A new three-year collaboration agreement between IUCN and the mining company Anglo American will explore how nature-based solutions can help deliver positive biodiversity outcomes and support carbon neutral goals, while delivering additional benefits for conservation and wider stakeholders.
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 MiningTM 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.”
