Joint activities will include exploring how Anglo American operations can meet their biodiversity and carbon neutral targets while contributing to long-term socio-economic sustainability with local communities as well as, at a national level.  In addition, IUCN will support the development and implementation of strategic corporate commitments by the company towards sustainable natural resource management that contribute to global societal goals.

“Reducing and preventing carbon emissions in the mining industry is absolutely critical for companies to achieve their climate change targets, particularly as the demand for these natural resources will continue to increase in the transition to a low-carbon future,” says Steve Edwards, an IUCN Senior Programme Manager, who oversees the organisation’s work on extractives. “IUCN welcomes the opportunity to work with Anglo American to explore how the company can enhance climate mitigation through Nature-based Solutions and identify best practices that can be shared with the industry to accelerate uptake.”

Dr Ian Hudson, Head of Environment at Anglo American added: “By adopting an ecosystem approach, we can better understand how biodiversity, people, climate, water, finance and the economy are all interconnected and bound by nature. This approach supports the delivery of our Sustainable Mining Plan and FutureSmart Mining^TM programme - our innovation-led approach to sustainable mining.”

IUCN and Anglo American will work together to identify how the company can discover and apply Nature-based Solutions and new technology across its full mining lifecycle. These activities include restoration, compensation and offset activities as well as carbon management that complement these multi-component outcomes.

“We realise that the cost of inaction is too high when it comes to nature loss, which is why we are partnering and collaborating with organisations like the IUCN, so that we can be part of the change needed to reverse nature loss by 2030,” says Warwick Mostert, Principal Biodiversity at Anglo American. “IUCN shares our interconnected way of thinking, using nature-based solutions that are aligned to deliver a wider range of outcomes.”

For more information:

About the collaboration, visit the IUCN website here. 

About Anglo American’s Sustainable Mining Plan, visit their website here.

About IUCN

IUCN is a unique membership Union composed of both government and civil society organisations. It harnesses the experience, resources and reach of its more than 1,400 Member organisations and the input of more than 17,000 experts. This diversity and vast expertise makes IUCN the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it.

About Anglo American

Anglo American is a leading global mining company and our products are the essential ingredients in almost every aspect of modern life. Our portfolio of world-class competitive operations, development projects and undeveloped resources, provides many of the metals and minerals that enable a cleaner, greener, more sustainable world and that meet the fast growing consumer-driven demands of developed and maturing economies. With our people at the heart of our business, we use innovative practices and the latest technologies to mine, process, move and market our products to our customers – and to discover new resources – safely and sustainably.

As a responsible producer of diamonds (through De Beers), copper, platinum group metals, the steelmaking ingredients of iron ore and metallurgical coal, and nickel – with crop nutrients in development and thermal coal operations planned for divestment – we are committed to being carbon neutral across our operations by 2040. We work together with our business partners and diverse stakeholders to unlock sustainable value from precious natural resources for the benefit of the communities and countries in which we operate, for society as a whole, and for our shareholders. Anglo American is re-imagining mining to improve people’s lives.