Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Shannon de Ryhove from Creamer Media's Contract Publishing. Welcome to today's webinar on Deepening Commitment to ESG in South Africa's Mining Sector, hosted in partnership with Harmony Gold Mining Company, our strategic partner for this webinar. Thank you also to our sponsors, Ukwazi Mining Solutions, Digby Wells Environmental Consultants, Implats, Sibanye-Stillwater, and Envision Advisory Services. Your support has made this webinar possible. Today's webinar brings together Thought Leaders in the area of environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, in order to deepen discussions, insights, and best practice with regard to this vital issue for the South African mining sector. Today's webinar will be facilitated by Lael Bethlehem, Chief ESG Officer at Sedibelo Resources, a mining company with PGM Assets in the North West and Limpopo Provinces. Lael has worked in various sectors of the economy, including forestry, renewable energy, affordable housing, and development finance. She started her career as a Researcher in the Trade Union Movement and later served as a Senior Public Servant in Local and National Governments before moving to the Private Sector. Lael will facilitate the discussion with our panel, which consists of Melanie Naidoo-Vermaak, Group Executive for Sustainable Development at Harmony Gold Mining Company, Dr. Tsakani Mthombeni, Executive of Sustainable Development at Implats, Sarah Crombie, ESG Division Leader at Digby Wells, and Kurt Roelandt, Director at Envision Advisory Services. Before we begin, please be aware that we have enabled the Q&A function, so please post any questions into the Q&A box. You'll find this on the panel at the bottom of your screen. The panelists will answer as many of your questions as possible at the end of the discussion. To encourage interaction, we've also enabled the chat function, so you can network with the Panelists and other Attendees via the chat box. You'll also find this at the bottom of your screen. Please do not, however, post any questions in the chat box, as we may miss them. You can post those into the Q&A instead. Please be aware that we are recording this webinar, and we'll be sending the recording to you when it's available. Now I'll hand over to our Facilitator, Lael Bethlehem, to take the proceedings forward. Over to you, Lael. Thank you very much, and good afternoon, everybody. I must say, it's fabulous to be on this webinar. I see there are 130 participants and climbing every couple of minutes. Really great that there's so much interest in this topic. You know, I guess in a sense there was no such thing, except that really there was, because there was sustainability and there were other concepts that not only Mining Companies were using, but other concepts that were being used out there in the economy. I do think that the focus on ESG and the fact that we now have this term ESG, which encompasses so much of what we need to achieve within our economy, and not only the financial bottom line, the fact that this has come to the fore as it has in so many companies is really very helpful. This is not only a local trend in South Africa, but very, very much an International trend. Really great that we are all focused on ESG, and I do see this as real progress that has been made in Integrating Environmental and Social concerns, Governance concerns into the work. Maybe, though, that we don't all agree on what ESG means. Is ESG an agenda? Is ESG a description? What does it mean to achieve ESG goals? Most importantly, how do we avoid ESG becoming a tick box exercise where we simply say, "Well, we report in terms of this standard and that standard, and therefore our work is done." In other words, can we make ESG a real driving force that helps to shape the work of our companies, that helps to shape the consciousness of our leadership, and that helps to drive the work of every single employee in our businesses. Let's start off by asking our participants how they see ESG in their environments. These are not always easy environments to manage, and here is another whole layer of requirements. Let's start with you, Melanie. Tell us from your position at Harmony, first, if you could share with us what your position is because different companies have a different way of organizing ESG. Tell us what your position is at Harmony, what your work entails, and how ESG works in Harmony. Over to you, Melanie. Thank you. Good afternoon, Lael. Yes. I'm the Group Executive for Sustainability, and Effectively ESG. It's about ensuring that we bring the different elements of Environmental, Social, and Governance issues together under a single umbrella and have it embedded within the organization. Really building a robust organization. I think that is the focus of my job and a very exciting one, I must say. Melanie, do you find in your work that you're able to create a balance between the environmental and social side? Do you see these things as complementary, or have they just been banded together in one box when in fact they don't have much to do with each other? How do you see the environmental and the social working together or not? Yeah. Look, I'm very careful to ensure that we don't separate and segregate issues. There's such a high degree of overlap and integration that it has to be seen as a holistic one. ESG by and large is about informing investment strategy, and we've been seeing where people put their money and consequently it affects business strategy. At Harmony, the ESG conversation is very alive and it's very integrated and it's very whole. It's about understanding and balancing the different aspects and elements of ESG, managing the risks, managing and optimizing opportunities, trying to create value for your organization. Very often, there's a high degree of integration and less of a trade-off between E, S, and G aspects. So at Harmony, it's very much an integrated kind of a view towards managing ESG within the business. Melanie, can you just tell us, just give a bit of flavor and color to your comments? Can you tell us perhaps about one or two of your ESG projects, that you've been involved with and how these might illustrate the approach that Harmony has taken? Yes. Yeah. There's been a number of projects that we've actually been involved in that has a very sound and solid ESG background to it. We've been involved in activities that take care of water recycling so that we may reduce our dependency on potable supplies for societal needs. We've been working on strengthening township economies, for example, and women becoming economically active, something very close to my heart, one of the initiatives I pioneer personally. We're looking to support alternative economies that can survive post-mining. I think the one of the more significant, most prominent, and most recent initiative that we've been involved in is our decarbonization Program. Harmony has been working these last few years on trying to understand and internalize both the physical and transitional risks to our business as a result of climate change. In the South African context, I mean, that's been further amplified by our supply constraints. We were very proud this year when we were able to commit to our net zero targets to be able to reach net zero by 2045 to further commit to short-term science-based targets to support us to get to that end game. I think underpinning all of this was a very aggressive plan to support the strategy and the target, and we're already making good traction from an energy efficiency perspective, with us already having saved a decent ZAR 1 billion over the last few years, reducing our carbon footprint by an additional 1.2 million tons. Harmony is not going to stop there. I think we have been very articulate that we want to go out and marry the efficiency program with a very aggressive energy mix program, which we broke up into three phases. We're in the construction of the first 30 MW already. There's, you know, it's strategy in action now. We're concluding feasibility on the next 137 MW facility, which is almost imminent feasibility, which should bring in another megawatts of wind. All in all, very exciting time for decarbonization in Harmony. I think today is specifically special to us. We're commissioning one of our solar plants at Kalgold as we speak. How wow. Really exciting times as it relates to decarbonization. I think the other thing Harmony has done as well is we've put in place our targets. We've put in place our strategy and plan, but we wanted to make sure that it's credible and it's doable, and secured a ZAR 1.6 billion green loan fund for our phase II. This clearly was a first for Harmony, a green fund, and I understand the first for South Africa as well. I think it just reinforces that having a good ESG proposition enables access to finance and enables us to be able to do the right things for the business. Fantastic, Melanie. I think that last point that you've made is one of the key points about ESG, is that it can no longer be an. It has to be integral to the business. It is about the way we do our business. Thank you so much for sharing those experiences. I think we'll come back to the decarbonization program a little bit later. I'd love to also quiz you a bit more about some of the social aspects that you mentioned. In particular, building resilient communities who can survive post-mining, because that's such an important part of the ESG agenda, I think, in mining, in South Africa. We only need to think of Jagersfontein, not only from an environmental perspective and from the burst of the dam, but also about the people that are left behind once a mine closes. Thank you very much to Melanie Naidoo-Vermaak from Harmony. We'll be coming back to you, Melanie. I'm going to move on now to Tsakani Mthombeni from Implats. Tsakani, if you could take us through how your job works. Implats is a really large organization. You have many mining sites. You've got some very old mines, you've got some newer properties. Do you get involved both on the environmental side, the social side, and how does Implats view ESG as part of its business proposition? Over to you, Tsakani. Well, thanks for inviting us to share our experience and aspirations really, from where we sit. Our approach to sustainability isn't necessarily driven by ESG demands, rather by the core desire to leave our people, which is to create a better future, through which we are committed to responsible stewardship for long-term value creation. I will later on share with you a few examples on how we have gone about doing that and how much money we have put in and how we are impacting lives in that regard. For us, responsible stewardship is one of our key strategic pillars in the business. We have found that, with that purpose in mind, we are able to focus on materiality, issues that are material to our business. That guides us in selecting and sequencing our priorities for what we focus on. I think, ESG as an acronym has obviously stimulated a lot of discussion, much of which we needed to have as an industry. However, we mustn't lose sight that these are three windows that investors are able to look through our business to see how well we are driving business sustainability. In and of itself is not the end, and I think Melanie said it very well. There are no discontinuities. The challenge is continuum. I mean, a clear example is COVID, what we've recently gone through. It is no point to put sanitizers and vaccinate employees if the program does not extend to communities. We are not winning. ESG in itself must not lead us to focus on, you know, a tick box exercise where we please people through environmental, social and governance lenses. I must say, interactions that we've had with the investors demonstrate clearly that even in the fund manager space, there is still no agreement on what ESG is. How do you measure performance? There's, I mean, more than 2,000, some venture to say 3,000 ESG indicators that people use depending on who you talk to. I think the biggest issue here is that even fund managers are not in agreement. Are they measuring input, process or impact? The view we have taken is we are adding value to the enterprise for the long term. The challenge with focusing only on investor messages is you have investors that come in for six months, nine months, and they are out. If you go with that, you are potentially going to ruin value, enterprise value. Our focus is really embedded and driven by our people and making sure that we deliver that value for the long term. Thank you so much. Sorry. No, carry on, Lael. Thank you. Well, you know, I just wanted to say you said some really fascinating things there. I think in a way, your answer also demonstrates the tension that can arise, because you've spoken about ESG being about creating a better future. In other words, it is similar to the old notion of sustainability, because the old notion of sustainability was not only about environmental sustainability, the management of natural resources, our impact on natural resources, but also our sustainability in relation to the people around us, as well as the people who work for us. That's also, I guess, a health and safety agenda. I think that's kind of purpose-driven set of ideas in ESG. I noticed somebody on the chat calling themselves an ESG enthusiast. In other words, it's somebody. You know, it suggests a kind of a purpose-driven concept of ESG. What's also happening, as you've mentioned, Tsakani, is that we're getting all of these indicators and all of these indices. I mean, some of us are reporting in terms of nine or 10 different indices. It can, I suppose, just become a tick box exercise. How do you, in an organization as big as Impala, get people to really live these ideas rather than this just being another report? What we sought to do was to try and make these sustainability/ESG conversations simpler, more visible to people at the floor level. We've broken it down into specific material topics such as water management. In there we have an ambition for the direction we want to go. By 2030, we should be recycling close to 70% of the water that comes through our uncertain. When it comes to decarbonization, we have a long-term ambition of carbon neutrality by 2050, with a short-term goal of 2030, which is to reduce our footprint by 30%. We have a number of other related goals around biodiversity, waste, mineral, and both mineral and non-mineral, as well as air pollution, mine closure and concurrent rehabilitation. Mm-hmm. You know, and when it comes to social, we've had to scale back and talk to business about, there isn't necessarily anything new here, but let's package our narrative for what we're doing and the impact a little bit better. Okay. We've been driving health and safety and wellbeing topics, I think, probably the most matured in the conversation. And I'll probably give you details later of our housing scheme. That is, I would believe is one of the industry-leading, schemes, housing schemes in South Africa. I mean, it's become incredibly important that you don't have stakeholder management, but you have stakeholder engagement. Mm-hmm. That changes the tone as far as when you engage with stakeholders. You're not managing them. You are engaging, so you can create progressively something forward. We have a huge program around mine community social performance. How exactly do we create livelihoods during and beyond our operations? Okay. We're focusing specifically on health and wellbeing programs for our communities. We're looking at enterprise development. We're looking at skills and education programs. We're looking at infrastructure. When we have to build a bridge, when we have to build a school, we'll take a high-grade specification and not take a typical CSR approach that would have been a couple of years ago. Now we are having to take that and look at impact going forward and make sure we don't saddle our communities with very expensive, very complicated technology, heavy and difficult to operate equipment through the mine closure. We are having to think carefully around how we deliver, what we deliver, what happens beyond delivery of these programs. Yeah. Fantastic. Governance is the foundation, right? There's no trophy for maintaining a governance foundation. That's what it is. We are a listed entity. We are fortunate enough to learn and have to manage around Canada expectations as a host country, around Zimbabwe expectations as a host country for us, as well as South Africa. That brings in itself a myriad of disclosure platforms that we have to manage. At the same time, we constantly looking at, you know, the topic of human rights. It's become very strong, especially through the supply chain as well. In our case, we have customers who also have customers. We supply PGM to companies that fabricate and ultimately you end up with a consumer who is a customer of our customer's value chain. All those expectations from the customer side, we constantly listening and we constantly seeing how do we communicate better and what is the message that's coming from the market. Yeah. Fantastic. That's how we've gone about it. Yeah. Thank you, Tsakani. That's you've raised a number of really interesting points there. I'd like to come back to a number of them that you've raised, particularly with you being such a big employer in our industry. I think that comes with enormous responsibilities and challenges. You've also mentioned the governance agenda. To me, governance is about accountability. Resources are put in our hands as companies, resources of money, resources of people, resources of natural resources. The question is, can we account for the way in which we've used those resources and the impact that we have? Looking forward to discussing that. Before we do that, let's turn now to Sarah. Sarah Crombie, Digby Wells Environmental, how have you seen all of this change? You're in the advisory services side, so people turn to you for your expertise. How have you seen the ESG agenda change in the work that you do? Sure. Thanks. Yeah, like we've seen across the globe, I think over the last decade or probably more specifically the last five years, ESG has really gone from the margins to the mainstream. For my team or, you know, within Digby Wells, we've gone from being just a one-man band on ESG advisory to a team of seven consultants over the last two years. We've seen a lot of significant growth and requests for help on all aspects, particularly in Southern Africa, including in the coal guys. They're looking to position and communicate their approach better, tell investors what the transition plans are. Some of the big drivers are obviously increased legislation and disclosure pressures from the investors. Also increased expectations. If you want to export your product, you know, your buyers are asking questions and expecting answers. What I'd say is, you know, while there's been some pushback starting to come on ESG, and we need to be careful about seeing it as a magic bullet. The trend is a desire for better disclosure and performance. I see that continuing. You know, the next generation of shareholders, of employees and customers ask questions about ESG, that they don't want to buy from, work for, or invest in companies that negatively impact society or the environment. They want to be associated with those positive changes. We've got, you know, one of the biggest transfers of capital occurring at the moment, so that's only gonna amplify. Someone also mentioned that, you know, ESG isn't just a tick box and of disclosures, and that's changing as well. A lot of those disclosures require actual action, and there's greater requirements to show what is happening and for the information that is being disclosed out to be assured. Beyond that, you know, we're also helping suppliers such as drilling and mining contract companies to understand what they need to do and to help them improve. That makes them a better partner of choice for the Mining Companies. You know, that's cascading all the way down the supply chain as well. Sarah, can you tell us in the way that people turn to you for ESG advice, are you finding more emphasis on the environmental factors, more emphasis on the social? Which are the more difficult ones to solve? Or are these factors being seen as a, you know, part of an integrated whole? A bit of both. Sort of within the ESG team, we get a lot of climate work and a lot of work around biodiversity. That social stuff's there as well across the whole company. Social is one of our big drivers. They all marry together at the end of the day ultimately as well. Fantastic. Thank you, Sarah. I'm gonna be coming back to you in just a minute or two because I want to follow up some of the specifics there. First I want to turn to Kurt Roelandt of Envision Advisory Services. You also, Kurt, are involved on the advisory side. Tell us what are companies reaching out to you for? What are the problems that they're trying to get your help to solve? How do you see the development of ESG both over the past few years, but also how do you see it developing in time to come? Okay. Thank you very much, Lael. We see different type of clients according to their maturity. We still have a number of clients that we had discussions on that are in fact waking up on ESG. The CEO has nominated one or two people in its organization to deal with ESG, and these people are looking for support, guidance around the standards, the principles. I mean, Tsakani said there are 3,000 different metrics that you can choose from, so it's a big, audacious, issue to deal with it if you start with ESG. That's the one type of clients. We have also clients that are a bit, already more, evolved along the maturity curve. One of the most basic questions that we get is how to establish a baseline. It's very much linked to the environmental side. It's to understand the Scope 1, the Scope 2, and some clients are trying to also measure the Scope 3, which is a bit more challenging. What we also see is a number of questions regarding carbon offsets and how does it work. We have, for instance, had a number of discussions with potential suppliers of carbon offsets that had a number of ideas to generate these carbon offsets. There we see that there is certainly a lack of seed capital. The ideas are there, but to get these projects over the line, it requires, first of all, a bit of technical competency, but also financial competency regarding the cost involved of these different standards that you need to adhere to create a carbon offset. We also see bigger companies that have, for instance, different projects like energy efficiency projects or changing of their energy input streams, asking if that applies for the carbon offsets and carbon tax offsets here in South Africa. That are two elements. We see also people that try to embark on their ESG strategy, but also want to align their ESG strategy with the full strategy. I think Melanie, Tsakani, and Sarah already mentioned to it's not a tick box exercise. It needs to be a very integrated approach. You have these three pillars, the E, the S, and the G, and sometimes you have competing forces in between. They are sitting sometimes in different areas of the company. It's to bring them all together and then to create a certain competitive differentiator. Because I think sometimes companies still see ESG as something they have to do. I think if you take a different view and you try to achieve, like some of the panelists here with Harmony and Implats mentioned, try to change the mindset and try to create differentiating from a customer perspective or from an innovation perspective or from a financing perspective, it can really bring a lot of value to the company. Kurt, do you see a danger that this just could become a kind of a compliance matter, rather than a new driving force? How do you help your clients to avoid that risk? Look, it all depends on the maturity of the entity. We have certain clients that are still starting at the beginning of their journey. Sometimes we feel they have to do it because someone in the C-suite, the CEO or a board member, has given that assignment, you know. They think maybe we'll scratch the surface and we'll be fine with it. Other companies that I've seen, that we have been working for, certainly in the mining sector, they wanna be a leader. They wanna use ESG as a differentiator. That's a total different mindset in these type of companies when you talk to the different levels of people in the company. They're all aware of their ESG targets, what they need to achieve, and whatever decision they take needs to be aligned with their overall ESG target that are set in 2025, 2030. Yeah. There are different type of companies out there with different type of maturities. I think it also matters if you're listed or not listed. Some of the non-listed companies are a bit shielded for now, and certainly if they don't really need a lot of financing from fund managers or from external investors, they still have a bit of a free rein to go. I think Yeah Over time, it will all come together and ESG will become a mainstay. I guess one of the differences between the tick box exercise and a real purpose-driven organization has to do with leadership. has to do with whether or not the leadership of the organization feels some personal commitment to running the company in this particular way rather than those you know who are just seeing this as something, "Well, it's another thing that we have to comply with." thank you very much, Kurt. thanks very much to all the speakers for giving us an overview so far. What I'd like to do now is focus in on the E, on the S, and on the G, and ask everybody to share some more specifics with us. In doing so, let me just share a thought with you about the way in which the health and safety agenda has changed in South Africa in mining. You know, if you think about it, if you go back to the 1980s, the number of fatalities in the industry was often more than 600 people a year. If you go back further than that, the numbers were even more horrific. People who died at work. As a result of coming to work and doing their job. Over a period of time, there has been a real shift in that for which we are really grateful. Now the number of fatalities that we get in the industry has dropped very, very significantly. If I think about what's happened over time, and I'm sure many of you on this webinar have experienced it yourselves, there has been a kind of a mix of a strong compliance drive from government, saying it is just not acceptable. A strong drive from trade unions to say, "We're talking about people's lives here. No one should die at work." Also, I think a real shift in consciousness that has taken place within the industry and within its leadership and within people working in the industry. In other words, the health and safety improvements that we've seen haven't happened by mistake. They've been a very conscious change. You know, like everything, these things require money. One of the reasons that fatalities have dropped is because we have invested more heavily in health and safety. I guess that's a really nice template to use in other aspects of ESG, because I do see health and safety as an aspect of the S in ESG. This is partly also about companies being willing to put resources into all of these priorities. I want to now come back to each one of our speakers. Let's start with the E. Melanie Naidoo-Vermaak has already given us a very nice example of the renewable energy and decarbonization journey that Harmony has embarked upon. I see that on the question group. On the Q&A, there are a couple of people asking questions of greater clarity from you, Melanie. What I'd like to do is I'd like to go to each speaker and say on the E of ESG, could you just share with us quite briefly, one project or one approach in your company and the lessons that you are learning from that? Melanie, since you've already mentioned decarbonization, please feel free either to give us a bit more detail since people are interested or you could perhaps choose another project. Can we come to you and say, inspire us, Melanie, with an example of what Harmony is doing in the E space of ESG. I'm gonna ask each person to do the same. Yeah, happy to. Look, I think we've spoken about decarbonization, and I think I took us through a talk, so I'm just gonna pause there for now. Perhaps linked to decarbonization is the whole water vulnerability issue. We're working in a water-scarce environment, very low continuity and a threatened availability for host communities, for local communities, for consumptive purposes. Water is a very key asset for us to manage responsibly, not just now, but for the future, if you think about climate and climate change scenarios. At Harmony, we're working very hard to manage that scarce resource. We're working very hard to implement technology and interventions that look to protecting and conserving that resource, so that we in part liberate the potable supplies, that it can be used for alternate uses and particularly for community needs. But we're also trying as far as possible to recycle to reuse as much as we can within our circuit from what we generate. And there's been quite a bit of innovation in that area. Harmony has established a host of plants and are continuing to develop these plants, where we try to get ourselves independent off of external sources and independent of having to discharge. So we're really using water within circuit, being very responsible around that. I think the next step for us is to see how we can actually take that from an E to an S perspective and start empowering our communities with what we've garnered and what we've learned through the lessons that we've had, and in utilizing some of our own infrastructure and facilities to be able to supply to external needs for now and for future use. I think those are some of the key aspects we're driving within our business. Like I said, you know, we try not to distinguish too much between the E and the S because they overlap. If we can deliver an operational and a business, a benefit, can we take it a step further and deliver the social agenda as well? I think that really talks to Harmony's purpose, which is about shared value. It's about using our economic activity to benefit beyond just our gates through ESG, through our business, through our value proposition. Thank you so much, Melanie. I think your water example is a really great example of how we can really use the same infrastructure, the same initiative, the same expertise, to serve the needs of the company while serving the needs of the community and taking the limited natural resources into account. I'm gonna come back to you just now for an example of some of the social projects, the SRP projects, perhaps, some of the things you mentioned about post-mining. We'll be coming back to you, Melanie, in a moment. Kani, tell us on the E side how this big organization Implats is approaching some of your key challenges? Perhaps share with us a little bit on the decarbonization side, if you will. Sure. I'll give you a little bit because you asked for it, but I really want to talk about one very special one. On our decarbonization pathway, as I mentioned earlier, we have a long-term, 2050, short-term, 2030 ambition. At the back of that is a huge roadmap of initiatives that we have identified. Close to or just over 500 MW of renewables that we'll be adding in our business. As we speak now, we are actually busy executing our first phase of that in Zimbabwe. It's 35 MW at $37 million. That's the plant and all the connectivity into the grid. That's that gives us the first step into the decarbonization journey. Obviously for South Africa, we have to deal with what is called the Scope 2 emissions. Emissions that come as a result of us using electricity from the grid. That's the majority of our emissions here, in fact 80% at group level. A big focus, shifting in electricity supply shift. That's horizon one of our decarbonization journey, where we're switching to renewables. Overlapping with our horizon two is what we call fuel switch. We're already looking at zero carbon fuels to displace, where we still have diesel, where we still have coal in our processes. In the long term, back to Cat's point, offsets become very important. Based on our understanding of our business right now, it will come a point when we will need to acquire offsets, to make sure that we get to neutrality. In the last, when we did the results, we made a significant capital allocation at the back of that, and that talked to leadership, Lael, that you were referring to earlier. I think there's a lot I could also share around water, but let me just pick one that's probably unique in the conversation, because the renewables tend to have an IRR, they tend to have an NPV. You can justify that with the numbers. Here's a situation where our leadership demonstrating commitment. They said, pursuant to us expanding our operations in Zimbabwe for the ZAR 4 billion smelter project. They said we will have a sulfur abatement plant to reduce our sulfur emissions at that operation. It didn't have to be. You could probably have gone and done some solution to still sail below, but board was very insisting, and they demonstrated that leadership you were talking to back to the purpose. We said we are going to put it runs into hundreds of millions of ZAR for us to put a sulfur abatement plant. That helps us to make sure that our Zimplats expansion with the smelter, the emissions are at levels that we are experiencing in South Africa. Here in South Africa, we have been investing in the past, again, hundreds of millions of ZAR to make sure that they will reduce our sulfur emissions. I think, Lael, these are numbers, these are projects, but what I really wanted to use this particular one for was for leadership, because there is no necessarily an IRR tied to that, investment. This is where it's not about environmental. It really comes down to what the leadership is driven by. We're driven by- Yeah. The purpose to create a better future. Therefore, when you have to make a decision, you come back to that and you say, our purpose behoves us to act in this manner. That's how we constantly use that purpose statement that we've taken time to craft and considered carefully to make sure that we can use that to guide our decisions going forward. Amazing. Thank you for those wonderful examples, Tsakani. You know, I think sulfur is one of the things we don't really talk about enough. You know, we also perhaps need to have a conversation in our industry about smelting, because smelting is a really massive source of carbon emissions as well as sulfur emissions. Really great to hear that Implats has taken that decision. It also perhaps points to the different regulatory requirements in different countries, and increasingly whether a jurisdiction requires a particular level of compliance with something like sulfur may not be the driving force for the decision once we are indeed purpose-driven, as you have put it. I'm going to come now to Sarah and to Kurt. Tsakani, again, I want to come back to you on the social side in a moment. But first I want to ask Sarah, can you give us an example, Sarah, of an exciting, inspiring, interesting project on the environmental side that you are seeing? I'm gonna ask you the same, Kurt. Sure. I'm not gonna be too project specific, but you know, as I alluded to earlier, we've had a real rush on the climate work. Everything from carbon footprinting, risk assessment, target setting, pathways and alignment with TCFD, including some of the scenario analysis work. That's what I really get excited about because you sort of look at that and then share those results through board education and management education and sort of explaining how climate could hit the business, what can be done to de-risk and future-proof. Melanie mentioned water work. Again, you know, some of the work we do around water accounting, that's helping clients align to best practice. It's not just a win for good disclosure, it's helping drive value on the ground since they've got a better view of where the water's being used, where the efficiencies might be wrought, and, you know, helping to improve those reuse recycling rates and ultimately reduce withdrawals. The other one that's pretty close to me is biodiversity. Sort of a next or bigger wave coming through. We've got a number of clients saying that they're getting a lot more questions around biodiversity management. We're doing a lot of really exciting biodiversity work, strategies, projects which connect site and management. What we're doing is looking to see how we can join up and evolve the thinking and use sort of nature-based solutions, connecting carbon and biodiversity offsets, and then start integrating in the social as well of that, with that. It's a tall order, isn't it, Sarah? You know, just as you were speaking, I was thinking about how the skills you must have in your company must be quite wide, because ESG has actually got a lot of technical skills behind it, and technical skills in different disciplines. You know, you need people who you know, biodiversity is very different from decarbonization, and that's just the E. You must have a pretty wide range of skills in your organization. Yeah. To be able to do all of this. Yeah, definitely. I mean, like I said, the team on the ESG side is. There's seven of us, but, you know, we're supported by a sort of a technical group, where we've got specialisms across water, biodiversity, social stakeholder management, cultural heritage. You know, it's really great, because I'd sometimes say we have knowledge that's six miles wide and three feet deep, to then have that backup of the guys who go six miles deep as well. Right. That's a great way of putting it. Kurt, do you have similar challenges in terms of the multidisciplinary nature of ESG? Share with us, if you will, an example or some insights that you have on the E side. Okay, let me start with the ESG side of it, itself. I mean, recently we did a project for one of our clients that wanted to venture into a new business, an adjacent business, in the mining sector, which require a lot of yellow plant. It's very typical for most of the mining houses here even. One of the elements there was. How does that new business with all that yellow plant fit in within our ESG strategy overall? We had a number of discussions with all the different OEMs. One of the lessons learned there was that while there are a lot of initiatives happening to decarbonize the yellow plant by synfuels, by EV engines, hydrogen, by having more fuel-efficient engines, and so on, one of the elements is that to get to a net zero production, it will still take a long time because the first commercial, real commercial, initiatives are only coming in in 2025, and that's only for selected pilots. It will still take until 2030 and probably until 2035 until you can talk about the full net zero production system, despite all the efforts. I think that's also a lesson, you know. We can all set ourselves incredible stretch targets, and we need to do that, but I think it's a long journey, it's a marathon, and it's absolutely not a sprint to achieve all these lofty goals. That's one element. The second element of part of your question is around the complexity of E, S, and G. It's indeed true. I mean, there are multiple topics going. I mean, the people already mentioned it, biodiversity, water resource management to carbon offsets. Every topic on its own requires a lot of deep knowledge and a lot of deep expertise. Our team currently is four to five people strong. I mean, starting from one or two people two years ago, so we also have grown quite significantly. We also have to require expertise for specific knowledge, because you can't contain all the knowledge within one company. It's impossible. It's too diverse. Absolutely. Thank you, Kurt. I think that your last comment is really important. I mean, just as companies struggle not to create silos within the organization, so advisory companies have to have not only a range of skills but also people who can work across different disciplines, because ultimately these things really all are interconnected. I'm seeing some fabulous questions on the Q&A. There's a very interesting question about corruption. There's also some interesting questions about decision-making in companies, and I'm itching to get to the questions themselves. Before I do that, I just want to ask Melanie and Tsakani in particular, because they are working in Mining Companies as such, to just share with us a little bit on the S side. Perhaps you can give us an example of a project or an approach, either to end of life of mine type problems, resilient communities, or perhaps to the ways in which social and labor plans can be used more effectively. Are we using our social and labor plans effectively? Are they having an impact? Or is it just, you know, often a set of, again, tick box exercises? Melanie, give us some insights on the social side. Yeah. Thank you, Lael. That is quite a packed question and comment, I must say, and we've been deliberating a lot about it internally. I think that things are revolutionizing a little on the SLP side, or the social labor plan. I think there's a stark realization that your mine life is very finite, and that you need to use your presence as a catalyst for something bigger and better and beyond mining. I think that this is resonating not just with regulatory environments, but also with industry, and I think we're seeing more and more coming through from the communities as well, wanting to have something put in place that's meaningful, that's impactful, and that has longevity beyond our presence. I mean, Harmony has had experience of this in the recent past where we were closing assets, but luckily it was still within a very strong mining environment with a lot of life left from other operations to sustain. We're acutely aware that whatever we put in place now and investment we make, we need to ensure that we're leaving it for long term, and we need to ensure that we're putting investments in place that actually delivers benefits that can stand beyond the presence of mining and is independent of mining. A good deal of effort is going into two things, managing the here and now, because there's still very much a need and an expectation from host communities for us to be seen to support and do the right thing. Because we're aware that our activities and the way we conduct our business affect the lives of our communities, we want to do the right thing. We want to do the honorable thing, it talks to Tsakani and his comments around purpose, wanting to have shared value. We kind of split our SLP commitments into two, looking at serving the more recent needs, the immediate needs, the infrastructural needs, the job creation opportunities, and the social development needs. We're also very aware that we need to structure the SLP in such a manner that it's also looking to deliver ends that are going to be sustainable beyond our presence. We're managing our investment in such a manner. I think what is really pleasing is that this is becoming a theme and an understanding that's resonating with more than just us. It's coming out of our communities as well. Some effort goes into looking at our natural resources, looking at our skills, looking at what we can use to create ecosystems that can survive beyond us, and activities, economic activities that exist beyond us. We're looking at the agricultural aspect, and agri-processing by and large, simply because we have the tracts of land, we have the water. These are skills that can be taught. It's portable skills that can be developed. We bring all of those concepts together to try to set up an industry that can operate, catalyzed by us and supported by us in the present, but will become independent in the not too distant future. I think the other thing we're also doing is trying to focus on women empowerment, so creating opportunities, skilling, upskilling women, introducing them into supply chain, building enterprise capability and capacity, because if we uplift women, we're uplifting township economies, we're promoting job creation. I think those are just some of the key focal areas that we're driving as a business currently. Fantastic. You know, Melanie, you've just said something so interesting about township economies and about surviving beyond mining. You know, it's not easy for any industry to sit down and say to itself, "How do I create another set of enterprises beyond the enterprise that I'm involved in?" You know, most companies, it's hard enough to run an enterprise without thinking about what might replace you. I do think that with the particular nature of mining, being a finite resource, these become really critical questions. Tsakani, you also at Amplats, in your organization, you're running a number of quite old shafts. How do you see the whole post-closure agenda? Is it something that you are concerned with at Amplats? When it comes to mine closure and all of that conversation, our approach is, one, don't wait for closure year, i.e., a future year, to rehabilitate. We spend a lot of money to do concurrent rehabilitation. In one of very good cases that we're actually busy with now is we have an old tailings dam in Rustenburg, and we have deliberately decided to go and re-mine that. With a Tier One company, i.e., a company from the host communities. We formed a JV with a company from the host communities. We brought in a technical partner. Our plan, our goal is that we are going to re-mine that hill or that hump, for those that can at least imagine what a tailings dam looks like. That's gonna be flat, and that land will be handed over back to the landowners. Now, that is a concept not just of what to do with mine closure. There's circular economy involved. There's gain sharing. Do it while you still can. Don't wait for end of life. That is our approach when it comes to to mine closure. Obviously, there are other, you know, legal requirements such as maintaining your provisions and all of that. We still do that, but our vision is to try our best to restore, consult with stakeholders, and restore some of the areas that we are having to rehabilitate. In doing so, create jobs and create sources of livelihood for those around. I also just wanted to share briefly, very briefly, on our industry-leading housing program that we're running, and it's been going on, I mean, Rustenburg, and also now at Zimplats in Zimbabwe. Just last year, we invested just over ZAR 500 million in our housing program. And what is this for? We're creating quality accommodation for employees and their families. And so they are closer to their workplace. You minimize commute. These are establishments that are surrounded by other services, you know, schools. We actually built a world-class, I think, early childhood center there and a primary school there. The pass rates are phenomenal. I think this is very important because when we started this program years ago, I mean, a house that you could have purchased there for ZAR 260,000 in 2018, today you could be selling it for almost ZAR 650,000. Now, not only have we provided quality accommodation, we created an opportunity for our employees to own houses, okay? That helps in terms of equity and leveraging their other investments elsewhere. This is an opportunity where you have created value and you can be proud of as an employee of our company. I mean, all those houses, they come with, you know, solar geysers, and with. They come with a communal water borehole to make sure that we minimize the stress on municipal water systems. Now, we were doing it for SLP purposes just to comply, we probably would have just built some lower spec house and walked away. This is why we are constantly pushed and challenged, particularly by our CEO, to think beyond compliance. What do we want to leave behind? How will we want to reflect back and say we were active in that particular area? Lael, if I had two minutes, I'll probably also talk about our COVID responses. I mean, we were at the forefront. The team in Rustenburg did really well. I think we were the first mining site to be accredited for vaccinations. Since then, we've been able to get 94% of our employees and contractors vaccinated. Now I think we're sitting at 92% full vaccination. Now, why is that important? It goes back to the earlier comment Melanie also made, that let's not focus on ESG discretely. We need to focus on the impact of this. This is continuum. They have no boundaries from, I'll say, Mel and I, from our practitioners' perspective. So much as investors are looking to understand our programs and activities and impact from an environmental, social, and governance, that is not necessarily how, as practitioners, will approach it. So these two projects on the social front will again demonstrate how that continuum goes all the way from the gate to the communities. Thanks, Lael. Amazing. Tsakani, you've reminded me of an old definition of sustainability that was around, I guess, when the word sustainability was very much the word that we were all using. That was the idea that sustainability meant some for all forever. If you think of sustainability that way, you immediately start focusing on people, and you start focusing on natural resources. That, I think, becomes a very nice way to think about these things. Tsakani has introduced the whole idea of housing. Well, I think that needs another webinar, actually. If we can say to Creamer Media, we really need a good conversation about housing. It's one of the really challenging aspects, I think, of being involved in mining. It's a little easier if you're in Rustenburg. It's a bit harder where I'm sitting today, which is out near Moruleng in the Pilanesberg area. Also for sustainability challenges that arise in relation to housing that I'm sure many companies face. We do need to talk about housing. We also need to talk, I think, about how companies can cooperate on their SLPs. I've been involved in an initiative this year through the Minerals Council around gender-based violence and trying to set up support centers for everybody, for men and women, mostly women, in communities who are experiencing gender-based violence. Because in many of the areas in which mines operate, there are simply no GBV services. For a woman experiencing GBV, she really just has to turn up at the local police station or the local hospital, and kind of hope that, she's going to be dealt with properly, and very often she will not be dealt with properly. I reached out through the Women in Mining Leadership Forum of the Minerals Council to other companies to say, "Couldn't we cooperate on this matter?" There's been an absolutely amazing response to that, and we are really working towards now a big partnership to try and provide GBV services. The key to this is that we would cooperate on our SLPs, because we all have SLPs. If you think, for example, about the western limb of the platinum belt where I am at Sedibelo Resources, you know, there are a whole lot of Mining Companies in our area, but we all have our own SLPs, and often we are served by and are serving the same communities. I think there's great scope to talk about how some of the exciting SLP ideas that are happening could be done with greater cooperation between us. Now we've got some wonderful questions here, and I'm going to take one that I consider to be really interesting and a little provocative in a good way. That is the question that has come. Does ESG include an anti-corruption agenda, and if so, how? Sarah, Kurt, either of you are willing to take that one on? Yeah. Sarah. I mean, I'll have a crack at it. Mm-hmm. Certainly within the disclosure requirements, there's a lot of focus around anti-bribery and corruption and what the policies are in place and following through on that. Yes, I think is the simple answer. Yeah, I think, Kurt, have you got any more to add? Yes, it's certainly the simple answer, but I also believe that most companies that we have been interacting so far is they are focusing on the E and the S, which are, of course, important elements. The G, they say it's Part of being a good citizen, and we are listed and so on. In recent history, even in South Africa. Not only in South Africa, you also have it in the U.K., these examples. Some companies, and we only have to think about the Steinhoff, even some Tongaat Hulett companies, they had failures on the G. I think it's quite important to really focus on the G element also and not take it for granted. Thank you, Kurt. Thank you, Sarah. You know, and also to say that in many of the indices that the industry is now responding to and reporting in terms of, the anti-corruption agenda is certainly there. It's there in the form of what's known as an ABC, an anti-bribery and corruption policy. I do think that the whole notion of accountability is a key one for ESG. We are accountable for what we do, and that accountability, I think, extends to anti-corruption. We also have to be really careful in the environments in which we work, because sometimes, you know, the companies in mining and construction come under pressure from local groupings. We really all have to be very careful about the way in which we manage those pressures, so that local procurement is done in a manner that has great integrity and resilience, and never falls prey to, you know, to groupings or forces who are trying to force their way into supply chains. I think that's quite a complicated question you've asked and a thought-provoking one. There's another interesting question. Sorry, Sarah. I was just gonna say, I can also just chip in, like a lot of that G around the corruption stuff also sort of leans back towards your more standard, and I'm going back to a sort of a disclosure framework where you'll what you typically have out in an annual report and accounts, less so on the sort of ES and G, but it's interwoven. You sort of it defaults into that section as well, but it's definitely very much there. Thanks. You know, Lael, if I may also just interrupt, you know, from a corporate perspective, from an enterprise perspective, G is very topical right now. Very, very interwoven into the fabric of your business, into your DNA. I think it talks to corporate trust. I do think that issues like anti-corruption and anti-bribery are actually highly managed by enterprises, by listed enterprises, by organizations that really want to live their values. We're seeing more and more of it coming together into the organizational DNA, into the organizational fabric. A lot more policies, a lot more regulation, and a lot more focus on culture. If we can embed ESG, and I think that's what I wanted to say up front, if we can embed ESG as part of the culture and the fabric of the organization, these things start to see the light of day. It isn't just a fad or something coming in because it's driving a regulatory outcome. It really becomes the way we do business. Certainly at Harmony, those aspects are highly regulated, highly managed, and highly driven as part of our value system. Thank you, Melanie. I think from a corporate perspective. Absolutely. I think what's also very valuable about what you've said is that you've talked about company culture. ESG is so much, isn't it, about shifting the cultures of organizations. I think that's where the anti-bribery and corruption, you are so right to say that it's part of our values, it's part of our corporate culture. It's also, I guess, part of our purpose. That our purpose is to do business with integrity, rather than to try to you know, meet some objective. You know, you've given us a really important insight there. That leads on to another interesting question that's been asked. Again, a slightly provocative in a good sense question, and that's about greenwashing. We're being asked here, you know, what about greenwashing? Isn't this all just, you know, new old wine into new bottles? Aren't we just trying to claim that we're better than we are? Is it changing anything fundamentally, or it's just giving a new form of marketing? Anybody want to have a go at the question of greenwashing? Tsakani. Lael, I'll give it a go, and I'm sure the other panelists will add to it. I think there has been real concerns, particularly from fund managers' side, who have latched on to the United Nations report that first came out, I think it was 2002, just before the sustainability conference here in Johannesburg. What has since happened is a lot of fund managers have created what they call products. So they are selling all sorts of packages if you want to invest in an ESG-friendly portfolio. Some of those products have been found wanting, i.e., not really promoting what they really were saying they are. When you look at it from Melanie and my perspective, which is, let's call it the practitioner side, okay? The issues that we have been dealing with in our industries are now. We are now asked to essentially go beyond compliance and try and see if you can. I mean, the topic of decarbonization is not because necessarily there's a law, but it is because we're seeing our value in contributing to a cleaner, better environment for everyone globally. Therefore, we are wanting to participate in the shift for decarbonization. I think the conversation on our side has probably remained authentic. It's not to say there has not been industrial mishap. Whether it's tailings in Brazil or Jagersfontein or whether it's corruption cases that you're now reading about big Mining Companies and Resource Companies. The conversation remains on our side in terms of the issues that we're dealing with. I think what we are being asked, which is not greenwashing, we are being asked to scale up beyond compliance. We are being asked to do more with others, i.e., embrace partnerships. We are being asked to embrace technology better and improve a lot of the fundamentals at the workplace. And I think, from my experience and what I've seen in a lot of Mining Companies, there's been real commitment to invest in water infrastructure for the communities. There's been real projects on the ground to actually improve electrification for our villages. That is a real tangible project. It's not greenwashing. The money we spend under SLP, building bridges, making sure that communities don't get disconnected when there's heavy rain, that is a real and tangible. If I can say how much money we spend with Tier One companies, you can go to a mine, they'll give you a list, you can visit those companies and actually touch and feel. I think, Mel, from our mining side, the conversation from our side has remained as real as can be. It is unfortunate that from the outside it may have been put on, you know, it may have been accelerated perhaps, and in that urge to promote ESG products from the other side, that they may have created a bit of a misalignment and misunderstanding to the general populace. But yeah, every year we disclose our programs, our spend, our impact at location level. If you say we built a school, there is a school built. I would like to believe that. I'm, you know, I'm not saying we don't have challenges still. We still have challenges. How much more can we do with limited resources that we often have, as well as, you know, breaking the hidden windows, collaboration windows between Mining Companies, back to your point, Lael. Yeah. Those are opportunities that we could knock on and actually do more to impact our communities and stakeholders. Thanks. And, and maybe- Melanie. I'm sorry. If I could just support Tsakani as well with what he's saying. I fully echo everything that he said. I also think that it goes a little beyond. It talks to maturity in an organization. It talks to what you value. I think if one realizes that if ESG is implemented effectively and it improves bottom line, and it makes certain that it protects business for the long term, it's easier to be authentic about implementing it as opposed to doing it for the purposes of tick box and greenwashing. I think you have to see the real value inherent in doing it, the real value short, medium and long-term to your business and to protecting value and to creating value in the long term. What I do think is the real shift is that ESG is not just talking about strategy any longer. It's not just talking about intent. It's forcing us to deliver. It's forcing us to have strategy-led actions and action plans that result in outcomes and impacts. Those impacts are measured and they're reported. I think when we get to greater maturity from an ESG perspective in terms of standardized reporting and you know distilling the 3,000 KPIs into a select few that is meaningful and translates to what business is doing and the impact that we're making. Once we get those measurements and those benchmarks correct, I think there'd be a lot less greenwashing because there's a lot more discretion and integrity around the information being put out. I do think it's driving us in the direction of eliminating some of these challenges that we've experienced in the past and putting in place measures and metrics that's going to keep intact and measure and manage our input and performance level. Thank you, Melanie. I must say, I think that's where these indices that everybody is now responding to become useful. Because what it means is that companies do need to publish a report every year setting out their ESG performance. You know, it used to be that companies would just have a couple of pages or a paragraph or two in the annual report, and then they would say it was integrated, but it wasn't really integrated. I think what's happening now is that all of us are now publishing substantial reports dealing with lots of different parameters in which we report. These are, you know, published documents in the public domain. We all therefore, I think, carry a great deal of accountability for the data that we share. We are all under scrutiny in that sense. I use scrutiny in a very positive sense because that's really where the notion of governance accountability is really coming forward. If you think about the fact that resources are put into our hands, natural resources, physical resources, human resources, and material financial resources, we are responsible for the resources that we manage, and we must be able to report in terms of those resources. We are beginning to run out of time, but I feel there's still so much that we need to cover. I want to just take an opportunity in the Q&A just to deal with one or two more issues that have been raised. We have a question here about gender and another related question about township economies. Is there anybody who has some experience that they would like to share with us about particular initiatives in township economies? Or if I say township, I guess in my world I also mean rural economies, and also any particular initiatives around the empowerment of women, either within our organizations that as employees or within the communities that we serve. Anybody want to grab that question? Any inspiring ESG examples out there, Melanie? Yeah. I was just gonna share on ESG, for example. We're acutely aware of the fact that we need to empower women to be able to participate in the supply chain and procurement opportunities. We've set up a fund in our host communities, which enables businesses to access startup capital from Harmony so that they can then go and establish themselves, procure opportunities with. It doesn't have to be us, it could be any other enterprise in that host community or beyond. We act as the enabler, supporting them with a very soft loan and easy terms, repayment terms. In addition to that, we give them business skills and capability and assist and support them all through the development years. I think also from an enterprise perspective, development centers are established in most of our host communities where we're welcoming and encouraging entrepreneurs from the community to participate, to sign up, and to be almost nurtured into the supply chain of Harmony. We use that opportunity to build financial and business acumen and to really orientate them for readiness to participate in our supply chain. Our enterprise and supply development program has been quite value-adding, and we've been able to introduce a number of new entrepreneurs into our supply chain. I think we record in our annual report, and I suggest you refer to it if you want to see a little more detail on both the La Rona funding project as well as our enterprise centers. We're able to move the dial as it relates to opportunities for women and opportunities for youth through both of these initiatives. Fantastic. Thank you, Melanie. I think it's also really interesting to see more companies reporting on the number of women working in their organizations at various levels. The number of women in particular working at senior levels. It is really I think encouraging to see that women are beginning to be represented more substantively in all parts of the mining economy. But there is still a great deal of work to be done on the women in mining agenda. Tsakani also I think just now gave us a very nice example about how one can integrate the E and the S. I must say I think that's where the cutting edge is. If I just give an example of the organization where I work, Sedibelo Resources. We've recently signed an MoU for the provision of 45 MW of wind energy for our mine, as well as an on-site solar facility, which will be about 50 MW. In building an on-site solar facility, it has really becomes very sort of obvious and clear that we must then try to provide solar to the people and communities around us. Because once you are doing solar for your own mine, then you just sort of begin to have the expertise, the connections, the network, and the ecosystem to also offer those resources more widely. Really exciting to see how these things are beginning to happen. There are still quite a lot of questions on the Q&A, and those that I think have not been answered here will be answered elsewhere as well. What I would like to do, because we're just beginning to run out of time, is just to offer an opportunity to each of the panelists. I'm gonna say to the panelists, you are very welcome to either share general insights or comments that you have on the various topics covered, or if you have seen something in the Q&A that hasn't been answered. For example, there's a very interesting question about people who are displaced. You know, initiatives where people have been relocated, and there may be somebody with some experience in that field. I'm gonna offer to each panelist the opportunity to comment or to answer a particular question that they might wish to answer. Tsakani, if you don't mind, I'm gonna start with you. No. Thanks, Lael, and to the panelists and colleagues that joined on the line. I think, for me, what has become very clear is, with the pushback and everything else undesirable that the acronym ESG might have brought to multiple stakeholders. Some are confused, some are trying to figure out what, how, and all of that. What I do see coming very strongly is similar to health and safety, particularly in mining, the way it has now moved and matured, to the shop floor level. I think there are a few areas within, call it the ESG parameters, that are likely going to, on their own, be accelerate or need to add that much acceleration. One of them is to do with how we respond to climate change, both from mitigation and adaptation perspective, and not just for our operations, but also to the communities at the gate. I think that's going to be a big issue. Linked with that, I think biodiversity conservation is likely also going to feature strongly because the negative impacts of the changing climate sometimes will expose the biosphere. That also obviously exposes some of our long-term infrastructure, such as tailings, when it comes to climate change. I believe there's going to be that laser focus or a more concerted focus on how companies are building resilience, how they are managing expectations, managing risks and opportunities around the impact of climate change. This is not only physical, but also goes all the way to strategies and new business models. You've seen a lot of, you know, other Mining Companies pivoting and going into non or other allied, metals, and it's all in response to the transition towards greener and lower carbon economy. I believe that, very quickly, one of those within the ESG. The second one, that's going to also become very key, I think, is going to be data. Lael, you've been very hard on accountability. I think data integrity is going to come under the spotlight because it underpins everything we say we've done, we are going to do. I think let me leave it at that for now. I'm sure we'll get feedback from the team on some of the questions, and we'll be happy to get in touch with to follow through. Thank you. Thank you, Tsakani. Thank you for sharing really a wealth of experience with us. Thanks also for mentioning tailings. We probably need a whole webinar on tailings. We've all seen what can happen to tailings, you know, 20 or 30 years after the mine has closed. It's a big conversation that we do need to have as an industry. Sarah Crombie, closing comments from you. Sure. So I just wanted to go back to the question around greenwashing. I'd say as ESG's matured and it's started to be better understood as a way to de-risk and optimize opportunity and value that cynical greenwashing that was perhaps happening 10 years ago is not so. There's a lot of mechanisms coming into play to also prevent that with increased requirements around assurance, and that links to Tsakani's point just now about data. You know, I'd expect that the data has to be assured in the next couple of years. There's already big moves towards that overintegrated at board and management seas. Other frameworks such as the RGMP, so the Responsible Gold Mining Principles, also require sort of assurance towards that. You've got things like with the new GRI standard updates, requirements around double materiality, which look at financial and impact materiality and how those are being integrated at board and management level and into decision-making. I think that's that. The other point, and it's sort of a, I guess, labor of mine this year is mining as an industry. You know, we get a lot of focus on the environmental stuff. The social is there, but we don't tell the story well enough. You know, mining is critical for achieving the UN SDGs, you know, through transition metals, etc. The other part of it is actually all the positive social benefit that comes alongside when a mine opens in a community through the job creation, through taxes, royalties, procurement, and then the social investment that's also made as well. You know, going back to sort of investors and that millennial change, if they don't understand that, and I don't know how well it is still understood outside of industry, then they're gonna shy away from investing. To win the hearts and minds, we just need to tell that story better. Part of that has to happen at the framework level. We know the metrics that are requested around social tend to focus on dollar spend, and we need to start showing impact better. Substance and not only, input. Exactly. Thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you for those, really helpful insights and for everything that you've shared today. Kurt, a comment from you, and then I'll close with Melanie. Okay. I think, and it's mentioned here before with the example of safety, the role that leadership plays, and certainly the executive leadership in a company plays, is incredibly important. Many years ago, safety was also initially not really taken seriously. It became only serious when it became a hard incentive for the top leadership. I think for certain aspects and targets for ESG, it also needs to happen. It's already happening in certain mining houses and in certain companies. That's the first one. To come back on the element of greenwashing, I agree with Melanie. It's all about implementation and showing that there is value being provided. Therefore, you really need to get the right data, accurate, transparent data in to show. Because I think if people look into their annual reports or integrated reports currently, there are a lot of data in these reports that if you would ask the people, "Come and show me where the data are coming from. And are you putting your hand in the fire for the data?" That's becoming an issue. I think around data transparency, accuracy is certainly an important element, and I think implementation can help in there. I think also what we have seen more from a construction, for one of our construction clients that we are working for, but they are doing a lot of work in the mining houses, is that while people are talking great, and it's. I'm talking generic here, so I'm not talking about ARM or Implats. We are talking around the E element in the construction projects or for instance, at this stage, still tendered based on price. Even if you put a lot of value add in regarding lower decarbonization, your projects are not being differentiated enough because price is one of the elements that impact or predominant in the choice. Yeah. I think companies also need to think about their organization model and while the CEO can have the right thinking and the ESG departments can have the right thinking, also in the other areas of and divisions of the company, like for instance in procurement divisions, things have to change and targets have to be changed, and that will take time, but I'm sure that it will happen. Thank you, Kurt, for all of those very timely reminders. As you say, it is all about walking the talk. It is all about implementation. Melanie, a closing comment from yourself. Thank you, Lael. I think from my perspective, I just wanted to say that I think ESG is here to stay. It's not a fad, it's not a short-term intervention. I think it is core to your business. I think it's going to be your differentiator. I think it's going to be your competitive advantage. I do think businesses really need to start thinking corporates really need to start thinking as to how they start incorporating and embedding it into decision-making within the organization. I urge businesses and firms to start having the conversations in the boardroom. That's where it starts, talking ESG and strategy intertwined, not separated, not independent of each other. It needs to make its way into operational practices. It needs to be built into life of mine planning. It needs to compete for capital. It needs to be a consideration in growth prospects. It needs to be a part of our KPIs. I really think it needs to start guiding the way businesses, corporates manage their Six Capitals. I think once we're able to internalize it like that, ESG becomes the way we do business and becomes so integral to the whole business ecosystem that it's not a standalone any longer. I just hope that we move in that direction and we can get to that point where we can then very categorically leave the dual impacts, both financial and societal or purpose-driven. Thanks, Lael. Thank you, Melanie, and for all the wonderful insights that you've given us throughout the course of this webinar. I must say, I think we've had four really outstanding panelists today. We've really got a lot of very, very useful information, a good conversation that we've had. I think we should really end, you know, with Melanie's insight that ESG is here to stay. If I think about the organization that I work for, Sedibelo Resources, my position is called Chief ESG Officer. It, you know, I think that demonstrates the idea that ESG indeed is here to stay. It's part of the fabric, it's part of the culture of our organizations, and that is the only way that we are going to do business in our industry and in South Africa, is with integrity in a way that is purpose-driven and not a tick box exercise. It's been great to have everybody on this webinar. We've had a wonderful large audience that has stayed with us throughout. We've had lots of good questions. I'm going to hand over to Shannon now to close us out. Over to you, Shannon. Thanks very much, Lael. That brings us to the end of our webinar. I'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you very much to our facilitator, Lael Bethlehem, for enabling a robust and engaging discussion on this important topic affecting the mining industry. Thank you also very much to our panelists, Melanie Naidoo-Vermaak from Harmony Gold Mining Company, Dr. Tsakani Mthombeni from Implats, Sarah Crombie from Digby Wells Environmental, and Kurt Roelandt from Envision Advisory Services. Thank you once again to our strategic partner, Harmony Gold Mining Company, and also our sponsors, Ukwazi Mining Solutions, Digby Wells Environmental, Implats, Sibanye-Stillwater, and Envision Advisory Services for their valued support. Finally, thank you to the attendees for taking the time to join us for this discussion on deepening commitment to ESG in South Africa's mining sector. We hope you found it engaging and informative. You would have seen in the chat that our next webinar will focus on the challenges facing South Africa's transport and logistics sector. This takes place on 26th October from 2:00 PM-4:00 PM. The link to register for that session was shared in the chat. The recording of today's webinar will be sent to you in due course, and if you have any additional questions, please be in touch. You can reach us at shannon@creamermedia.co.za. Thank you so much for your time, and goodbye.