Global gold and copper miner Barrick Gold Corporation was committed to sustainability, highlighted the company’s group sustainability executive Grant Beringer. He was speaking at the annual Digby Wells Sustainability Breakfast, on the fringes of the Mining Indaba 2025 conference, in Cape Town.

“The space that we’re in, sustainability, is ever-changing,” he pointed out. “Sustainability for Barrick is the bridge to achieving the UN [Sustainable Development Goals]. It’s how we create long-term value for all our stakeholders.”

He emphasised that all the aspects of sustainability were interconnected. Further, all actions must be rooted in science to be successful and sustainable.

He cited Barrick’s support of, and involvement in, the initiative to create a single global consolidated mining standard, to replace the current four major mining standards, issued by different industry bodies. This initiative involved the World Gold Council, the International Council on Mining and Metals, the Towards Sustainable Mining initiative, and the Copper Mark. “We are intimately involved with this initiative.” Fortunately, there was significant commonality between the existing standards.

The idea, he explained, was to create a single, credible, clear and accessible standard which even junior miners could apply. The proposed standard structure involved four areas, namely ethical business practices, worker and social safeguards, social performance, and environmental stewardship. These four areas embraced a total of 24 categories.

Outsiders, including NGOs, had to be involved in the process. “The days when the industry can mark its own homework are past,” he affirmed.

The draft consolidated standard proposed three performance levels – foundational practice, good practice, and leading practice. Foundational practice would be the starting point, the level of minimum industry standards, for companies that needed extra time and/or resources to reach the level of good practice, which was the level in line with full industry standards. He pointed out that having companies on the foundational practice level was much better than them not adopting standards at all.

The public consultation process for the new standard has just been completed, he reported. But there would be a future public review process, as well.

Also regarding sustainability, Beringer highlighted Barrick’s own, internal, Biodiversity Residual Impact Assessment [BRIA] initiative. “It empowers our teams to measure our biodiversity impact, both positive and negative. It gives us tangible metrics that we can measure against.”

The BRIA process involved establishing baselines at each of the group’s locations. This was the fundamental step. Once that was done, conservation plans could be developed. For biodiversity protection, as for greenhouse-gas emission reductions, everything had to be based on science.

The group was very happy to share BRIA with other companies. “We’re keen to get it out there, because it’ll benefit the industry.”