We're excited to share our performance and look forward to a good discussion today. I'd first just introduce the team for today's session. From Barrick, in addition to me as President and CEO, we have Grant Beringer, who's our Sustainability Executive, our Group Sustainability Manager, Duncan Pettit, and our newly appointed Group Head of Health and Safety, . Unlike previous years, we won't spend time speaking through our sustainability governance. If you have attended before or read our sustainability report, you will know this well. Instead, today we aim to give you an overview of how we have achieved Detlev van der Merwe sustainable delivery and will focus on our key objectives, material aspects, and results on the ground. This, we believe, will add the most value to you.
Before we get into this performance, I felt it necessary to remind you of our global footprint and the diverse geographies and cultures within which we work. The drivers of our business are our Tier One operations: Kibali and DRC, Loulo-Gounkoto complex in Mali, Pueblo Viejo in the Dominican Republic, as well as the Nevada Gold Mines complex. We have a further Tier One gold asset in the making with North Mara and Bulyanhulu complex in Tanzania. We also have the Tier Two gold operations of Hemlo in Canada, Tongon in Cote d'Ivoire, and Veladero in Argentina. In addition, there's Porgera Gold Mine in Papua New Guinea, which is now in the final stretch to restarting, and has the real potential to meet Tier One status.
While gold is the world's most precious metal, I've always maintained that copper is rapidly becoming the most strategic metal. We own the Lumwana Gold, copper mine in Zambia, which we are planning to expand and move towards a Tier One asset. Jabal Sayid in Saudi Arabia is another key operation, where we have increased our exploration footprint and are looking to expand this operation. Finally, over the last year, we have concluded a framework agreement for the development of the Reko Diq Copper Gold Project in Balochistan, Pakistan. An exciting project, which will be one of the world's larger copper operations and will deliver value to a remote region of Pakistan. Often, sustainability is dealt with in its individual components. At Barrick, however, we recognize the interlinks between each aspect and apply holistic thinking when tackling sustainability.
A key focus of our sustainability report, and in line with this holistic approach, is that we have integrated the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, throughout our report. In this way, we can demonstrate how our business activities contribute to or impact against the achievement of specific SDGs. The SDGs are critical global goals that need to be achieved if we are to live in a world that we envisage. Despite the collective and global commitment to the SDGs, I feel the progress towards the SDGs have been placed on a shelf and forgotten about. A set of goals that the world bodies will dust off towards the end of the decade. Global leaders will ask: "What went wrong, and why didn't we achieve these?" For us, that is not acceptable.
There needs to be greater attention and tracking against our collective and global progress. Something we are resolutely sure of, is that mining is the flywheel for development, and therefore, the entire industry is critical to the achievement of these SDGs. We also want to demonstrate that mining is not important just because of the green transition, but perhaps more importantly, how responsible mining has a positive and transformative impact on global development and uplifting for disadvantaged communities. It is for these reasons that we changed the core focus of our sustainability report, away from the endless indices of reporting frameworks that muddy the waters of ESG.
To instead focus on the SDGs and showcase our impact on and contributions to society. That is not to say we don't still use and align to GRI, SASB, and TCFD standards, as these are all still important, but the way in which we measure our performance is now rooted in contributions to society. I will now hand it over to Grant to take you through our sustainability performance for 2022. Grant?
Thank you, Mark. Before running through some key numbers, I wanted to detail where you can find all our sustainability data, which is disaggregated at a site level, as well as the governance aspects. Alongside the shift in narrative and framework focus, we also work to adjust the way we structure some of our content and make it available for you digitally. We moved a lot of the governance information about policies, procedures, and processes out of the report and onto the website. Our governance structure is stable and has been fully embedded since the merger, and thus, we felt it unnecessary to include it in the report itself. This information has instead been put on the website under a section called Management Approaches. The web page has set out how we implement our policies and are available electronically to those of you that use it in your ESG-based rating.
I'd also like to draw your attention to the document library that includes all other auxiliary information, from our detailed environmental and social data at an asset level to assurance statements, tailings facility inventories, and archived and supporting reports. I'm sure by now that you are all aware of our industry-first Sustainability Scorecard. This is an important mechanism for us to measure our performance on the metrics we believe are most important for ourselves and the industry at large, and which benchmarks our progress against our peers as defined in our MD&A. The scorecard also accounts for 25% of the long-term incentive awards for senior leaders. It is worth mentioning that in line with our philosophy of continuous improvement, new metrics will be integrated into the scorecard for 2023.
These include progress against our Journey to Zero safety program, measuring the increase in national procurement year-on-year, the percentage of recommendations completed from independent human rights assessments, and the increase in female representation throughout our workforce. As you can see now, during 2022, we achieved a B grade, reflecting the progress we have made, but also showing that there's still room for improvement. We will circle back through this presentation to share some case studies that speak to the contribution towards these metrics. In the meantime, however, I'll share some of the aggregated performance for 2022. Our most critical area for improvement is on safety and health. Over the course of the last 18 months, we have unfortunately recorded 8 fatalities. This is an unacceptable figure and one that has sparked a reset in our health and safety approach.
Conversely, we did see improvement in our lost time and total recordable injury frequency rates. Without everyone going home to their families each day, this progress means little. Our localization strategy, that is, hiring and procuring from local communities and reducing expatriate and international procurement, continued a very pleasing trend, with 96% of our employees being host country nationals. We continued to meet our environmental targets, including reusing and recycling 83% of our water use, up from 80% in 2021, and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 6% year-on-year, and 11% against our 2018 baseline. We are particularly pleased with our progress towards conformance with international best practice, that being the ICMM's performance expectation and the World Gold Council's Responsible Gold Mining Principles, which we have collectively referred to as the RGMPs Plus.
We have included a complete conformance disclosure in our sustainability report, along with external assurance against our conformance to the respective councils' mining principles. In addition, our progress against the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management, or GISTM, has been pleasing, and we'll share some more information on the GISTM later in this presentation as we approach the committed disclosure date of the 5th of August. These are just some of the metrics we measure, and as I've said, we'll take a deeper dive into them during this presentation, showing how our sustainability strategy is implemented on the ground at a site level, where it makes the most difference. I will now hand over to Detlev van der Merwe , who will take you through the safety performance and our roadmap to zero.
As part of our safety reset, Detlev has been appointed as the Global Head of Health and Safety. Over to you, Detlev.
Thanks, Grant. Good day. Health and safety is the foundational value of our business, and our safety vision is every person going home safe and healthy every day. As noted earlier, we made good progress in reducing our total recordable injuries and our lost time injuries by 11% and 42%, respectively. While this progress is pleasing, it was undone at the top end and most fundamental level. 5 of our colleagues losing their lives in workplace incidents during the year is simply unacceptable, and we've had a number of honest conversations and engaged in a lot of reflection to identify and understand what is going wrong and what we must do to keep our people safe. Full and thorough investigations were undertaken for each loss of life, and the results have been discussed at all levels of the organization.
This has culminated in the revision and a reset of our safety program, Journey to Zero. Our Journey to Zero roadmap, which is summarized and shown here, was developed earlier this year by members of our regional safety team, selective executives, and senior members from across the business. We call this our Journey to Zero, because zero harm must start with zero fatalities. The roadmap identifies five progressive milestones. These are honest reflection, connection, engagement, ownership, and one team, one mission. Alongside this, there are four focal areas for action. These are risk management, courageous leadership development, contractor management, and monitoring and assurance. We are tracking our progress against the Journey to Zero rollout, including company-wide communications to the frontline shift workers. I'll hand it back to Grant to take you through our engagement and investment with our communities.
At Barrick, we understand and recognize that the countries and communities we operate in are our hosts, our neighbors, and our partners. Linking back to our Sustainable Development Goals slide, we believe the mining industry is a catalyst for socioeconomic development. Through the infrastructure we build, the jobs we create, the businesses we support through our supply chains, and the strategic investments we make in local communities. For us, this is an imperative and a responsibility of any modern mining company. Fundamental to our approach is to engage openly, honestly, and with mutual respect, and importantly, to take time to listen. We apply this across and throughout our business, but with our communities, it is really epitomized by our Community Development Committees, or CDCs, which we put community members at the heart of discussions and decision-making regarding the support we provide.
While we know money spent does not always equate to impact, it is an important means for showcasing the scale of the impact we can and do have. In 2022, we distributed more than $15 billion in economic value, almost $11 billion of which stayed in our host countries. $6 billion was spent with in-country suppliers. Almost $3 billion went to governments through taxes and royalties, and nearly $2 billion was paid to employees. A further $36 million was invested into community development initiatives, distributed and managed by the Community Development Committees I mentioned earlier. For example, through Nevada Gold Mines, we have invested $3 million in the development of two new early learning centers in Spring Creek and Elko. The centers opened in May of 2022 and provide preschool care and learning facilities for local children.
We have extended the hours for each facility to run from 4:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M. to reflect the typical work schedules of our employees, helping to support those workers with late or early shifts by providing much-needed childcare. Like the investment we have made into the Astros baseball program in the Dominican Republic at our Pueblo Viejo mine. Through this program, we have committed $400,000 to rehabilitate three local fields for young people to play and train on, giving them an alternative to a life of crime and opening doors for gifted players. One of the difficulties with sustainability reporting for a global company like Barrick is that aggregated data does not give stakeholders an understanding of what it really means in the places we operate, what it is like on the ground.
This year, we are trying to capture country-focused pages throughout the report that provide asset-specific performance data and also focus on a theme that is particularly pertinent for that operation. Our operations in Tanzania is one such example, where the international narrative is not reflective of the truly remarkable change and success we have had on the ground. As you all know, we took operational control of North Mara, Bulyanhulu, and Buzwagi in September of 2019. At the time, North Mara was effectively closed, and the relationships with the communities had eroded to a level where there was no social license to operate. Resetting those relationships, rebuilding trust, ensuring the safety of the North Mara tailing storage facility, and becoming part of the local community were our immediate priorities. It has taken time and energy across the mine and the organization, but it is now paying off.
Last year, we delivered almost $1 billion in economic value in Tanzania. We employed 2,500 people. Again, with the bulk being Tanzanians. Importantly, nearly half of all new hires were from the communities local to our operations. Our $12 million investment in community development since 2019 has been transformative for our communities. One of our key projects, recently completed, is the construction of a water tower that provides potable water to nearly 35,000 people in the communities around North Mara. Our commitment goes further than just the community around our mines. We also committed $30 million into education across the whole of Tanzania. This investment will go towards building more than 1,000 classrooms and over 1,600 ablution facilities at schools.
A critical part of our stakeholder and community engagement is ensuring that we have robust grievance mechanisms in place that are used and trusted, and that are able to settle grievances in good time. Each of our operations has a functioning grievance mechanism, which aligns with the IFC Performance Standards and the United Nations Guiding Principles. The bulk of our grievances received last year were linked to land and resettlement processes by geography, arose from Kibali in the DRC and Pueblo Viejo in the Dominican Republic. At both these operations, we are either planning for resettlement or actively undertaking resettlement. It is encouraging, however, that the mechanism is being used and importantly, resolving these grievances lodged. One performance metric we use to measure the effectiveness of our grievance mechanism is to determine the proportion of grievances resolved and the time taken to resolve them.
Our group-wide target is to resolve grievances within 30 days. We do not compromise process to meet this objective. The process must be followed, communicated clearly, and escalated and investigated where necessary. During 2022, 64% of grievances were resolved within the 30-day target, and we look to improve on this metric in future. We also have an anonymous whistleblower hotline that is available 24 hours a day in all languages of our operating countries. Moving now to human rights. Respecting human rights is foundational for us. It is one of the key pillars of our overall sustainability vision. We have zero tolerance for any human rights violations committed by our employees, affiliates, or third parties acting on our behalf.
We have a standalone human rights policy, which is informed by the United Nations Global Principles: Protect, Respect, and Remedy Framework, the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, and the OECD Guidelines for Multinationals. These principles are also embedded throughout our policies and guidelines, including our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, our Anti-Bribery and Corruption and Social Performance policies, as well as our Supplier Code of Ethics. Our policy is then applied through our Human Rights Compliance Program, and we conduct both self-assessments at all sites annually, and independent human rights assessments are undertaken on a prioritized risk basis. In 2022, independent assessments were undertaken at Tongon, Lumwana, and Veladero. External training was also provided to security staff at these operations, along with our standard practice of providing training on a scheduled frequency at all of our operations.
Independent assessments during 2023 include North Mara, Bulyanhulu, Jabal Sayid, Kibali, and Loulo mines. An effective sustainability strategy includes transparency and taking responsibility for past and present issues. This is embodied by our determination to resolve legacy sustainability issues at both our operational and closed mines. These were inherited from legacy Barrick following the merger with Randgold. The new management has been working hard to resolve these. I now like to take you through some of the legacy issues and some of the allegations that are referenced in external reports, with the hope that this will provide you with more detail and valuable context. I will start with North Mara, and as I'm sure you are all aware, there are legacy human rights allegations pertaining to the mine.
Rather than go into the full detail, we have summarized the salient points here, and I'll provide an update on the progress to resolution, as well as our overall approach. Between 2013 and 2019, 14 claimants lodged legal proceedings against North Mara and Barrick, citing excessive use of force by the Tanzanian Police Force. While the jurisdiction for these cases is Tanzania, we have agreed to have them heard in the English courts. The hearings are scheduled for June 2024. Further to the U.K. claims, 21 claimants have launched legal proceedings in Ontario, Canada. The allegations involve the Tanzanian Police Force and their alleged actions after 2019. There's been limited communication with Barrick regarding these proceedings, nor were we afforded the opportunity to comment prior to them being lodged. The allegations have all been raised by RAID, a U.K.-based NGO.
Going back to 2019, RAID submitted a complaint to the London Bullion Market Association, or LBMA, for the continued certification of the refiner MMTC-PAMP, that traded with North Mara. The complaints by RAID triggered an incident review process by the LBMA, and MMTC-PAMP appointed Synergy, an independent global consultant, to complete an assessment of North Mara based on the LBMA's Responsible Gold Guidance and OECD due diligence process. This multi-year incident review process, consisting of two on-site assessments by Synergy, concluded in 2022, with the LBMA closing the incident review process based on key findings from the assessments. They recognized the measurable improvement in the management of risks since Barrick had taken control of North Mara, and they found no reason as to why the refinery should halt trade with North Mara.
After numerous engagements and invitations to visit North Mara, RAID finally accepted and visited the mine in January this year. It was an opportunity for us to not only share with them our approach, but to provide them with the context in which we operate, something they were not familiar with, as they are based in the U.K. and have not been to the mine. They visited community development projects, showing how we have worked to rebuild our social license, and we arranged meetings with the communities in which they participated. Most notably, these included meetings with community leaders, the district commissioner, and the regional police commissioner. Although no information or evidence to back up their allegations was shared with us by RAID, it was a good opportunity to invite them to raise their concerns and allegations with those responsible authorities.
During these tripartite meetings, none of the allegations made by RAID were corroborated by the community leaders. The authorities asked that RAID submit the evidence to them, including the Tanzanian Human Rights Commission. To date, RAID has not provided any further information or evidence. We have taken many actions to update and improve our approach to human rights, particularly at North Mara, as you know, our approach to community development focuses on using local companies wherever possible. This helps us inject money into the community, building businesses and community resilience. We have also applied this thinking to security at North Mara, we replaced the international private security company and appointed a local security company. That both aligns with our localization philosophy, as well as helping with community engagement, as the local security understand the local culture and the communication is easier.
Beyond the Synergy reports as part of the LBMA review process, we also undertook independent human rights assessments in terms of our human rights policy. These assessments track progress over the year, identify new focal areas, and maintain an evolving action plan and recommendations towards constant improvement. In terms of the Tanzanian Police Force, they are naturally under their own chain of command, like you would expect of any police force, and they do not direct our security, and similarly, we do not direct them. We do, however, provide Human Rights and Voluntary Principles training to the Tanzanian police, as we do with our private security. We also have signed an MOU with the Tanzanian police, which sets out the agreements for training, the standards they must adhere to, and a clear incident escalation process and investigation requirements.
Another of our operations, which has legacy human rights allegations, is Porgera in Papua New Guinea. These concerns were dealt with at the time through the creation of the Porgera Remedy Framework. Allegations were raised subsequent to this process concluding. These are unsubstantiated and have not been raised directly with us by the individuals, but rather by so-called representative groups. We have asked for the information. This has not been forthcoming. Porgera remains in care and maintenance. We have begun preparations internally to plan for a restart. Upon reopening of the mine, our priority actions include supporting individuals and gaining access to the grievance mechanism and reviewing and closing legacy grievances. We will also undertake an independent human rights assessment and continue to train the public and private security forces on human rights and the Voluntary Principles. Shifting now to the environmental aspects at Porgera.
Riverine tailings is by no means our favored method of for disposing of tailings. It is the most suitable option in a region that has high rainfall, frequent earthquakes and landslides. We are, however, committed to further reducing the amount of tailings deposited in the river. As you can see here, we have a roadmap towards complete reduction of riverine disposal. Once reopened, we will try a commingled facility, starting with the oxide tailings material, subject to success, continue to plan to expand the facility. In addition, we have an extensive monitoring network to assess and understand the impacts of riverine disposal on local rivers. Our monitoring network extends up to 600 km downstream has consistently shown that water quality remains within compliance.
These monitoring programs and results are reviewed and validated by an independent third party, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. Since early 2020 and in 2021, we undertook a study to understand the state of the river while operations had ceased. This study, also vetted by the CSIRO, found that we remain compliant and that the risks to water, sediment, and human health are low at all our monitoring sites. We trust this insight to our controversies has provided valuable information and important context. We have long questioned how controversies are determined and rated by third-party raters. However, we have seen significant change in this regard based on our efforts. For example, MSCI have recognized this progress and have upgraded or removed a number of controversies since 2019. Moving on from the legacy allegations. Diversity and inclusion continues to be a key priority for Barrick.
Our approach to appointment is merit-based. However, we recognize the value of a diverse workforce for our business and aim to have teams that are reflective of the communities in which we operate. As can be seen here, the ethnic diversity of our workforce is clearly representative of the areas we work in. At a group level, 12% of our workforce are women, and we have a good and growing pipeline up the organization, with 18% of our management positions now filled by women and 16% of senior management are women. One operation where we are particularly proud of our diversity performance is Pueblo Viejo in the Dominican Republic. We set a target of 50% of all new hires to be women. This target was achieved during 2022, and now almost 23% of Pueblo Viejo's work employees are women.
I'll now hand over to Duncan, who will take us through the progress we have made in regard to the environment.
Yeah, thanks, Grant. Our approach to environmental management is holistic and integrated, and one that considers people and the community, because we know the environment, human health, and community prosperity are linked. Some fundamental principles of this approach recognize that access to clean water is a fundamental human right. Our environmental approach must consider the community and build resilience, and communities in the areas we operate depend on functioning ecosystems and healthy biodiversity. These beliefs and principles underpin our environmental management approach and are integrated into our decisions, actions, and targets. Tailings management and dam safety is something we prioritized long before the tragic events at Brumadinho. We have a tailings management policy and standard, and we disclose our tailings storage facilities, or TSFs, by location, construction type, and consequence classification as part of our tailings inventory.
Of the 60 TSFs that we manage, 18 are operational and 42 are closed. All of these facilities meet regulatory requirements, and we continue to work to best practice. We were actively involved in the development of the GISTM and are working on its implementation. We are on track to disclose our conformance for priority facilities by the end of next week, all of which will be available on our website. In terms of greenhouse gases, we have an ambitious emissions reduction target in place, with the ultimate goal of net zero by 2050 and interim targets to track and support this progress. More than this, we have an actionable roadmap of initiatives at every site and committed capital that drive emissions reductions, but also pass our internal investment hurdles.
Last year, we again reduced our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 6% year-on-year, and an 11% reduction against our 2018 baseline. We will continue to share our progress against our GHG roadmap and keep it updated as new emission reduction opportunities arise. In the past year, we broke ground with the development of the 200 MW solar plant at the TS Power Plant in Nevada, as well as tripling of our solar capacity to 60 MW at Loulo, in Mali. We also continued to execute power purchase agreements in Nevada that source electricity from our own power-generating facilities, as well as increasing our use of electricity from renewable sources. We know that simply disclosing our progress to reduce emissions is not enough, and that a changing climate and extreme weather events requires us to understand the risks posed to our business.
In line with the requirements of the TCFD, we have been undertaking climate scenario analysis and associated risk assessments for our sites, starting with our Tier One gold assets. Last year, we completed these for Kibali, Loulo, and Carlin for both transition and physical risks, and expanded for the whole NGM complex for transition risks. Our scenario analysis for these mines considered the predominant climate scenarios from a 1.5 degrees Celsius world through to our current emission projections. The key conclusions from the physical risk assessment are that our assets are considered resilient, and our facilities' designs are expected to be adequate for future temperature and rainfall scenarios. We also continue to progress the data maturity and emissions-based engagement in our value chain as part of Scope 3 emissions. The objectives of Scope 3 is to drive collective global climate action.
Although the measurement and reporting of these emissions are demonstrated here, our main focus is the outcome of this process. That is, the process allows us to identify emission hotspots in our value chain and set both engagement and awareness plans, and then work with those suppliers to measure their emissions and establish their own reporting and target setting. We are engaging with our highest impact suppliers to understand their reporting maturity and their efforts to reduce emissions. This will be a feedback-driven process that we will continue to build upon year-on-year. We are busy developing our Scope 3 target setting and are on course to disclose this before the end of this year. Water is a key input for mining, and as we noted at the start of this section, clean water is also a fundamental human right.
Access to water is at the nexus of growing global populations and a changing climate, resulting in water scarcity becoming a growing concern. We have a standalone water policy, and our approach to water management focuses on conserving and protecting high-quality water sources, access for other users in the watershed, reusing and recycling water wherever practical, and safe discharge. We have developed site-wide water balances and tailored water management plans for each site that consider climate, water sources, and the community. Last year, 83% of our water was reused or recycled, increasing to 86% in areas of water scarcity. Following on from the last slide, we wanted to share a snapshot of our water reuse percentages at an asset level, as well as an overview of our main water sources and combined if they are under water stress.
We have adapted our definition of water stress, which considers not just scarcity, but also abundance, as too much water can pose an environmental and operational risk. For us, some of our operations, such as Pueblo Viejo, Kibali, and Porgera, are in areas of high rainfall, and our focus here is to ensure we manage this excess water well and prevent contact with operational areas. Some key water management performance to note includes 88% of water reused at the water-stressed NGM complex, and as much as 70% of water reused at Veladero in Argentina, which operates a heap leach system. Our Veladero mine in Argentina is one of our most unique assets. It's located in the high Andes at around 4,500 m above sea level. There are no doorstep communities at Veladero.
Our communities are more than 100 km away from the mine. Nonetheless, we have significant programs focused on local employment, local procurement, and community development. The area has limited access to municipal water supply, and one of the focuses of our community work has been to construct new and rehabilitate existing local water treatment plants and agricultural irrigation projects, to ensure communities have both access to water and to better quality water. The treatment plants are particularly important in this region, which has naturally poor water quality. This poor water quality is a perception that some anti-mining groups like to use to suggest that the mine is operating irresponsibly. Going back to 2015, we had an unfortunate spill at Veladero, where cyanide-bearing process solution was spilled onto a road next to the valley leach facility, or VLF, and a portion of that solution entered a near waterway.
We immediately reported the incident to authorities, and environmental monitoring was conducted. Monitoring at the time confirmed that the incident had no impact on local water sources or access to water for local communities. Further to our own monitoring, the San Juan government commissioned an impact assessment undertaken by the United Nations Office for Project Services and the United Nations Environment Programme. The UN assessments both concluded that the incident did not cause any impact to downstream areas and posed no human health risks. This report is available publicly. Over the past 18 months, allegations of repeated spills have been made publicly, and an official complaint was submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council. These allegations have all come from the same organization. To be clear, these are all entirely false.
I'll remind you that we reuse 97% of water and that our communities are some 100 km away from the mine. We have an extensive water monitoring network and collect over 500 water samples from 122 different locations every month, all of which is tested and analyzed at an independent laboratory. We also undertake community participatory monitoring to show transparency through the process, and we make all of these monitoring results available to the authorities and the public. Nonetheless, these allegations continue to be misconstrued in public and are the subject of discussion with ESG rating agencies and impact our ESG scores. Despite this overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and many reputable in-country journalists reporting that the allegations are indeed unfounded.
We have also provided an in-depth response to the United Nations Human Rights Council, which is also publicly available. We will continue to engage with them. A big focus of our environmental work is nature, starting with biodiversity. Functioning ecosystems and a healthy biodiversity underpins all life on Earth. This is an aspect which is being increasingly recognized by industry, governments, and investors. However, for us in our communities, it has long been a priority. Our overarching ambition is to make a positive contribution to nature, starting with no net loss to biodiversity. We do this by rehabilitating sites through both concurrent rehabilitation and agreed closure plans, understanding our impacts to key biodiversity features and expected residual impacts.
To achieve our target of no net loss and address our expected residual impacts, we identify measurable conservation actions, such as through partnerships with organizations like African Parks and our efforts to protect the regionally important sage grouse and their habitats here in Nevada. This year, we have set ourselves a further challenge. While everyone is speaking about the importance of biodiversity and nature, little progress has been made in defining how best to measure and report on these aspects. We are working with internal experts to develop a tool to calculate and measure our contribution to nature and conservation. We hope in time to share this tool and efforts with wider industry that will move the needle for everyone. With that, I'll hand back to Mark to talk through a biodiversity project that has been 13 years in the making.
Thanks, Duncan, and I hope everyone has enjoyed the presentation and found it insightful. We wanted to just share with you a very interesting project, as Duncan refers, and that is on the back of our long partnership with African Parks, and in particular, the focus on the Garamba National Park in the DRC, which is a World Heritage Site and one of Africa's oldest parks. We have sponsored a number of initiatives to reestablish that very special part of DRC and a piece of wilderness that is being preserved right from the very beginning. It's a home to a range of important species, including elephants, the critically endangered Kordofan giraffe, and it used to be the home to the northern white rhino.
We are delighted to announce that after over a decade of identifying this dream, once just after we had purchased, the Kibali Gold Mine, and a number of years in planning, in June of this year, we re-located the first 16 white rhino back into the Garamba National Park. The rhino introduction serves many biodiversity benefits from, of course, protecting an important species and creating another gene pool to the ecosystem services that these mega herbivores play in the grazing areas that are beneficial for other biodiversity, and also reducing fire risk. This is not only important from a biodiversity perspective, it is also evidence of the improved security in this region and the part that Kibali has played in bringing stability to the northeastern DRC. Only a short decade ago, such a project was considered a non-starter.
I hope that we have made clear our holistic approach to sustainability is entrenched throughout the Barrick organization. As we've demonstrated today, our bottom-up leadership and approach to sustainability, we feel, is paying dividends, as seen through the performance metrics and trends. However, one thing I want to assure you is we won't rest on our past performance. We challenge ourselves every day for continuous improvement. Based on our annual materiality assessment, we also wanted to talk through a few of our focus areas for the year ahead. Firstly, using our purchasing power to drive our Scope 3 emissions down. As mentioned earlier, we are working with our suppliers to improve data, set Scope 3 targets, and track progress to achieve this. Secondly, meeting our commitments under the GISTM, disclosing our conformance, and continuing our safe tailings management.
In addition, we will work to develop a tool to measure nature and our commitment to conserve key biodiversity features, as we've demonstrated at Garamba. We'll also continue to engage with the ESG raters to understand the scores, whilst ensuring the most up-to-date information is available for those scorers, so that they can reach informed conclusions relating to alleged controversy such as what Duncan explained at Veladero. Finally, progressing the environmental and social studies at Reko Diq, while at the same time building on the license to operate, which we have already begun to establish by forming CDCs and delivering our community development commitments. I need to dwell on that a little bit, and that is: You know, I've personally been to most of the town halls in the different villages around the Reko Diq site.
When we started this, I think Grant actually had an engagement where one of the local leadership explained to him that he wasn't going to tell the community what to do. That's the very base of our CDCs, is we do not tell the community what to do. We engage with them. We have a conversation. We work on ensuring that they come up with the things they think are most important within the five pillars of our commitment to community investment. It was extremely pleasing to me when we opened the first two schools in that region. We were able to witness that close to 50% of those children were girls, and the other 50%, of course, were boys.
You know, when your perception of that part of the world is that girls and women are not important, but that's not true. You know, discovering other cultures and embracing their values and their visions and their foundational views of how they want to live and their family structures is important. Sometimes we in the West don't spend enough time understanding that. Our CDCs, whether it's in the DRC or Balochistan or here in Nevada, they embrace the local community values and aspirations and work as partners and investors, co-investors in those communities' ambitions.
With that, I would like to conclude by just going back to my opening message, and that is, we know that done right, the mining sector is a powerful catalyst in the struggle for social and economic development. Quickly and directly supporting entrepreneurs and communities and bringing stakeholders together for collective action. At Barrick, our sustainability strategy and approach is enabling us to realize these opportunities and ensure sustainable delivery. With that ends the formal presentation as the part of this engagement today, and we'll now open it up for questions and discussions. Thank you very much for listening.
Thank you, Mark. For those attendees who wish to ask questions, please refer to the procedure on the screen. If you are viewing this event on your desktop, click the raise hand icon at the bottom of your Webex screen. Wait for the unmute yourself request, and once done, ask your question. For those of you reviewing on your mobile phone, tap the three dots at the bottom of your Webex screen. Click the raise hand icon at the bottom of your Webex screen. Wait for the unmute yourself request to ask your question. If you prefer to type a question using the Q&A portal on your desktop, click the question mark in the bottom right-hand of your Webex screen and type your question to all panelists. Thank you. We have a question from Sabine Jatoye. Sabine, please go ahead and ask your question.
Talk through the sustainability report. I'm looking forward to reading the full report and learning more about how we operate and, you know, just educating myself. I have a quick question on something that was touched upon very lightly. One of the speakers mentioned that we adhere to things like Voluntary Principles in our operations and all the rest of that. I just have a question, basically, 'cause, you know, we work in areas that are very underdeveloped. I mean, I'm talking about Reko Diq as a case in point, and places like in Africa and where, you know, people have to learn and we have to adapt and understand the local culture. Is there a progression that you make towards these things, and is it reflected in reports?
From point zero, you can't suddenly get to point 100, right? I'm just curious to know how that's reflected.
I'll try and answer that, Sabine Jatoye. As you know, I've been in this game for 40-odd years, and when we started out and built Randgold Resources back in the early 1990s, you know, the mining industry had no concept of what ESG stood for, and we focused on developing and building Randgold Resources from scratch. We didn't have an employee, we didn't have any money. We went out and raised a bit of seed capital and then set out to build a profitable gold mining business on the back of a period in the global gold industry that hadn't produced much value for some time. It was a novel idea.
Again, we focused in on Francophone Africa because the geology doesn't stop at political boundaries, and we felt, and I had identified, that the Francophone countries in Africa had been neglected by a largely Anglophone mining industry. Again, those countries, like the West African countries, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, and then DRC, those countries had been neglected but the geology was quite exciting. Over a period of 20 years, we made five discoveries and built what was the most profitable gold mine in that period, a gold mining company.
It was founded on the very principles of partnership with our communities, the recognition that the mining assets in a country are national assets, and we, as miners, are taking on the responsibility to develop those national assets for the benefit of all stakeholders. In that structure, we recognize that host countries are as important as our shareholders, because the asset actually belongs to that country. When you intellectualize that, the importance is to recognize the key stakeholders. Of course, the government that represents the people in that country, and an important aspect of paying rent or taxes to the central treasury.
There's other important stakeholders, like the opportunity to employ in that country, and not only just for labor, but that we don't import expatriates to develop the skills which are always there in those countries. Of course, we embrace the concept of developing and engaging with local business people. Therefore, you become a real corporate citizen in that country, and you create partnerships. That's how the CDC arose and that we so strongly believe in. We partnered in all those countries, and we've shown that it doesn't only work in emerging or underdeveloped countries, as you suggest, but it works equally here in the United States, at Nevada.
We've shown that it works in, you know, South America, of course, the Pacific Rim, which is some of the more challenging environments like Papua New Guinea. Again, our Scorecard that Grant spoke about is that measure, and we've always done that. If you go back in the history, you'll be able to track our progress. As I said, and Grant reiterated, is that we do not spend a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror. It's nice to reflect on how we've progressed every year when we make these presentations and talk to our various stakeholders that are integral in our sustainability discussions and philosophy. At the same time, our history is a learning platform, and our future is how we can improve.
I think that's, you know, as best as I can do for a quite a complicated question. I will, before passing on to back to Louis for the next question, just ask Grant if he's got anything to add.
Yeah. Thanks, Sabine. Thanks for the question. I think in terms of what you mentioned around the progression particularly when we go into new projects, like Reko Diq, and you mentioned the Voluntary Principles as well as, you know, the United Nations Guiding Principles. I think it's important for us to set that standard, and that's why we have the policies in place. Obviously, starting with our Human Rights Policy that refers to the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, but also the UNGPs. Then also the standard in which we do that. When we go into a new country, that is the standard that we set and obviously demand that of, you know, our contractors, any, and any business associates that we have.
It is important that we take them through the process, and that's why we conduct independent human rights assessments. They're not just to monitor our progress, but also that of our contractors and affiliates, but also to help the training. I think that's probably the most important aspect of implementing it and getting it to that place that you refer to in terms of 100%. We do need to have that training, and that's why it's so important for us to engage with local NGOs on the ground, much like we've done at North Mara. Because they understand the operating context, they understand the people, the communities, as opposed to perhaps some of the international NGOs that, you know, have never been to the operation.
We partner with these local NGOs to help us with the training. They engage with the local communities, importantly, in the local languages, and also it builds that trust. Trust for the communities to start asking us questions on what some of these policies mean, how do we implement them, and if they feel that we're not aligning to them, how do they raise grievances? It is a process, as you mentioned, but I think importantly, we need to start off with showing what our standards are and communicating that broadly right from the get-go.
Thank you, Grant. That was very well explained. Thank you, Mark. I'm excited to watch this and be a part of it growing at Reko Diq. Thank you.
You've answered part of the following question, but we do have a question from Bajma, Zurich: Could you talk more about Reko Diq project in Pakistan, and how do you envision to go beyond in terms of sustainability in the region and for the project?
I think we have gone a long way to answer this in the previous with the previous question. I think what I'll do is let's hand it around, because I think we. You know, there's a lot of expertise here, and I'll wrap up when you finish. Grant, you can have the first crack at it and then I'll pass it on to Duncan.
Yeah. Perfect. Thanks, Mark. Yeah, as Mark said, you know, we've all been on the ground, you know, had these town halls with the communities, but importantly, spent time on the ground, looking at the whole spectrum of what sustainability means to us. As we mentioned, how it all fits together. A good example of that is in the communities, and particularly in that part of Pakistan and Balochistan, is the fact that water is a precious resource.
We saw that the provision of water was obviously very important to the communities, and as one of our first priorities of how we could help the communities access clean drinking water, which had numerous benefits, not to mention health benefits, because the water that they were currently consuming was very saline. That's an important aspect. Obviously, in terms of the work that we're doing from a feasibility perspective, we need, and we do follow the performance standards as per IFC, and have conducted and already started conducting a lot of the specialist studies from water to air quality to biodiversity. That is obviously a fundamental step in us getting the project up and running.
I think more importantly, and as we alluded to in the presentation, was really starting to engage with the local communities and building that social license to operate. I mean, as I've said many times before, is you can have an environmental license, but if you don't have that social license, you will never operate successfully. We've started that, and we've been very encouraged with the progress that we've made in terms of the Community Development Committees that we've set up. We have a local CDC for some of the communities that are closest to our mines, and then we have another CDC that is looking a little more regionally in the town of Naukundi. We've already seen, as I said, very encouraging results.
Mark alluded to the schools that we've opened, and we've also engaged with a health provider to start working on bringing or getting access to healthcare for those communities. I'll perhaps pause there and just hand over to Duncan in terms of some of the work we're doing, again, to embed our sustainability strategy at Reko Diq.
Yeah, good. I think the majority has been covered. This is obviously an area that, you know, has really been long forgotten from a development perspective. There were some external concerns asked as we implement our sustainability strategy, and particularly our community development approach. Would that again translate into another culture region where, you know, it hasn't been implemented before? I think that process has been smoother than any of us have really expected it to be going into it.
You know, we always expect some challenges along the way, but I think, the way the community has seen how we trust and empower and put the decision-making into their own hands through that CDC model, and bringing all these different groups together and having honest engagement that everyone comes to the party, has really been a key kind of contributing factor to really getting things going and building that foundational trust for us to go on. From there, we're obviously, you know, early into the work, so we're setting up a lot of baseline and understanding where a lot of focus and development needs to go. Certainly we've been met with a lot of positivity and enthusiasm and encouragement for the project to go ahead and hopefully further development and running through those CDCs.
I think I'll just wrap up.
... I'll just wrap up with that, and Jabal, you know, this is a very poor part of the world that's got not a lot of people living in that region. Poverty is enormous and, you know, the sort of core business activity is running contraband from Pakistan to Afghanistan and into Iraq. You know, for us to be able to offer the concept of proper employment is enormously exciting for those communities. Again, the town halls we've had, and we opened the conversation, really the only criticism that we received was the fact that the previous governments delayed this project from development back in 2013.
They were frustrated because they've lost more than 1 decade of being able to participate in this special endowment in this part of the world. For me, it was very motivating, as I've touched on, you know, witnessing these schools being opened and we've got lots more to do. Our concept is that we are investing right at the junior school level. Then we will do vocational training of people that are sort of lost on their schooling. They're in their early teens and late teens.
Then, another initiative, which we've just embraced the first number of students, is we've gone out across Pakistan and the world and looked at who that are Balochistan, are engaged in university education, we've interviewed and our objective is that we will employ there. At the same time, we have a lot of experience in developing business capabilities. Again, you know, given the harsh environment, social environment, the really successful business operators there are very talented. With some capacity building and opportunity, I've got no doubt that we're gonna be able to demonstrate, you know, the importance of our investment in that part of the world, not only by developing and delivering copper and gold product from the mines, but our embracement and commitment to local first.
You know, watch this space.
Thank you, Mark. We have a question from David Horton. Mark, what has been the most significant social challenges in the reopening of Porgera? The riverine discharge has been discussed, but what are the other pressure points?
That's a good question, David, and really, I don't know, we could spend the whole morning talking about this. You know, it's a very complex and unique social situation in the Porgera Valley. Again, many, as Brad said, external NGOs have exploited this situation, accused the legacy Barrick of all sorts of bad behavior. As with the riverine situation, we've had the mine closed for the last nearly four years, and we are able to go back and test that ecosystem and show that the very limited impact over a very short distance in the river.
Likewise, we stepped back because we were in care and maintenance, what unraveled was significant and abusive tribal conflict across the valley with, you know, abuse of children, women, rape and pillage and destruction. It was interesting, the only people that visited and worked with the community leadership who were trying to engage the warring factions was us and myself personally, but we didn't see too many other people, and definitely not those people that have made all these accusations. Through that process, not only working with the government, but engaging with the communities, we've rebuilt the basic foundation for a proper, moral, responsible community forum. It's very early stage.
Really the whole, you know, challenge around this is the abject poverty and the fact that landowners expect to be part of the development of any natural resource. The anxiety and the aggression around not having anything because that mine was closed, not through Barrick's activities, brought a lot of frustration and anger and we've been dealing with it. Now, hopefully we can channel that energy, that negative energy, into something positive. It's pleasing. We're right at the cusp of the final regulatory steps. We've just started. The Prime Minister and the entire cabinet was out there last week, to launch the security forum, because that's important.
Again, that will roll into the development forum, which is a consultative process under the Papua New Guinean law, which consults all potential interested and affected parties, as well as the landowners, in a debate on how we compensate for the mine impact going forward. I, you know, again, we've started employment. Our focus again, is Papua New Guineans. We already in our budget, have more than half the budgeted planned number of expatriates. We do need some to be able to train the people. Again, we've really moved Porgera management back to Port Moresby and site, rather than vicariously managing it from Australia, which is what happened in the past.
You know, there are many social challenges, and one thing that I can say, and I'm new to it, I've been involved since 2019, is that these claims and aggressive engagement from third parties, particularly international agencies and institutions and NGOs, they've never been there. They have no idea. What's very clear is if you look at PNG today, it can't even afford foreign exchange to buy aviation fuel. It's all around the fact that Porgera was such a big engine in its economy, for its economy, and also that it was a major, the dominant earner of foreign exchange. Everyone has now understood it because it stopped for 4 years.
You know, I think that having said that, Papua New Guinea is a very challenging place to do business. We have definitely got a different social license today than we had back in 2019, when after the merger with Randgold. I'm excited on what we can do there, given our philosophy, which the team has shared with you today, about really embracing communities, making them part of our business, because that's what that part of Papua New Guinea really needs.
We have a question from Christopher Anthony: Are there any new or emerging mining-related technologies or approaches that you think will help drive environmental efforts, such as emissions reduction or water management across Barrick and the broader mining sector?
Yeah, I think I'll pass it on to the experts here in a minute. Again, I think there are lots, and we've used them all. At the same time, the most significant aspect of sustainability and managing our environment, and to ensure that we have we preserve this planet for future generations, is 1, honesty, and 2, recognizing the impacts that we make and working to mitigate them in the case of the negative impacts, and leverage those that are positive. That is absolutely core. You can have all the technology in the world, but you won't be able to do anything if you don't recognize the gaps.
it would be remiss of me of not just reminding everyone, we all sit and pontificate in the Scot, COP 27 and 28, and Davos and United Nations and all these other things. to date, we have been similarly unsuccessful as a global community of driving much change, and we've resorted to compliance. if we don't reach out and work to make those underdeveloped economies and countries, and developing economies and countries investable and able to be industrialized in a modern sense, in a responsible, modern sense, all the other initiatives on environment are not gonna help to make a better place for everyone on this planet. With that's the philosophy of Barrick. That's something I personally believe in.
With that, I'll pass for the more technical aspect of this, that question to Rob.
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for the question. I mean, it is something that myself and the team work on in terms of the various technologies. I think as Mark has alluded to, we have employed a number of this types of technology in our business. I think to your point around water management, I think this is probably where, you know, we've been the most active. We've shown the success of this in if you just look at sites like North Mara, and as I mentioned, when we took over control in 2019, the TSF there had far too much water sitting on it. We needed a solution, a very.
quick solution, but a solution that, you know, demonstrated we were dealing with the problem responsibly. Conventional water treatment wasn't going to work, so we engaged with a number of our partners that, you know, we had established back in the Randgold days already, and we brought them onto site. I think the most important part in that particular project is that it wasn't just an international consultancy that helped us. It was actually, we brought in the local teams, too, in Tanzania, to actually build the plant.
The solution we found there was, is what we've called a High Recovery Plant or the brine plant, which really has meant that we can e-extract a lot more of the salts from that water, but at a very small amount of volume in terms of brine for us to then safely store. The one issue with water treatment, which many people don't understand, is that you remove some of those impurities in the form of brine, but you need to store that somewhere and in some cases, in the low recovery treatment, large volumes. That's one aspect of technology that we've actually implemented, and we're gonna roll it out throughout our organization. We have some opportunities here in Nevada to do the same.
I mean, I'd also suggest that some of the work that we're doing from a nature perspective is very much in that R&D space, but also then implementing it in a sort of a real-life situation. you know, we've talked about the tool that we're working on in terms of measuring biodiversity impact. but also there's some research that we're doing, for instance, here in Nevada around the sage-grouse. Rather than just going about rehabilitating habitats, we are actually doing scientific research on what impacts a sage-grouse and their habitats. Very little is known about that. Rather than trying to find a solution for a potential problem we don't have all the information for, we'd rather study that, and we are doing that.
I think on the tailing space, we've also been very active. We're looking at GeoStable Tailings. At the moment, really, a co-disposal, it reduces the amount of water in the tailings, but also deals with the issue of waste rock. I think you talked about emissions. This is a space that we've been actively involved in, both in the working groups in ICMM, and some of the initiatives like the ICSV project that they're running through. Also, on the ground, particularly here in Nevada, we've trialed some underground battery electric trucks. We had the teething issues that you would expect, but it's provided very valuable information to the OEMs, to update that.
It was not just yesterday, we, in fact, had this discussion with one of our OEMs about how we can push this a little bit further, but importantly, to implement technologies that do work. For us, at the moment, the battery technology, we still feel is a couple of years off. That's not to say that we wouldn't test it and trial it and help improve batteries. At the moment, we do see, you know, diesel-electric trucks being more suitable, and that's something that we are looking into.
Then other technologies to reduce emissions like putting in conveyors or Rail-Veyors, that is unique to Nevada, where we're currently in the process of reviewing that at one of our closure sites here in Nevada. Again, that eliminates trucks from the fleet and again, obviously, GHG emissions. You know, there's a lot of aspects that we're looking at from a technology point of view, and we'll keep you updated in terms of the progress that we're making.
Okay, thanks, Grant. I have a question from Ellen Kunst: "I have a follow-up question pertaining to North Mara. Being aware of Barrick's decision not to disclose the MoU with Tanzanian Police Force, I was wondering if you would be able to share some details about what the escalation process, as specified in the MoU with the Tanzanian Police Force, looks like, such that conditions and possible steps for escalation, and whether Barrick has deferred to or considers to take escalation steps based on allegations regarding violence. Many thanks for the informative update.
Ellen, thank you very much. I'm gonna just give you a snapshot of, you know, the process that we work on, because we do recognize our communities as key stakeholders. I personally visit the sites once a quarter and at least, and in cases that are challenging cases like North Mara, I meet with the elected community leadership. I would just point out a couple of anomalies that people don't understand, is Tanzania has no tribalism. It nationalized everything, one nation, way back with the founding president.
To that point, there's no traditional chiefs. There are elected chairpersons of the villages, across the nation, and also there's a management team with the chief executive in each village. In North Mara, there are 11 villages within our sort of impact area, and they all have a chairperson, woman or man, and they have a management team. Those are elected, and then you have the members of parliament from the region, and then you have the appointed representatives of the state. Of course, you have the law enforcement and the collective of those are form the security council, which looks at after security. I meet with all those various individuals.
Every quarter, I meet with a with a government representative group led by the Minister of Mines or the Deputy Minister of Mines or some senior political figure. We talk about our progress, the issues, concerns. They have meetings with these various local authorities and elected village leadership before they meet with us. Following that, and separate, without their presence, we meet with the village leadership. We, the... For my meeting, we set out deliverables at the end of every meeting, and then we go through a report back. I report back from the progress that's been made by the management team and the village leadership.
We'll comment, whether I'm right or wrong. Because they, of course, are the recipients of the responses. We have that debate. The reason I do that, and I do that right across the group, is that I get a feel for directly what the community thinks, and not one that's sort of filtered by management. We keep an honest engagement. Of course, as you know, in North Mara, there are issues around conflict, criminal behavior, and it's been there like that, for it's a very complicated social, political, environment, that northern part of Tanzania. It's interesting that very seldom does the community bring up these issues, because it is dealt with within the structures.
Then at least twice a year, I meet with the president of the country and various politicians, and we discuss these things. It's interesting, Tanzania has a woman president today, and she finds it very insulting that people take some of these allegations from international, non-registered NGOs in the country to international point, courts, circumventing the authority of a sovereign state. So, you know, we disclose to her, all, every incident. Of course, her view to me, too, is that she wants to know about it, because if the police are being abusive or abusing their authority, she wants to know about it, because ultimately, she's in charge of these sort of organs. So we discuss these points, we discuss every incident.
What we've introduced through Grant's leadership is, again, when there are these incidents, because we do not carry armed security, that when we have a situation where the community or our employees' lives are at risk, we like anywhere in the world, we call the police. Again, if there's an incident that results in injury of any sort or a fatality, we expect that the police must do their own investigation, and the various organs that oversee the police, of which there are, they need to follow up on that, and we want to see the results. We've got to the point now where when there's an incident, we make a public statement so that everyone aware, is aware the incident is there.
We encourage, and the police have been responsive, and they should do their investigations. As a consequence of those investigations, there will be follow-up. Again, we defer our opinions to any of those investigations to the authorities that are responsible for the police. I just want to get one thing right: We do not tell the police what to do, not in any way. When we brought the RAID CEO there, a few things. She publicly claims that she understands everyone and that she's representing the community. We took her to a community meeting with all 11 chairpersons and village elders and village elected officials, and they didn't know who she was, and neither did the member of parliament.
I think that sometimes there's a lot of mischief, and extortion of these poor people by international agencies. Just as we are open to criticism and review, and we are held accountable to what we say. I think it's about time that these NGOs, inverted commas, are held accountable as well. That's why, to Grant's point, we've said, "Let the competent courts of the United Kingdom really assess the situation, the reality of the situation." That's something that people didn't want, because up until now, the practice is maximum pressure on the mining company and settlement, financial settlements. We're saying this is a lot more than that.
When we invited the RAID CEO to join us in our endeavor to invest and engage in this society and community and make a better place for everyone, their answer to us is, that's not their strategy. Their strategy is just activism. That's all. You know, that's difficult for us to get our head around. Grant, do you want to deal with the actual MOU and issues around that?
Yeah. Thanks, Alan, for your question. I, you know, I think your question is really around the transparency and how we escalate incidents should they occur. I, you know, I wanna remind everyone that MOU is not a unique aspect to North Mara. We have MOUs with many of the public security forces in countries we operate in. In fact, it's seen as best practice by the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. I don't think the question is really around, you know, whether we have or we haven't issued the MOU publicly. These questions have never been asked of us at any of our other operations.
I think the question is more around how we are implementing our standards, and how we are ensuring that those standards are upheld through our contractors and even the police and public security forces that we engage with. I think Mark has alluded to that. I think this transparent engagement we have with the local communities, because these are the individuals that understand what is happening in the community. If there are issues, they have a mechanism in which they can raise those. Our grievance mechanism is in place, and we know it is working.
In fact, to test that, we had one of the local NGOs go out and distribute information around the grievance mechanism, but also to take questions about the grievance mechanism from the local communities. It was clear that the work that we had done in the form of engagement, posters, flyers around the grievance mechanism in the local language, Swahili, it was clear that it was understood by those communities. I think that's the important mechanism in terms of escalating process. I think we have shown that over the last while, and of course, you're free to have a look at our website, where we've put a number of the statements up on our website in terms of incidents that have happened.
It's clear that we engage with the police force. We have a regular dialogue with them, which was never in place before with Acacia. We're able to talk to them and understand what challenges they're having, but also to ensure that our standards are being upheld. As I say, I'm not sure it's the question of whether the MOU is published or not. I think it's more how we are transparent in terms of our engagement. You know, I'd end off by the fact that, you know, this transparent engagement goes right from the bottom at a site level, where obviously it's the most important, all the way to the top, as Mark explained with the president, but also yourselves as investors.
We've published a standalone human rights report in December of 2021, which details some of that engagement and the policies and the standards that we implement on-site. Thanks.
Thank you, Grant. We have a follow-up question from Bajma Zurich. Could you please talk briefly about the TSF's plan across all plant schemes and gender ambitions for the region? Mark, I assume it's for you.
Yeah, I assume that's a follow-up question on Reko Diq. You know, I think that as Grant has alluded to, the first and most important is potable water, and these communities have a much lower life expectancy than the average Pakistan person because of the saline water that they consume. First focus, in Barrick, we believe that water is a human right, and so we have already started rolling out reverse osmosis processing plants to ensure that every community has access to potable water, and that's important. The other key pillars are health, education, economic development, and food security. And again, we pointed to...
I've summarized our education strategy, and of course, Grant referred to us working with local NGOs on making sure that we upgrade their access to health. Again, you know, the very presence and embracing local first, we are already employing people, and we measure and make it public, the percentage of Baloch people we employ relative to people from Pakistan, but further afield, and that is important. Then, you know, the food security component, that's more challenging in this part of the world because it's a desert, but it's absolutely critical, and there's some very innovative farmers in the region. So that's the sort of broad foundation of our approach. How do the CDC functions?
Let me pass on to Duncan.
Thanks, Mark. I think I also wanted to just touch on particularly the gender point of that question. We mentioned earlier that, you know, from a junior or primary school, we've already got 50% attendance of girls attending those classes, so that's a great start. What we've understood is, as you go up through the ages, that attendance obviously drops, and we're busy understanding what are the key barriers in preventing that. It's largely down to poverty. you know, where there's limited resources at a family level, when they get to an older age in that part of the world, you know, the men have more opportunities from an economic point of view.
When they have to make a decision of, you know, which of their children can attend school, as they don't have unlimited resources, the young boys usually get that preferential treatment. Understanding those barriers of removing the poverty and removing that need to make such a decision is important. The CDCs themselves, what we didn't mention earlier, is there is woman representation on those CDCs. Within the election of representatives at the CDC, which again, is all community-led, there was a agreement that at least as a minimum, a quarter of those representatives would be women. Again, that was a community agreed and inspired sort of process.
There's already a acknowledgment that there needs to be greater involvement in the community, greater opportunities for women, and that really starts at the education and making sure that goes throughout. Lastly, the CDCs themselves aren't just looking at what projects they can implement, you know, in the next 3, 6 months at a short-term perspective, but they've also begun developing a longer-term community development plan. We're looking at, you know, to begin with, a 2-year plan for addressing the basic fundamental needs of those communities. Once that two years is up, already starting on a 5-year and longer-term plan, that also links with regional and national planning. I think that's really critical.
It's an opportunity to look much further ahead of what will that region look like in future generations, and then building the steps of not only how can we contribute to getting there, but also realizing where those opportunities are for scale within those projects, both from, you know, government's involvement, NGOs and other partners to really come in there and identify those key steps. I think those are, again, very exciting first steps, and, you know, I think there's certainly been quick involvement from the communities to make sure that women are representative at each step of that decision-making, which has been really pleasing.
Thank you, Duncan. We have no more questions at the moment. Can I just remind you, if you would like to ask a question, you can follow any of the three procedures on the screen. We'll give it a minute. Okay, Mark or Grant, if you want to wrap up.
you, everyone. And particularly to the team that's worked so hard to get this together. Again, it's a moment in our year calendar. We hope that you got something out of this, and please feel free that you know our contact details, you all of you know how to get ahold of us. I'm sure you have Grant's and Duncan's, and you definitely have Loreto's and Kathy's, and mine is very public. So, please feel free to reach out to us if there are any questions. Maybe you don't want to ask it publicly, and you still would like to get some background.
We're there to answer and again, you know, our board meeting is on the eighth of August. That's another time that we'll all be together and available for questions, but that doesn't mean to say that we're not available all the time. Thank you again, and to those on the other side of the pond, have a good evening, and for the rest here in the United States, have a great day. Thank you.