked to our strategy is how we manage sustainability. As I've already touched on, for us at Barrick, sustainability or ESG is not a corporate function with the aim of ticking boxes to manage investor expectations. Our approach to sustainability management starts with exploration, and it progresses to our operations throughout the mining cycle. That is where our business is, so that is where the heart of our sustainability commitment and strategy lies. As part of this, [ each dots ] reports in sustainability performance through a range of [ emphasis ] and KPIs on a monthly basis. This information is then reviewed and analyzed by regional leads and presented on a regional basis to the group's sustainability executive with any levers or laggards identified. We practice data not because it's trendy to do so, but either when you measure what you do, you are able to track performance and ensure delivery, and that adds value to our business. While we favor and encourage bi-level responsibility for sustainability, support oversight and guidance is provided by specialists, regional leads and the group sustainability executive, of course. And accountability for performance ultimately resides with myself and then the Board of Directors. The group's sustainability executive reports on sustainability related issues to the Executive Committee on a weekly basis. This includes health and safety performance, any grievances raised and any challenges emerging as well as production at some of our community and new business projects. Above Ex Co, that is the Executive Committee for the Barrick Group, we have the Environmental and Social Oversight Committee, which is a Board-level committee chaired by myself. This committee meets once a quarter and brings together the group's sustainability executive, regional chief operating officers, the general managers of each mine, regional sustainability leads and site-level sustainability representatives and independent sustainability consultants to discuss performance and any emerging issues. These [ and then delivered ] from these meetings are then provided and discussed at the Board quarterly begins. Thank you for listening, ladies and gentlemen. And I'll now hand over to Grant to address some parts of our sustainability and ESG performance in more detail.

Thanks, Mark, and good morning or afternoon to you all. We at Barrick are encouraged that ESG as an investment thesis has moved from the mainstreams -- from the margins to the mainstream. However, we also recognize the challenges it presents with the number of disclosures, tools and metrics used to score a company's performance ever increasing. The point is that it's hard to know what good looks like, particularly if you are new to our industry. That is one of the reasons why during the 2019 sustainability report process, we developed our Sustainability Scorecard. The scorecard, which is a first for our industry, sets out those sustainability issues we believe most relevant not just for our business, but for the gold mining industry. We use the scorecard to benchmark ourselves against our peers as well as driving internal performance. Like everything we do, we take that scorecard back to the sites and the regions to understand where we are performing, but most importantly, where we need to improve. Results ensure we focus our efforts appropriately. Our scorecard is broken into 5 subsections which reflect our 4 core strategic pillars, with a fifth category focused on governance aspects. Just last year, we have improved on almost all metrics, achieving the targets we set ourselves internally. Most notably, all our sites are accredited to ISO 14001 in 2020 except for North Mara, which received its certification in February this year. We also are well on track to achieving our 2021 target of having all operations certified to ISO 45001 with North Mara, again, achieving this earlier this year. We have gained significant progress in implementing the World Gold Council's Responsible Gold Mining Principles and the ICMM's Mining Principles with every site completing the self-assessment process ahead of the stipulated schedule. And as Mark has already mentioned, we have improved on our order efficiencies, greenhouse gas emissions and successfully implemented CDCs at all our operational sites. However, despite our improved safety performance in 2020 compared to that of 2019, we unfortunately recorded a fatality during the year. This tragedy occurred underground at the Kibali gold mine where [indiscernible], who worked as an underground service truck operator, became trapped between [ 2 beams ]. One fatality is too many and does not meet our definition of safe. Thus, we ranked ourselves on the [ low percentile ] for 2020. Overall, we improved our score from 36 to 33 and retained the B-grade. We feel this is a fair reflection of the significant progress made during 2020, but that we still have not met all the standards we have set and expect of ourselves. In keeping with our belief in continued improvement, this year's scorecard includes new and additional metrics, which will be used to assess our 2021 performance. It is important to note that the scorecard and our performance against it has led to our long-term [ contingent ] program. In terms of health and safety, we believe in aligning with internationally recognized management standards. Previously, 3 sites, Kibali, Loulo-Gounkoto and Tongon were certified to the ISO 45001 standard. And as already stated, earlier this year, North Mara gold mine was added to this list, with all other operational sites well on track to be certified by the end of this year. Throughout 2020, we've invested a lot of energy in improving our safety performance from last year, which we acknowledged was not good enough. One such improvement initiative was our group-wide journey to zero harm, which has assisted us in driving [ we get ] on lost time and total injuries. a program that we will continue to reinforce at all our sites during the course of this year and beyond. In terms of our safety performance for 2020, as I said before, we saw a significant improvement across the group with a 32% and 25% decrease year-on-year for lost time injuries and total reportable injuries, respectively. The improvement and conductive paranoia to improve our safety was epitomized by the LATAM and Asia Pacific region. Rob Sheahan will now take us through how this was achieved. Over to you, Rob.

Thank you very much, Grant, and good morning, good afternoon to all of you. My name is Rob Sheahan. I'm the Health and Safety Manager for Latin America and Asia Pacific region. So in 2020, LATAM recorded an LTIFR of 0.17 and a TRIFR of 0.76 per million hours worked, exceeding the regional improvement goal above measures by a substantial margin. The cornerstone of the improvement was better communication. During 2020, we implemented weekly safety calls between myself and all regional operating and exploration sites. These provide a regular forum to discuss health and safety success, challenges and emerging issues. This has also led to the generation of cost communication between sites and with our other regions. Through all of this, it is evident that silos are coming down and we visibly share in our success and our challenges. We also focus on knowledge sharing, so flash and summary reports of incidents that occur across the group are shared with all sites. These incidents are discussed during the weekly safety calls, along with potential risk control measures for each site to prevent similar incidents occurring. Under the new system, after a recordable or high-potential incident, the site team from where the incident occurred, alongside the site health and safety team, provide a report and a presentation to the regional safety team regarding the incident. Thank you very much.

Moving onto the social and economic aspects of our business now. Since the merger, there has been a strong focus on building our social license to operate as seen by the highlights shown on the slide. In terms of community investment, as highlighted earlier in our strategy, we placed a lot of emphasis on community development and partnership. And in 2020, we spent more than $26 million on [ sandal ] community development projects and an additional $30 million was spent on COVID-related support for our communities. Key to achieving this was the formation of Community Development Committees at our operational sites, enabling our host communities to be part of a -- to be the heart of the decision-making regarding community development. We believe that this renewed and improved social license is down to the following 3 main principles. The first is the primacy of partnership. Our approach to partnership is typified by our Community Development Committees or CDCs. Each CDC is made up of a mix of local leaders and community members, and their role is to allocate the community investment budgets to those projects most needed by the local communities. Secondly, the sharing of benefits. We do this through global hiring and buying, our tax contributions and our community development investments. As noted already, we spent more than $4.5 billion on local and in-company suppliers, and 97% of our workforce are nationals. These are tangible benefits that leave a lasting legacy. And the third principle is engaging and listening to stakeholders. Like everything we do, we consider the most effective engagement, that which is delivered on the ground at the local level. Further to this, at most of our operations, we invite labor representatives and trade unions to attend the mine's quarterly Board meetings, and we consult them on many key business facilities, including cost of use. Alissa will now talk to us on how we have used these partnerships with our communities to assist them during the COVID pandemic. And thereafter, Hilaire will discuss how the CDC model at North Mara has gone a long way to partnering with our communities there. Over to you, Alissa.

Thank you, Grant. So as Grant said, my name is Alissa Wood, and I'm the Head of Communities and Corporate Affairs for Nevada Gold Mine. Like many parts of the world, the local economy surrounding NGM was hit hard by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, NGM launched the innovative I-80 Fund, which is essentially a fund to provide local small businesses with vital support through low interest loans, with the primary goal to ease the burden on NGM's host communities until the economy stabilized. A partnership approach is center to the success of this fund. The loans are administered through Rural Nevada Development Corporation, known as RNDC, a local nonprofit. NGM made the initial $5 million investment and reached out to other industry partners to participate so as to help grow the fund and make it more sustainable. To date, we have 6 participating vendors contributing almost $250,000 to the fund. And since its launch in July 2020, the I-80 Fund has approved a total of 20 small business loans in the amount of $2 million, which I think shows the need to fund builds within our small business community. We are very proud of this initiative. And what's really neat is that we've been able to take this model and establish similar funds in AME and LATAM. Now I'll turn it over to Hilaire to go over the North Mara case study. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Alissa and Grant. A key -- I'm Hilaire Diarra. I'm Head of Sustainability AME for Barrick. A key area of focus as we assume operational control of the former Acacia assets in quarter 4 has been the restoration of the social license to operate at North Mara. Spending a lot of time in-country and on-site at the time of the acquisition, I can attest to the complete lack of relationship between Acacia and the 11 villages surrounding the mines in the past. [indiscernible] our team started on. This, including the establishment of the CDC that Grant mentioned to oversee local community investment and to partner with the community, it hasn't always been easy as the community was used to empty promises and have grown disillusioned. However, through continual engagement and honest communication, by taking time to listen and sticking to our word, we are starting to see real progress. While still new, the North Mara CDC has been key to this change.

Thank you, Alissa and Hilaire. Our approach to our relationships with our indigenous partners is no different, and we see them as important partners in our business. We strive to create genuine partnerships that build long-term capacity and legacies within our host indigenous communities with regular, open and transparent engagement. In our Hemlo mine in Canada, we have recently concluded the renewal of our social economic payable agreements, which Karen will talk us through. And then we'll hand over to Joe Mike, who will take us through our progress with the Native American communities in Nevada.

Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Karen Osadchuk, and I'm the Sustainability Manager at the Hemlo mine in Northwestern Ontario in Canada. The Hemlo mine in Northwestern Ontario sits on the traditional territories of the Anishnaabe Ojibway of the Biigtigong Nishnaabeg and Netmizaaggamig Pic Mobert. Our goal is to foster genuine partnerships and deliver on our commitments to our indigenous partners. In 2020, we negotiated new partnerships agreements with Biigtigong and Pic Mobert. Collectively, the agreements are valued at more than CAD 9 million and are categorized as socioeconomic benefit and cooperation agreements. These new agreements included requirements for the establishment of CDCs. The establishment of CDCs has helped to build relationships with these important communities, and through that, understand their long-term strategic plans and ambitions and how we can meaningfully contribute to the achievement of those plans. It has positively changed the nature and the depth of our engagement with our indigenous partners from transactional to partnership. As we are looking to extend Hemlo's life, this sets an exciting foundation for our future legacy. Thank you.

Joe, over to you.

Hi, my name is Joe Mike, Head of Native American Affairs for Nevada Gold Mines here in Nevada. Our operations in Northern Nevada take place on or around the traditionally inhabited lands of the Native Americans of the region. Our relationship with our 10 Native American partner tribes is very important, and we focus on engagement, inclusion and collaboration to build and sustain the relationship. Our commitment is set out in a Collaborative Agreement known as the CA between Nevada Gold Mines and the tribes. The agreement is designed to be one of partnerships and sets out how Nevada Gold Mines will work to provide benefit for the tribe [ events ] and members within each. Since the third quarter of 2019 and throughout 2020, we have worked to update our Collaborative Agreement. The key changes under the new Collaborative Agreement are: Updating the agreement to reflect changes following the establishment of the joint venture; inclusion of 2 additional tribes, the confederated tribes of the Goshute Reservation and the Ft Mc Dermitt Paiute Shoshone; and inclusion of a social investment framework to promote the provisioning of support to tribes via development programs, which are designed to be self-sustaining and beneficial over the long term.

Thank you, Karen and Joe. Moving on to human rights. Under our human rights policy, we commit to respecting the human rights of all individuals impacted by our operations, including employees, contractors and external stakeholders. We have been a member and follow the Voluntary Principles since 2010, and the VPs guide our dealings with public and private security providers, local communities and potential victims of human rights violations. In September last year, I personally presented at the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights plenary to update them on our progress to formally implement the VPs at the former Randgold operations in AME. During 2020, we reviewed and revised our human rights training program and updated several standards, including the use of a core standard and the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights stand. We also worked with independent consultants [indiscernible] to develop and facilitate in-person human rights workshops for managers and supervisors at each of our high-risk sites. In January in 2021, we conducted our first workshops at our North Mara and Bulyanhulu mines in Tanzania. Shifting now to the E of ESG. Environmental stewardship is a fundamental responsibility of any modern mining company and a critical part of our business strategy. Responsibly managing our environmental impacts not only reduces risk, but it also helps to deliver a sustainable legacy for the regions. Our environmental performance improved again in 2020, which saw a 38% decrease in our Class 2 or minor incidents year-on-year. We also improved our water recycling, reduced our emissions against baseline and rehabilitated almost 1,300 hectares of land. As a group, we have adopted the ICMM Water Accounting Framework and embedded this [ at a cycling ]. Every site reports [ mandatory ] to our regional leads and myself on their water use. These reports provide a full picture of water use across the sites [indiscernible] that allows us to proactively manage our water use and drive improvement. A big [ focus ] for the past year has been on how we can improve our water recycling and reuse, particularly in those areas where water may be scarce or that are vulnerable towards stress like the [ hind ] desert in Nevada or in Saudi Arabia. In 2020, we reused and recycled 79% of our water going to tasks, that is water which is worked or used in the process, an improvement year-on-year and well over our internal target of 75%. Moving now to climate, an aspect of our business I am most excited to report back on. Throughout 2020, we reviewed and updated our climate change strategy. The objectives of our strategy can be summarized as follows. Firstly, identifying, understanding and mitigating the risks associated to climate change. We endeavored to do this by building climate change resilience to limit exposure to increasing regulation, scrutiny and physical climate risks. Next by maintaining an updated greenhouse gas emissions baseline and reduction target. This is followed by continuously improving our disclosure on climate change to provide the market with annual climate change strategy disclosures that incorporate scenario analysis and are aligned with the TCFD framework by [ opting ] cleaner energy sources and increasing the proportion of renewable energy in the company's energy mix. And lastly, making each site accountable for our progress to target with the introduction of climate champions on each site to drive this performance. We also integrated climate change-related factors into all risk assessment process. During 2020, we updated our global scenario analysis. This considers the potential impact of climate change on our business. The scenarios that were assessed are: The stated policy scenario, the 2-degree Celsius to 3-degree Celsius increase scenario; secondly, the sustainable development scenario, well below 2-degree increase; and lastly, net zero emissions by 2050. The next step in this analysis is to take it into the sites, and we are now working on detailed site-by-site analysis to understand the specific risks that climate change poses to each of our operations. As you may remember, in early 2020, we set a target to achieve an emissions reduction of at least 10% by 2030 against the 2018 baseline that combined both legacy Barrick and Randgold data as well as data from newly acquired assets at the time, all while maintaining a steady arms production. Since then, we have also seen a lot of other companies come out and make bold proclamations on emissions reduction titles, but they lack the backup or detailed road map for achieving these titles. As per our detailed review, we have updated our emissions reduction target. Our updated target is to reduce our emissions by at least 30% by 2030 against the 2018 baseline of 7.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per annum. Ultimately, our vision is net zero emissions by 2050, achieving primarily through greenhouse gas reductions and certain offsets for hard to abate emissions. Our target is grounded in prime science and has a detailed and demonstrable road map for achievement. And it is pleasing to note that some of the projects we have identified have already been implemented and contributed to reducing our emissions. These include investments in battery technology at Kibali to reduce the mine's requirement for diesel gen sets and supplement by hydropower stations we've already built; installing a 20-megawatt solar power plant at Loulo-Gounkoto in Mali, reducing our emission by 27,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year; and in the Dominican Republic, we have switched the Quisqueya power plant from heavy fuel oil to cleaner-burning natural gas. But we don't rest on our laurels. In 2020, we continued to work on our emissions profile and to identify further reduction opportunities and define our road map as seen on the slide. Looking ahead, we have a list of projects that will further reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At Nevada Gold Mines, we will be constructing a 100-megawatt solar farm. This is estimated to reduce GHG emissions by 52,000 tonnes with the opportunity to double this capacity in the future. At Loulo-Gounkoto in Mali, we will double the capacity of the 20-megawatt solar farm for another 27,000-tonne saving. Implementing the lime kiln fuel switch project from diesel to LNG at Pueblo Viejo is another future project, which is estimated to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 127,000 tonnes per annum. Similarly, we are conducting feasibility studies to construct an 80-megawatt solar plant in the Dominican Republic; and in Jabal Sayid in Saudi Arabia, bringing online a solar power plant that will reduce emissions by 64 kilotons of CO2 per annum. In terms of the interim initiatives, we have committed $200 million to implement these projects. Taken together in 2020, we realized a 2.5% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions against our 2018 baseline of 7.5 million tonnes of CO2. I would like to point out that the graph on this slide includes the full year data for 2018, 2019 and 2020, with the acquired assets referring to assets acquired by Barrick following corporate transactions in 2019. Previously, we have reported data for these assets from the point we assumed operational control. However, to enable a like-for-like comparison, we included the full year instead for emissions for these assets. Full year data for the acquired assets was obtained from public sources. I would now like to discuss the management of our tailings storage facilities or TSFs. Safety is at the center of our approach to tailings management and determines how we manage our facilities. Our approach is set out in our Tailings and Heap Leach Management Standard and aligns with international best practice, including the recently updated ICMM and Mining Association of Canada guidelines. As a member of the ICMM, I was personally part of the tailings management subgroup and is actively involved in the development of the global industry standard for tailings management. We are working to make sure our processes are aligned with the requirements of the standard. And the actions underway include updating our Tailings and Heap Leach Management Standard to align with these requirements, working to classify our facilities for the consequence classification. It must be noted that by the end of 2020, we have already completed the preliminary consequence classification for 42 of our 63 TSFs. We will continue to identify those very high and extreme facilities that will need to follow the GISTM classification by 2023. And finally, updated our risk assessment and risk management procedures to facilitate risk-informed decision-making. I'd like to hand over to Hilaire now, who will take us through the progress we have made at North Mara regarding the management of the tailings storage facility there.

Thank you very much, Grant. So when we assumed operation of North Mara, I would remember that the Tanzanian authorities had already shut down the tailings dam under the control of Acacia, claiming concerns of potential seepage in local groundwater. The TSF was holding significantly more water than it was designed to, so improving this facility was one of our highest priorities. To do this, we've worked closely with the authorities to identify and develop solutions to address the concern raised and to reduce the amount of water on the tailings dam. This included undertaking a structural analysis of the TSF, commissioning detailed groundwater studies to understand if there was any seepage, and if so, the extent. And importantly, conducting a hydro census of community boreholes around the mine. This showed minimal impact on the water quality and that Tanzanian water quality standards were met at these sites. We also came up with short and long-term strategies to reduce the water on the TSF. Our short-term solution was to use evaporators in the pool on top of the TSF to help speed up evaporation of the stored water, while our long-term strategy was to use more water from the TSF in the processing plant. Notably, we've increased the on-site water treatment capacity. This included investing USD 65 million to upgrade the water treatment plant. The upgraded facility came online in December and has increased our treatment facility -- treatment capacity 16-fold to 40-megaliter a day. These efforts have also helped extend the operating life of the North Mara tailings dam and reduce the need to build a second TSF. But despite the considerable improvement made, significant work remains. In 2020, we planned to construct a brine treatment plant on-site. The plant is scheduled for commissioning by the third quarter and will reduce the volume of [ salts ], but increase the concentration to allow for safe storage in the TSF. Thank you.

Thank you [indiscernible]. Now I'm back to our management of biodiversity on and around our sites. Our aim is to play a positive role in the management of the biodiversity in the areas in which we operate. We set a target for all our operational sites to develop and implement a Biodiversity Action Plan, or BAP, by the end of 2021. Currently, BAPs are in place in 11 of our 12 operational sites. BAPs detail the flora, fauna and habitats on and around the site and outline the strategy we will follow. They also identify the areas around the mine that could benefit from conservation support as well as existing conservation areas that require additional support and resources. For example, the Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Garamba is one of Africa's oldest national parks and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is home to the DRC's largest population of elephants and the critically endangered Kordofan giraffe. To date, we have provided over $1.5 million for tracking collars, fuel for observation and anti-poaching planes and made improvements to bridges, roads and other infrastructure. We are pleased to report that since September 2019, we have not reported a single event of an elephant being poached. Our support will also fund a risk/benefit analysis for the reintroduction of white rhinos and giant elands into the park. I would like to now hand over to Amanda to take us through some of the biodiversity initiatives we have implemented in Nevada.

Thanks, Grant. My name is Amanda Steensen, and I'm the Environmental Lead for Nevada Gold Mines. Across much of the Great Basin of Nevada, the Greater Sage-Grouse habitat is in decline due to effects from fire, invasive plant species, conifer encroachment and human impacts. Since 2019, we have committed to mitigate the impacts of mining on the sagebrush ecosystem through habitat preservation and restoration programs, including Barrick's Bank Enabling Agreement, BEA, and Nevada's Conservation Credit System, or CCS. We collaborate with a range of partners in this work, including The Nature Conservancy, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Nevada Department of Wildlife and the Nevada Sagebrush Ecosystem Technical Team. In 2020, we implemented nearly 11,000 acres of habitat rehabilitation treatments within the BEA project area, bringing the total treated area since 2017 to over 28,000 acres. We also enrolled an additional 29,000 acres for habitat preservation and rehabilitation into the CCS for a new total of 37,000 acres in our Nevada Sage-Grouse Conservation Bank.

Thank you, Amanda. Aligning with our DNA and being open and transparent to all our stakeholders, I would now like to take you through some of our legacy issues we are dealing with. When Barrick and Randgold merged at the start of 2019, the new management team was aware that there were a range of historic issues in the legacy Barrick portfolio which needed additional attention. Since this merger, the management team and operational level staff have worked to ensure these issues are satisfactorily resolved or whether, after viewing it with fresh eyes, alternative solutions can be found. While the majority of issues have been resolved, some have continued to negatively impact our reputation and license to operate. Starting with Porgera in Papua New Guinea and the riverine tailings disposal on site. Barrick releases [ riverine ] tailings and erodable rock into the nearby Porgera River. This is not ordinarily our preferred method of tailings and waste rock management. However, in the Porgera context, where the risk of catastrophic failure of a tailings impoundment are unacceptably high due to geological and climate factors, it is necessary. We, however, take care to ensure we are management and minimizing the risk. For example, prior to discharge, tailings undergo a 2-stage treatment process to comply with stringent discharge criteria. This includes a series of chemical processes that destroy cyanide and a multi-step neutralization process to raise the pH level of the water. We have also built a tailings paste plant so that some of the tailings material can be used to produce cemented fill to backfill the underground workings. This has helped to reduce the amount of tailings material entering the river by approximately 13% since 2011 after the recent developments at Porgera, we are excited to recommence the work we have started to reduce the amount of tailings deposited by increasing the amount and fraction of the tailings going back underground as backfill and prioritizing the use of upside material in this backfill. Moving to Chile and the Pascua-Lama project. In 2020, Chile's Antofagasta Environmental Court upheld the closure order and sanctions imposed by the SMA in 2018. We have not appealed the Environmental Court's decision, and the Chilean side of the Pascua-Lama project, Pascua, will now be transitioned to closure in accordance with that ruling. The immediate next step is to start closing Pascua as permitted, in compliance with the Environmental Court ruling and Chilean legislation. While the ruling found we are in breach of some conditions, it also noted there was no irreparable damage. As part of closure planning, Barrick has completed a comprehensive review of the existing social and environmental obligations to ensure relevant commitments are addressed with local authorities and the communities. I will now hand back to Mark. Thank you for your time today.

So thanks, Grant, and thank you all to the other presenters from right around the world. As you would have picked up, each presenter was in a different place. And some of the connectivity was a little challenged, but I'm glad we got through that. As noted, we discussed our ESG scorecard. While there has been significant progress, there's still a lot that remains to be done. As we strive for continuous improvements, the team has set some overarching priorities for the year ahead, with our objective to maintain our leadership role in these initiatives. These include continuing our implementation of the World Gold Council's Responsible Gold Mining Principles and the ICMM Mining Principles. All operating mines conducted self-assessments in the fourth quarter of 2020, and these are now being reviewed. And plans will be developed to close any gaps. We aim to begin formal assurance in quarter 4 of this year. Embedding our climate strategy at the site level and introducing climate champions at all sites to identify further opportunities for reductions is another objective for this year, as is continuing to review our climate strategy and targets against new and realized opportunities. Another is fulfilling our commitments to the global tailings standard and complete the human rights assessments we have planned and arranged already. We will also enhance our alignment to SASB while continuing to report to GRI. Another important priority and one that we have made much progress on already is continuing the dialogue with the ESG raters and specifically dealing with the legacy issues that they referenced in their controversy reports. This will require providing them with information on how we have and continue to remedy the perceived risks, and we will continue to hold regular meetings with these important groups this year. We look forward to meeting these goals and challenges in the year ahead and to continue to updating you on our progress throughout the year. Thank you for your time. And now we will move to your questions. And we will start if there are any questions that have been e-mailed through before we open up for questions directly.

Okay. So I'm going to take any questions that come up on our Q&A or chats. [Operator Instructions] Just please put your hand up against your name should you want to ask the questions. All right. We have the call from [ Julia Manitska ].

I'm [ Julia Manitska ] from Allianz Investment Management. Thank you very much for the update and for the sustainability update, sustainability report. I have just 2 questions on the CDCs, and it probably goes to Grant, so 2 questions. One is, I think it's great, the metric that you plan to introduce in 2021 on the exact measurement, the CDC commitments. A question on that, would you plan to publish that in detail, this commitment, so that one could also see kind of the later measurement and assessment of the fulfillment? And the second one is on Pueblo Viejo mine where, from what I understand, the expansion is underway or is planned, how CDC, they are informed and facilitate successful and smooth growth? So it would be great if you could cover those.

So I'll ask Grant to answer the first one, your first question. I mean, look, I'm [indiscernible]. And I'll -- he'll -- I'm sure he can add to the answer on the second one. But CDCs are absolutely core on how we communicate with our neighbors. What we had pride ourselves in is our relationships with our community. First of all, we look to employ from our communities. So we are already entrenched in the community through our own employees. In Pueblo Viejo, they're a little different in that there are 2 aspects to the expansion: The expansion of the processing facilities on the site as part of the processing and enhancing the operations to extend the ability to continue to produce at the rate we are producing at the moment and even more for the next 20-plus years. The second part of that is the development of an additional storage facility for tailings and PAG, potentially acid generating material, and that is in a different region. And that's where we are now working to engage with the community and the government and all other stakeholders ahead of developing an environmental baseline and social baseline studies and ultimately a ESIA submission to the government. To get to a CDC, we first go through our community engagement procedure, public engagements, and we're just embarking on that at the moment. So there's still some way to go. What we have done around the mine itself is we've now started rolling out CDCs in the different regions, and they are operated -- and they are operating. And again, I would stress, the concept of that is that we are able to actually talk to our community and the leadership thereof. And it's been extremely helpful through the pandemic because not only are we -- not only do we pride ourselves -- I mean, I've talked to the President or the Prime Minister of those various businesses, but we also have known our communities by name, the leadership, the new leadership, the community members. And so again, that helps in a real neighborly relationship where you can share information, share issues and reach agreements on how to deal with challenges that the community might be faced. So I'll pass it on to Grant, and he can answer that and continue with the -- your first question.

Thanks, Mark. And thanks, [ Julia ], for your question. On the CDCs and measuring those, as you say, we've put it in our new metrics for the scorecard. And this is something we've been doing for those operations that have got CDCs already. And in fact, it's all part of our sustainability leads on each of our operations. It's also part of their outputs. And in fact, the reason we are putting [indiscernible] at the moment is we are conducting a strategic session with our team here. And at the end of that session, our social leads will have a list of outputs. And one of those is to fulfill the commitments we made in terms of those CDCs. So from a measurement point of view, that's something that we do on a monthly basis. We track it monthly and are now in monthly reviews that I have with our teams. We'll talk to those CDCs and determine the level of progress that we've made. In terms of publishing them, we certainly would look at summarizing a number of those. I mean, as you can imagine, with some of these operations, they're fairly big. But we certainly would be able to summarize those and put the key items that we have there. As Mark explained earlier, the projects that we come up with are actually decided on by those Community Development Committees. And as I elaborated a little bit on in the presentation, they really are made up of the community. We have one seat at the table there. It's generally governed or chaired by the chief or the governor in that area or mayor in that area. And as I said, we sit at the table as one representative. And we want to make sure that it's holistic of our community. So we will have women's groups, youth groups, the elderly involved in that they represented and they choose those projects. They go back to their communities, and they [ socialize ] that, exactly what projects they would like to implement. So we'll certainly look at summarizing those and publishing those. In terms of PV, as Mark has mentioned, there's been a lot of progress there around not only the CDCs but our community development as a whole. And when -- shortly after the merger, we really rationalized the projects to align them with our partnership funnel. A number of the projects that existed were more associated with donations, and there was a real lack of partnership and, as we like to call it, skin in the game from the community. So we changed that around. And certainly, the CDCs have helped with that. We've implemented it in a number -- within our communities right now and associated with it the TSF extension that the community has said that we are looking to build. We've already got CDCs in place to talk about some of the projects of those communities who would like to implement them and start working on them even before the tailings dam is being constructed.

So -- and I think, Julia, just to come back on the -- this data, we can just expand the report and make it full of tables. But what I can assure you is, as Grant says, the commitments and KPIs of each CDC is discussed and shared with our executive team all the way up to our Board. And again, at the end of the year, the performance of those CDCs against the KPIs are judged and verified. And so to put -- and I'm sure that when we report, we're going to be able to continue to score ourselves and certainly make that public. And again, if anyone wants to dig into those scores, I'm sure Grant would be happy to have those conversations to take you through what we have achieved and what is our standing and will be captured on, again, I'm sure, as we get smarter at sharing this sort of information with you in our sustainability report.

Yes. I have 2 questions from [ Jonah Foster ]. I'll read them out. The GRI content index contains helpful information, although the spreadsheets are not user-friendly. In the future, could you publish it, data labels with all your critical ESG data [ and the rest of the ] company as well as historical values? And then secondly, can you comment on any work you're doing with manufacturers to electrify both?

Okay. So I'll take the first question from Jonah. Jonah, nice to hear from you. We've -- it's a good comment, and I thank you for that. We certainly would be able to put the 2019 data and the historical data on this -- for you to download and analyze. And it is something that we could discuss in terms of the GRI content index this year. There's a lot of data, as you well know. But certainly, to navigate through that, we could make the tabs a little more accessible certainly. But that's something that we all work through, and we appreciate the feedback that you've given us on that. And we hope we'll certainly look to improve that. So maybe in terms of the electric vehicles and our partnerships with some of those, perhaps I can hand over to Mark to talk to that.

Sure. And I think John Steele as well. So if I missed out on anything, John, you've got to actually speak up.

Yes.

So the key thing, Joe, is that what we've done is we have a weekly review of our progress on all technical innovation. And one of the big focuses, of course, is underground equipment and electrification. And with that, we've actually partnered, and specifically on the underground equipment, with Sandvik. We still, in the service equipment, look to bespoke smaller service providers to work with. And at the same time, we've started working with some of the big equipment manufacturers, for instance, like Caterpillar. And on -- even down to small light vehicles, we have a very strong relationship with Ford. We're a big Ford client, and we're again working with them to test some of their EVs as they come out. And the electrification goes across the whole business. I mean, one of the things that we've done really, an exciting bit of work, is as you know, we have a baseload [indiscernible] station in the form of 3 electric -- we have 3 hydropower stations in Kibali. And we've been working on how we can further reduce the diesel-powered [ past behaviors ] that supply us spinning reserve, particularly just for the vertical shaft demand. What we've recently discovered through our own engineers is that we switched the construction effectively of the power -- the microgrid, and we use the battery to form the microgrid. And then to support the battery, we've got a very unique battery that is supplied by Caterpillar. We've just installed it, and it's really starting to show the benefits. And what that does is -- and again, we use the battery to pull the grid, and we support the battery from the hydropower. And so there's parts of the year where we get down to almost no diesel generation. Of course, in the drier seasons, we had to switch some engines on. What's come out of that, too, is that the ability to use that same philosophy in Loulo-Gounkoto, where we have heavy fuel and diesel mixture supported by our recent solar installation. And again, you have to dial up your solar capacity because it's -- you've only got the daytime to use it. And again, we are looking at the battery capability to more fully utilize the full installed capacity. And so -- and again, we understand, and doing the same in Nevada, along with the transitioning from coal to natural gas and then looking to build ultimately a 200-megawatt solar power station to support our operations in Northern Nevada. And so there's a lot going on. The way we do it is that we each show -- we coordinate it on a group basis. We -- however, each initiative is run separately in the part of our business which is most equipped to deal with the manufacturer and can apply it and test it within the operations. John, anything you want to add to that?

Nothing, Mark. You've covered it. Perfect.

[Operator Instructions] Okay. So a question from [ Marcelo Kim ].

What's the question?

No. It's a [indiscernible]. I can't see any more questions. Would you give me one more minute?

Yes. [Operator Instructions]

Okay. And we have a question from Patrick Peura.

This is Patrick Peura with Allianz. Congratulations on your net zero commitment and also increasing your 2030 target. Can you talk a little bit more about working within your supply chain and value chains with both your suppliers and customers to see if there's opportunities for full value chain decarbonization and how you can partner with them? And also, now that you've made your 2050 commitment, which is spectacular, actually Allianz needs all of the companies in our portfolio to do the same, how do you see now reinforcing this as a competitive advantage through work with policy in all the locations that you operate?

So Patrick, I'll answer the last one first. And that is -- I mean, that's very close, and Grant and I spent a lot of time debating that. And the big thing is when you look at -- we want to be real about that. And so a lot of guidance from the mining industry is based on depleting production profiles. And what we do is we look to continue our operations and grow them. And so what it calls for is a real investment in technical innovation. And what we've been able to do in the last 2 years is to really show and develop almost at every mine site a genuine, clear plan to improve our greenhouse gas emissions. And as I said in my presentation, we have champions at each of our operations like safety and production. Our sustainability KPIs is owned by the general manager. So our executive team is constantly looking at ways to improve our greenhouse gas emissions. And just as you say, decarbonization elements to do -- without it in our operations. And I can run you through it. But we've got hydropower and continued improvements in Kibali. And in fact, without the hydropower, Kibali wouldn't be as profitable as it is today. We -- our biggest challenge is western Mali because there's -- we generate it all ourselves, and solar has limitations. And so it's been -- it's how do you innovate around solar and also your equipment. And in Nevada, we're moving away from coal. In fact, we're completely doing without the coal-generated power, certainly from our power stations. And we've got many other initiatives. One is the big solar initiative. The other is just looking at the way we utilize energy across the group, and there's some exciting initiatives that we're working on there. PV, we led the entire country in a transition from heavy fuel to natural gas in the generation of power, and that's been a great success. In Argentina, we are busy putting a power line across -- to lead into the Chile grid. And that really brings in one of the -- a national power utility that, as you know, is one of the highest percentages of renewable energy in that grid. And that does away with the big diesel generators that currently power up Veladero. And Papua New Guinea, we've redeveloped it now with the restart of Papua New Guinea -- a natural gas facility, which will support the mine and, again, the opportunities to either develop, as we've done in Kibali [ around the river ], hydro, and as well as leading to some of the bigger hydro power plants that are being talked about in the Enga Province where we operate the mine. So every aspect of -- or every place that we have a mine, we -- our teams are working to -- and we measure it, as I pointed out, when you measure it, you really start seeing the gaps and the opportunities. And again, one of the challenges we have within John Steele's team, who's a man who builds our mines, along with Rod Quick, is for our next mine that we build, what is it that would make it a new mining -- mine? And what is the sort of technology that you need to be able to do that? And so everyone is still talking about hydrogen cell technology. Again, the big challenge there is to produce the hydrogen, you need power. And right now, we don't have a good solution for that. But that -- if we could find one that's an easy way forward, and it would really make a big difference, but there are lots of little steps that we're going to have to do before we can be able to benefit from very significant paradigm-type technical innovations on the power generation front.

Yes. I can go back to the first question, Patrick, in terms of what we're doing around our suppliers. And I think it's a great question and something that we've elaborated on in the sustainability report. This is -- first of all, disclosing those country revisions more and then obviously working with our suppliers to see what they're doing about reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. So we've already reached out to a number of our big suppliers in terms of what they've already got in place and how we can help them achieve some of their objectives. We've already reached out to, here in the Africa and Middle East region, some of big partners to sit down and workshop with them how we can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from their side. It's also something that we're looking at putting into more formal around their disclosure to us when we look at new suppliers and contract them. And the other thing from our side, I think, is -- which everyone has been struggling with is how do we quantify the Scope 3 emissions. So it's finding a method and a system that we can do this fully. So that's something that we are working on. I agree with you, it is something that -- as responsible companies and putting out these targets, we need to start looking at scope 3 emissions and how we do this, we -- and review our emissions as well.

Exactly.

And we're going to be reducing all of those, so not just Scope 1 and 2 but focusing on the Scope 3 emissions.

Yes. I think that's a very good point that Grant makes, and that is we look at our greenhouse gas emissions as a whole. We don't try -- this -- our job is to deliver against our commitments on a global basis, and we're not going to be skewed about definitions.

Thank you. As there are lots of questions...

[indiscernible]

[Operator Instructions]

So I see we have one from [ Marcelo Kim ]. In terms of -- maybe last question there. Why doesn't the World Gold Council create a sustainability scorecard for companies to comply with? I mean, we work very closely with the World Gold Council. And we've assisted them as part of -- on the ESG task force for the World Gold Council. And what we do is look at ways that we can measure ourselves. And I think the Responsible Gold Mining Principles is just that. It's not necessarily a scorecard, but it is certainly a number of principles by which we feel as the World Gold Council -- as a member of the World Gold Council can certainly encourage companies and align them to its progress. What we have to do in terms of aligning with the Responsible Gold Mining Principles and adopting them is getting external [ assurance ]. So in that regard, you are effectively being scored. We're also -- as a part of that initiative, as companies, we'll disclose how we meet those requirements, either not, partially or fully compliant with the Responsible Gold Mining Principles. In terms of your other question, Marcelo, I may need you to elaborate slightly on the climate emissions on an aggregate basis rather than through ton of ore processed measure. I mean, what I can say around our emissions disclosure is that we have disclosed them in many metrics. And I think that's part of the issue with the disclosures, as I mentioned earlier. There are so many metrics out there. It is quite hard to know what it looks like. One of the things that we certainly have looked at and what we've aligned to, the per tonne of ore processed metric rather than even an ounce -- per ounce production is that we believe that it's more comparable with some of the other gold mines in the industry. It doesn't factor in the varying grades that we see over the industries. And what we are working on, and we're part of this working group, is how we can get an equivalency across the industry. And one of the initiatives that is running at the moment is looking at our copper equivalency. It's a factor or an equation that would be applied to all companies, whether you're gold or iron ore, that you could apply, and you would effectively get a copper equivalent. So then we can start comparing ourselves across the industry, not just within sectors of the mining industry.

And Marcelo, the one I would add to your question on sustainability scorecard is that's why we've always measured ourselves. And sustainability, as you know, has been core to our business going back to 1995. And so as a major producer within the gold industry, we went ahead and set out our own scorecard, and so all these ingredients that one needs to be able to measure performance. And I'm sure that it will tease out some of the sort of gray areas that are utilized and reported across the industry. And hopefully, we'll be able to build on that over time. But for me, the critical thing is because everyone is starting to create scorecards, we have a very clear scorecard. We've set our rules and regulations. As Grant says, we're looking to equivalency across not only the gold industry but across the mining industry. But in the meantime, that's our scorecard. And hopefully, it will form a part of that final scorecard. And the way to look at it is that we go back to a couple of decades ago where we had the same debate about safety in the industry. And it really took some time for the industry to eventually land on how do you measure safety and deliver safety statistics. And certainly, that's been an initiative that has informed our own thinking in the development of the Barrick sustainability scorecard. So all I can say is that we are, in every sphere, debating and encouraging our colleagues to move towards something like that.

And lastly, just to follow up, Marcelo, on the greenhouse gas emissions, I would just also point you to our CDP disclosure. There's a lot of detail in there, as I'm sure you can appreciate. The sustainability report, although quite a bit detailed, is really a snapshot of our emissions. On the CDP disclosure, we do go into each mine in detail in terms of the nature of those emissions. But I'd just encourage you to look at that. But certainly, we can go into more detail, should you wish of more.

There are no more questions.

All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for making the time to listen to the team and where we are in our road to being a better and more sustainable mining business with our objective being that we want to be the most valued gold mining company in the world. And really to be the most valued gold mining company, we look at it this way. We want people to want to work or better. And we want -- and to do that, we're going to have to make sure that we are acceptable to future generations. If we're going to change, as we've discussed with some of these questions, it's all about the future. And mining is our -- it's needed and it will continue, but it's who's going to be the miners, that is the big question. The other aspect of being most valued is, of course, we want those countries to want us to be in their country because we're a good partner and committed to our own sustainability objectives and strategies. And the third one, of course, is we want investors to want to own our stock, not just to trade it but to own it because of who we are and the fact that not only will we deliver consistent and sustainable returns to our investors, but that we will do it in a fashion that's acceptable to society. And that goes back to the -- our sustainability scorecards, et cetera. So again, thanks very much for your time today. We are always available should you have any queries. It doesn't have to be specific to this forum. You have our contact details. If you don't want to contact any of us directly, there's an opportunity to do that through our website. So thank you, and I look forward to continuing this conversation throughout the year.