Catastrophic hazard management

We have developed specific programmes to actively identify, monitor and mitigate catastrophic hazards within our industrial business. We review our management of catastrophic risks to understand whether they are controlled and require our industrial assets to put in place appropriate management and mitigation measures. 

Our health, safety, environment, social performance and human rights (HSEC&HR) policies and standards address the catastrophic hazards that present a material risk to our operations, setting out the requirements for the prevention of potentially catastrophic events. 

Catastrophic or natural disaster events may arise due to natural causes (flood, earthquake, drought) or due to infrastructure (including underground mines or open-pits or tailings or water storage facility faiure) or equipment failure (such as shafts and winders). Climate change may increase physical risks to our assets and related infrastructure, largely driven by extreme weather events and water-related risks such as flooding or water scarcity. 

We identify and manage catastrophic hazards through:

• A five-point risk scale: We classify the severity of potential incidents on a five-point scale from 1 (negligible) to 5 (catastrophic).
• Group fatal hazard protocols (FHPs): Our FHPs set out mandatory requirements to manage common fatal hazards at our industrial assets. Our safety standards provide mandatory requirements to manage fatal and/or catastrophic hazards that exist in selected industrial assets. 
• Risk register: We require all our industrial assets to maintain a register of potential catastrophic hazards and to conduct regular verification of the implementation of critical controls, which our industrial commodity departments and Group HSEC&HR review through quarterly reporting.
• Assurance: Group Internal Audit and Assurance (GIAA) performs catastrophic hazard audits using both internal and external expert assessors, designed to assess the effectiveness of controls in place to manage catastrophic hazards and ensure that related risks are identified, assessed, managed and controlled effectively. Our industrial assets implement corrective actions to address the findings identified during the audits. GIAA subsequently verifies that the findings are effectively remediated and corrective actions have been closed effectively. The Board Health, Safety, Environment and Communities (HSEC) Committee reviews the findings from the catastrophic hazard audits, as well as the status and results of corrective actions.
• Our commodity departments implement actions at our industrial assets to address findings identified during the audit. GIAA returns to the industrial assets 12 to 18 months later to verify that the findings are substantively addressed and that any identified corrective actions have been closed effectively. Our Board HSEC Committee reviews the status and results of these reports. 

We plan, design, construct, operate, maintain and monitor our surface and underground mines, water and tailings storage facilities (TSFs), smelters, refineries and other infrastructure and equipment in a manner consistent with leading international guidelines and standards. Our approach is designed to prevent incidents and protect our people, assets, communities, the environment, and other stakeholders.