Social performance

Our activities can make a significant contribution to social progress and national, regional and local economies through the provision of employment and training, local procurement, social development, environmental stewardship and payments to governments, such as taxes and royalties.

Our presence requires ongoing management to avoid adverse social and environmental impacts. Our aim is to minimise adverse impacts from our activities and to build partnerships to support sustainable development and growth.

We respect human rights and seek to learn about the traditions, cultures, perspectives, and development priorities of people with whom we engage and build trusting and constructive long-term relationships. In line with our core value of integrity, we are committed to doing what we say and treating each other fairly and with respect.

Our approach

We aim to avoid harm to people from our activities, respect human rights, contribute to social and economic development of affected people and society more widely, and establish and maintain trusting relationships with stakeholders, through ethical and responsible business practices.

We strive to make a valued contribution to social progress through the production and marketing of commodities that provide the basic building blocks for development; through the provision of employment and business partner opportunities; through payments to governments such as taxes and royalties; and through social development in societies where we operate. As a member of the societies where we operate, we work in partnership with government, civil society and development agencies to share knowledge, build capacity and contribute to enduring social and economic outcomes.

We support economic development by providing local employment, procurement and contracting opportunities to local enterprises and by incorporating social transition strategies into our planning process to mitigate closure impacts. We measure and monitor our community impact and aim for continuous improvement.

Engaging with host communities

We require our industrial assets to design social programmes that reflect an understanding of their host communities based on data gathering and engagement. This involves:

Analysing local demographics, economies, sociocultural activities, religions, existing and potential conflict, and availability of services and infrastructure to build a picture of our host communities; and
Listening to people’s needs and concerns, as well as identifying our potential impacts, risks and opportunities.

From these assessments, we expect our industrial assets to design stakeholder engagement strategies aligned with Glencore’s business objectives and their local needs. Our objective is to work towards creating meaningful, constructive, and proactive dialogue with our local communities.

Our community consultation processes are designed to be inclusive, respectful of local context, cultures, and traditions. We seek to identify vulnerable groups, such as women, children and Indigenous Peoples, and develop and implement strategies to include them in the engagement process.

We expect our industrial assets to provide their local communities with information in a range of different ways, tailored to the local context and culture. These may include radio broadcasts, social media channels, site publications and a range of face-to-face meetings.

We require our industrial assets to review their approach regularly to ensure that they are meeting community needs and addressing priorities. Community perception surveys are performed every three years to evaluate the effectiveness of our approach and provide valuable information to shape future plans.

Creating sustainable livelihoods

Case study: Creating sustainable livelihoods in the DRC

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Creating sustainable livelihoods

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Case study: Creating sustainable livelihoods in the DRC

Paying special attention to vulnerable groups

Some people living in our host communities are at risk of economic and social discrimination. These may include Indigenous Peoples, women, children, disabled and elderly people, and victims of conflict.

Working with Indigenous groups and respecting cultural heritage

Our business interacts with many diverse communities around the world. We respect the rights, interests and aspirations of Indigenous Peoples and acknowledge their right to maintain their culture, identity, traditions and customs.

Some of our industrial assets are located on or near the traditional lands of Indigenous Peoples. We engage in open and continuous dialogue with local and Indigenous communities affected by our activities to better understand their culture, views, and aspirations, and work with them to minimise adverse impacts and create enduring benefits.

At all our industrial assets, our activities focus on practical and meaningful measures that can enhance the socio-economic capacity and well-being of our local and Indigenous communities. Our approach aligns with the ICMM Position Statement on Indigenous Peoples and Mining, demonstrating respect for Indigenous People’s rights, interests, special connections to lands and waters, and perspectives.

We seek to ensure that Indigenous Peoples are consulted and have given their free, prior, and informed consent in relation to new projects and changes to existing projects where significant adverse impacts are likely to occur, including because of relocation and/or the disturbance of lands and territories of critical cultural heritage. We seek, through good faith negotiation, to reach formal agreements with Indigenous Peoples who maintain an interest in, or connection to, the land on which we operate, formalising engagement processes and sustainable benefits. These agreements include Indigenous Land Use Agreements in Australia and Impact Benefit Agreements in Canada. At relevant assets, we focus on practical and meaningful measures that can enhance the socio-economic capacity and well-being of our local and Indigenous communities.

In Australia, we engage and consult with the Traditional Owners and Custodians, local and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workforce and cross-cultural consultants in the development of cultural respect strategy initiatives.

Our Australian industrial assets operating near Indigenous Peoples strive to enable and promote Indigenous employment opportunities at our operations, and meaningful and transferrable skills development. Our coal industrial assets continue to implement their Indigenous Employment Pathways Programmes (IEPP) in Queensland and New South Wales to provide real employment connections for Indigenous Australians, skills and lifestyle training and work experience. Our McArthur River Mine (MRM) industrial asset enjoys one of the highest rates of Aboriginal employment of any mining company in the Northern Territory, with close to 25% of MRM’s employees being members of Indigenous Peoples' communities.

Our Aurukun Bauxite Project Joint Venture in Queensland continues its engagement and benefit agreement discussions with the Wik and Wik Waya People who hold native title rights and Aboriginal freehold rights over much of the project area of the Aurukun Bauxite Project. Since 2019, our project team has progressed engagement with Traditional Owners through various mechanisms including working groups (the model of which was developed and endorsed with Traditional Owners and the Ngan Aak Kunch Aboriginal Corporation (NAK)), on-country camps, and Traditional Owner aspirations and benefit management discussions. These processes will continue in 2023.

Our Raglan Mine in Nunavik, Quebec, negotiated the first Impact Benefit Agreement (IBA) in Canada in 1995. The IBA has established social and community engagement initiatives, developed, and implemented preventative and proactive health and safety approaches, supported Inuit employment and training, and made environmental improvements. The IBA has been, and continues to be, used as a reference for other agreements between Indigenous groups and the mining industry and other industrial sectors in Canada.

The Raglan Committee, which consists of representatives of the signatory parties, was established to support the implementation of the IBA. In 2022, the Committee responded to community concerns about dust and engaged on the dust monitoring process.

Through discussions with Inuit partners, Raglan Mine identified that some of the communities’ key concerns were around mine closure practices, including tailings management. Although Raglan Mine is expected to remain operational for at least another 15 years, the Raglan Mine Closure Plan Subcommittee was launched in 2018 to establish and maintain a dialogue with the Mine’s Inuit partners about mine closure and to integrate traditional knowledge into Raglan Mine’s Closure Plan. During 2022, as part of finalising the Closure Plan Review, the sub-committee developed a list of concerns, comments, questions, and directions to submit to the contractor who will be developing the next Closure Plan. In 2022, to support the Closure Plan Review, the sub-committee held a workshop to find appropriate terms and descriptions in Inuktitut for key terms used in the closure planning process. Workshops with neighbouring communities resulted in 24 Inuktitut phrases and descriptions for mining and closure terms.

In 2008, the Raglan Mine established its Tamatumani (second start in Inuktitut) programme. The programme encourages and supports local Inuit community members to work at Raglan Mine.

A court ruling in December 2016 required Cerrejón to consult with the Indigenous communities within its area of influence on potential compensation for possible environmental, social and cultural impacts that have occurred during more than 30 years of operation.

Cerrejón established a dedicated team to carry out this consultation exercise, which is of unprecedented magnitude in Colombia. By the end of 2022, Cerrejón had reached agreements with 301 Indigenous communities. Consultations with the remaining Indigenous communities are taking place during 2023.

Agreements with communities have included compensation measures to address social and cultural impacts such as income generation projects related to livestock activities; cultural strengthening initiatives including harmonisation rituals and new engagement protocols; and infrastructure for the general benefit of the community. The projects reflect proposals made by the community representatives.

In South Africa, our ferroalloys industrial assets engage with Traditional Authorities and communities living close to its operations, undertaking annual engagements with these communities.

For some years, Glencore and other mining peers operating in South Africa have experienced violent community protests in response to rising poverty levels. In some cases, industrial assets were stormed and vandalised resulting in extensive production losses.

Our ferroalloys industrial assets worked with an external consultant to develop an approach to address local stakeholder discontent. The work began with our Eastern Limb operations with the identification and mapping of villages and their boundaries of 19 rural communities. Demarcation workshops were held at Traditional Council Offices in the stakeholder community villages. Village maps were printed for Traditional Authorities, supporting their perspective of their village, its section boundaries and key locations.

The village demarcation project is the first proactive attempt to identify and map the Indigenous knowledge of village and village section boundaries in the Steelpoort area. The findings contribute to our improved understanding of the geopolitical landscape of our stakeholder communities and is expected to substantially improve social investment project planning and implementation in the area.

Supporting local business

Our industrial assets support economic development by providing local employment, procurement and contracting opportunities to local enterprises and by incorporating social transition strategies into our planning processes to mitigate closure impacts.

We use local suppliers whenever we can, to reduce our costs and provide our host communities with alternative employment opportunities. Our development of local procurement bases can also help local governments to fulfil their objectives.

Our industrial assets work to support and promote local businesses wto drive local economic diversification, for example through the provision of financing, management expertise and advice, or work premises.
Our approach varies from region to region, but can include:

• Encouraging our large international suppliers to build partnerships with local businesses;
Financing or constructing business parks and centres to host and support local entrepreneurs;
Training for small businesses;
Programmes to support local businesses meet local and international quality standards; and
Working with local government agencies to support training and help develop business plans.

In regions with a less developed small business sector, our community and procurement teams work together to identify needs and develop programmes to help local businesses meet our quality standards and expectations for conduct. For example, we may offer targeted business management training, underwrite credit applications or guarantee future business within specific limits. We also encourage large international contractors to develop local partnerships to transfer skills and build capacity locally.

Supporting students and teachers around the world

We support schools and teachers around the world, working to shape the minds of the future.

To help provide students with access to education, we work with schools and teachers to create mobile learning opportunities. These systems are designed to enable students in rural areas to connect with experienced teachers to improve their performance and create new opportunities for their future. Learn more in the following case studies:

UNESCO World Teachers’ Day 2021 South Africa

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Watch the video from South Africa

UNESCO World Teachers’ Day 2021 South Africa

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UNESCO World Teachers’ Day 2021 Peru

Watch the video from Peru

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Watch the video from Peru

UNESCO World Teachers’ Day 2021 Peru

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Making our payments to governments transparent

We pay all relevant taxes, royalties and levies required by local and national regulation in the countries in which we operate.

The payments we make to the governments of the countries in which we operate include local, national, sales and employment taxes, government royalties and licence and permitting fees.

In addition, we contribute to local economies through our use of local suppliers, wages and employee benefits, voluntary and mandatory support of socio-economic initiatives such as health and education projects and infrastructure development.

We understand the detrimental impact of corruption on the capacity for regions and nations to fully realise rights and benefits due to them from resource development. We support efforts to combat corruption including through transparency initiatives and our own compliance initiatives, as we discuss further in our 2022 Ethics and Compliance Report.

We welcome fiscal transparency, as it encourages the responsible management of revenues from extractive activities. We commit to disclose taxes, fees and royalties related to mineral extraction to governments in accordance with the principles set forth under the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI).

We have been an active supporter of the EITI since 2011 and its principles of transparency and accountability. We participate in in-country forums supporting the EITI and, at a corporate level, in the EITI Commodity Trading Transparency working group.

Our annual Payments to Governments Report addresses our UK regulatory obligations under DTR 4.3A of the Financial Conduct Authority's Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules, and details payments by country, project and recipient. The report includes disclosure on our commodity trading payments made to state-owned enterprises in EITI-implementing countries for the purchase of oil and gas and minerals and metals.