Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Barrick's second annual sustainability briefing for investors. My name is Peter Sinclair, and I am the Chief Sustainability Officer. Look, I think we have a great agenda today, and we have set it up so you are going to meet as many Barrick leaders as possible, some here in the room and some via video. Let me first take a minute to talk a bit about why we are hosting this sustainability briefing. First, it is in response to the continued interest we are hearing from many of you here today in how we are managing environmental, social, and governance or ESG issues. This additional interest in scrutiny, we welcome. We see the effective management of ESG matters as critical to our mutual success.
Second, it is to give you the assurance that we have the right people, the right systems, and the right executive and board-level support to effectively manage our ESG risks and opportunities. Finally, because the social, political, and economic backdrop against which we operate is changing, and changing in a way that makes sustainability much more important to our business. Before I go any further, I would like to highlight that during this event, we will be making forward-looking statements. This slide includes a summary of the significant risks that could affect Barrick's ability to deliver on these forward-looking statements. A review of our most recent AIF will provide you with a more complete discussion. One other piece of housekeeping for those in the room, if you hear a fire alarm, please exit the room at these doors and proceed calmly down the stairs right across the hall.
There are three parts to our agenda today. First, you will hear from our head office leaders, from Kelvin, from Catherine, and from Greg Walker, who will be joining us via video. He is in Argentina. They will give their views on sustainability based on their own unique experiences and why they think it is a vital part of our license to operate and our license to grow. You will then hear from several of our colleagues in the field, including from Argentina, from the Dominican Republic, and three of our leaders from Barrick USA. Barrick Nevada, as most of you know, is where so much of our current production comes from and where we have the most significant growth opportunities. We really felt it was important to feature that here today.
Finally, you will hear from some of the independent voices that we value so much, including Bob Fowler from our external advisory board, CSR advisory board, and Nancy Lockhart, board member and Chair of the Corporate Responsibility Committee. As you will see, the presenters will share facts and data, but as importantly, their stories will bring that data to life. You can find plenty of additional data on our sustainability report, which we just launched yesterday, and everybody in the room has a copy, and everybody on webcast can find that online as well. It includes a detailed progress update on our 2017 priorities and our 2018 plans. We plan to run about 90 minutes, then move to a Q&A before breaking for lunch for those in the room.
For those watching on the webcast, there is a place to submit your questions for the Q&A at the bottom right-hand corner of the webcast. In addition, just to let you know, in addition to the speakers, there's several other leaders from Barrick who will join us for the Q&A or who are here in the room to join us for the Q&A and for lunch. Before giving the podium over to Kelvin, I just wanted to share a few highlights of things you're going to hear today. The first is how we're managing sustainability within Barrick's decentralized operating structure and our growing portfolio of joint ventures. This is something that was raised at the sustainability briefing last year, and I think it was important for us to address that.
You'll also hear about the corresponding organizational changes to help sustain and strengthen our sustainability performance, from creating new roles like the VP of Joint Venture Governance, or chief compliance officer, to tying compensation to sustainability outcomes once again. You'll also hear how we're reducing our cost by cutting inputs like energy, and about the serious steps we're taking to reach our goal of 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, like the recently announced power plant conversion in the DR. We estimate that this project alone will reduce our emissions by 250,000 CO2 tons annually, equivalent of taking 54,000 cars off the road. Finally, you'll hear about how we're creating distinctive partnerships with communities, with governments, suppliers, joint venture partners, and with our own people to create value for our shareholders and by responsibly transforming natural resources into wealth and prosperity.
We are, against the backdrop of some very real challenges in our industry, creating the operating structure and building the trust that allows us to work with our partners to create the lasting benefit to which we aspire in our sustainability vision. We hope you come away from today with a better understanding of how we're doing this, we look forward to a very productive discussion. Let me now hand things over to our president, Kelvin Dushnisky.
Thank you, Peter. Thanks, everybody, for joining us today in person and also via the webcast. I think in a lot of respects, the fact that you're here and the number of people who have joined us online, I think it really underscores the importance of this particular, whether you call this CSR or corporate responsibility or license to operator sustainability, it doesn't really matter what name you choose. I think the importance of it, and the fact that it's really become a fundamental part of our business is certainly, to my view, emphasized by the fact that we're all spending this amount of time.
I mentioned to Greg Walker, when we were chatting before the meeting, that when I joined in 2002, it's almost inconceivable that we'd be spending this amount of time with those following the company analysts, our shareholders, and that we'd spend a day a year and all the other updates that we give in this particular space. It really reflects, I think, the importance of getting this right, and I think from an investor's perspective, clearly the risk associated with getting it wrong. Again, welcome everybody. We really appreciate you being here. In fact, I think it's also true that when I think back, if you were to consider investor meetings that we had even five, six, seven, eight years ago, you may mention LTO issues kind of in passing. The odd meeting now, almost every meeting with shareholders, it's touched on.
Sometimes, not in a lot of detail, other times it dominates the meeting, and you'll hear more about that. I think that at Barrick, much of the credit for the approach we're taking, the emphasis we place in this important area, and the platform that we have to build on, it really comes down to, I think, two people, and you see them on the screen. One is Greg Wilkins, and in fact, Greg's photo's on the wall there as well. His other pastime, besides running mining companies, he raced cars. I'm not sure which was safer, actually.
Greg really saw around corners in a lot of respects, and he didn't, I think in fairness to Greg, he didn't exactly know what the challenge was going to be, but he knew it was coming, and knew he had to get ahead of the curve, and he understood the need for us to be better integrated in the communities. He understood the need for us to have close supplier relationships, and in essence, again, it wasn't called LTO, but he knew the need for it. In fact, it was Greg who authorized me to hire Peter when How long, Peter, was that? 12 years? 12 years at the company. He allowed me to hire Peter, and it was kind of an interesting thing at the time because now it seems pretty logical.
Peter came from an NGO background and internally there was a lot of anxiety. We're bringing an NGO in-house. How could that be a good idea? All he'll do is tattle to his friends outside and get us in trouble. From Peter's perspective, it took a while to convince Peter to join because his sense at the time was his own personal integrity and credibility with that fraternity would be challenged being inside a mining company. We had to persuade him that you could do at least as much or more good inside a company like ours, the resources we have available and the focus we're placing, as on the outside trying to prevent us from doing things and being responsible. It's worked out well, I think.
Again, it seems logical now, but at the time it was a challenge. I think that but for people like Greg, I don't think we would've made the progress that we have. We still have a lot of room to go. We've had lots of missteps, and we'll talk more about those. Still, I think Greg gets a lot of credit for that. The other, of course, is Peter Munk. Everyone knows Peter, our iconic founder. From the start of the company, way before I was here, Peter ingrained in everybody the notion of giving back and the notion of being part of the community. He did this, I think, in many respects because he knew it was the right thing to do, but he also knew it was the right thing to do for the business.
Again, this was way before anybody even talked about LTO and CSR and sustainability. That was in no one's lexicon at the time. Peter got it, that if you didn't do that well, you'd have a hard time, in terms of sustaining the business into the future. It was symbiotic, and he understood that. You're going to hear a lot more today about how we've been performing, things we've done well, things we haven't done as well, what we do to try and fix that. There have been two examples of meaningful change at Barrick that I've observed over the last 15 years that I'd like to comment on. Both relate to governance. Peter touched on them and you'll hear more, but I want to talk about the Corporate Responsibility Committee of the board and the CSR Advisory Board.
Starting with the Corporate Responsibility Committee, first of all of the key functions report into that committee. Environment, health, safety, security, sustainability, LTO. It all comes into the CR committee. It's chaired by Nancy Lockhart, who you're going to hear from later. I'm not saying this because Nancy's in the room, but I'm saying because I've observed over the last 15 years. That committee is now more robust. I think it's more disciplined and focused and probably holds management to a higher standard than has ever happened before. It's very constructive, but this is not, trust me, not a box-ticking exercise at all. The other thing that's changed is that the level of air time and importance that particular committee has at the full board has increased significantly.
I think partly because, again, the way Nancy conducts that meeting. Also because the board recognizes, like investors, the risk associated with not doing this well. In fact, there's often issues that are circulated from this committee that go onto the risk committee as enterprise-wide or enterprise-related risk. That's the importance of it and the prominence it gets. Complementing the Corporate Responsibility Committee is the CSR Advisory Board. Peter mentioned Bob Fowler, who's here. Bob's one of the founding members. He hates me saying this, but it's true. He's one of Canada's most distinguished diplomats, probably by a very high, by a big stretch, in fact. Together with Nancy on the CR committee, the CSR Advisory Board has had six visits, including visits to our most complex sites, going from Porgera in Papua New Guinea to Zambia to South America.
They spend time on the sites. They spend time with stakeholders independent of the company, and they give very direct feedback. They challenge us. These are all people, by the way, the four individuals on that committee who are at the very top of their professions. They have sterling reputations that are hard-earned, and it's very clear. First of all, none of them are sitting around with nothing to do. Secondly, they're not prepared to sacrifice their reputation for a company that's not doing its best. They don't expect perfection, and they know we're not perfect, but they do expect us to do our very best. We have situations where we misstep to fix them, and they give us a lot of helpful advice in terms of how to try and achieve that.
Another meaningful area of change that I've observed over the last number of years is how LTO issues matter at kind of higher political levels. It's always been meaningful, but not anywhere close to what it means now. Just to give you some examples, coincidentally, in the past two weeks, I've met with two heads of state. First, President Lungu, the President of Zambia. I've got a long relationship. It's a very productive relationship. I was there to talk about a number of things from tax to other operational things. Interestingly, the President was very well-informed about our social performance in the country. He knew that we have 97% of our workforce is Zambian. He knew about our local procurement programs. He knew about our community investments, and his comment to me was that, one, it helps him the fact that we're operating well in Zambia.
Two, it helps the reputation for the industry. I can tell you, it certainly made our discussion on the other matters that I was specifically there to deal with, a lot easier that that was the backdrop of the discussion. Last week in Peru, I was actually there to speak. There was a gold symposium, which I spoke at, but I had the opportunity to have a side meeting with President Vizcarra, the new President of Peru. Now coincidentally, for a short time, he was the Peruvian ambassador to Canada before taking this post. It's kind of funny because I mentioned to him we had organized a luncheon in Ottawa, I think it was in May. April. Anyway, whenever it was. This was a luncheon where we invite diplomats and senior politicians and senior civil service people, and it's just a relationship kind of building luncheon.
Ambassador Vizcarra was to attend. Then the day before, we got a message saying that he couldn't make it. He was called back home. I mentioned to him when we met on, I guess it was last Tuesday. We were chatting. I said, "I was initially kind of offended that you blew off our lunch and kind of on short notice until I found out it was to be actually named President of the Republic. You get a pass on that." He's very progressive. He's an engineer by background. He was governor of a province in Argentina, where he was a promoter of a particular mining project. He understands the industry really well. What I thought was remarkable is, partway through the discussion. By the way, we had an hour-long meeting.
About half an hour of it was dealing with social and community-related issues, which he said is critically important to him because he feels it's preventing the unlocking of value and investment in Peru, and he's worried about Peru's reputation in this particular space. At one point, he said, look, he's going to be announcing something which he calls a program of social advance. In essence, he said his experience has been that when projects get announced, there's a lot of kind of enthusiasm and excitement in the community for the benefits that will flow from it, jobs, et cetera. He said, what happens is you go through a two or three-year construction phase, and then it operates for a while. It takes a while for those benefits to actually flow and to be materialized.
He said in that period, a lot of relationships are damaged, and expectations aren't met, and it can create problems down the road. He said that what he wants to see is investment up front in things like clinics and hospitals and infrastructure, et cetera. The community sees benefits early on associated with the mine development, not just contractors coming in, for example, and getting the bulk of the work. I was a little nervous, I said, "Well, President, the one thing to keep in mind is that if you burden projects too much up front with these, you will see that their projects just won't be able to meet the economic hurdle, and you may risk losing investment." He said, "No, no." He says, "I want to be perfectly clear on this.
This is the state funding that infrastructure up front, consistent with the construction of the mine." He says, "We'll get it back over time in taxes and royalties, and we know that." He said, "This is the way to try and unlock the value so you actually have development. The intent is not to have an added burden on companies. We're not talking about increasing tax. We're not talking about increasing royalties. This is the way to actually kind of catalyze new development." I think it's very progressive. Obviously, the devil will be in the details, and things need to be worked out, but it's that kind of thinking that matters. It also goes to my earlier point that at the very senior level now, head of states recognize the importance of it because the truth is this all translates into votes, and that's what matters.
From the company's perspective, if you get this right, there's no doubt it's a competitive advantage. If you don't, it's a competitive disadvantage, and that to me has just become more and more clear. I promised Peter I wouldn't get wound up and go on too long. Peter, I'm sorry. I've probably already gone through my limit. I'll leave it with that. I did want to reiterate the profound change I've seen in the company and in the external landscape. I also want to emphasize that we will continue to change and evolve with it. I've also said to Peter that I think that the day you think you've actually got this figured out is the beginning of the end because that means you're complacent. Trust me, this space will continue to evolve. Thanks for being here again. Challenge us. We really welcome your input.
We're grateful you're here. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Catherine, our CFO, and she'll be more vigilant than me and help us catch up on the schedule. Thank you.
Thanks, Kelvin, I'll do my best. The good thing about going first is you blame it on everyone else. Right. Before I start my presentation, I wanted to frame why it is I'm up here speaking about sustainability when in theory, as CFO, this doesn't normally fit into the remit of financial reporting accounts, et cetera. As a former fund manager, I approach this topic slightly differently, I think, from most CFOs, mainly because I've seen the damage done sort of third hand when this has been managed poorly. Vice versa, as I've seen the benefit it has to a portfolio and the benefit it had to our funds when on the rare occasions this was managed well by mining companies. In particular, it was around the quality of the returns that you got in the portfolio.
It was that the volatility associated with the performance was much less, on the whole, outperformance over the longer term was delivered, mainly because you didn't have the negative events impacting share price performance that you see a lot in the mining industry. The second thing, as a fund manager, I became very disillusioned in the trading mentality that exists in the market, not only by the companies, but by investors themselves, by the analysts, and by the bankers, which is really to only focus on short-term issues. Those short-term issues means it makes it very difficult to have a longer-term perspective. It's that longer-term perspective you need to make real structural change in the industry.
The two things really that reflected this was the way mining companies engage with the world around them, and the responsibility that they have, the burden of responsibility they have, given that they're effectively exploiting finite natural resources and the very sensitive effect that that has on everyone around them. Now as part of this industry, I am on the other side. In theory, I'm now able to facilitate and accelerate the structural change that I believe needed to happen. The second thing, if I move on to the next slide, around why the CFO needs to care about these things, is really down to these two issues. One is that it makes good business and financial sense, Kelvin's already referred to a lot of this. The second is because it's what investors expect of us.
If I go into the first one, why does it make good business sense? Well, there are really three reasons. It reduces risk, protects value, and creates opportunities. In terms of investments and capital allocation, those are the three things you really want to be focusing on as a CFO. A huge proportion of our attention is spent searching for investment opportunities that have the potential to deliver strong returns. We all do study after study. We talk about IRRs of 15%. We talk about NPVs, NAVs. We sink huge amounts of capital based upon spreadsheet models. Those assumptions within those models are so dependent upon the governments and the communities in the countries that we invest. In particular, they assume uninterrupted production, and they assume a stable tax rate.
Yet the risk associated with these spreadsheets is asymmetric to the downside, given that so many factors are not within a company's control. It should be a no-brainer that one of the most straightforward ways to deliver these targeted returns is to avoid the attrition, the downside risk, the attrition associated with poor management of what constitutes sustainability in its broader term, be that environment, be that community and government relations, or be that the fiscal terms under which we have to operate. In addition, the ability to unlock value through being seen as a preferred partner has been exemplified across the business world, probably more so outside of the mining industry than inside of the mining industry. That ability to be a preferred partner effectively creates opportunities to invest that others don't have.
It leads, in theory, to a higher share price multiple, this in turn creates a currency for acquisitions where we can then add value to the assets that we acquire. Essentially, it's self-perpetuating to be good at sustainability. The second reason are investor expectations, as I talked about. Basically, our investors now expect it. Investor expectations are changing, our approach needs to change with them. Even compared to when I left the buy side, what, just over three years ago, I've seen the greater increase of focus that is coming from our investors and from the institutional investment world as a whole on environmental, social, and governance issues, as well as a requirement for ever-increasing transparency and disclosure. That's not just in the investment world. We're seeing that in politics. We're seeing that more broadly. Let me try and put that shift into context.
A specific example that's quite close to home is Larry Fink, the CEO of my previous employer, BlackRock, and also one of Barrick's largest shareholders through their passive business, wrote in his annual letter this year, sent to all the CEOs around the world or the major CEOs around the world, that they're thinking about ESG as part of their longer term growth plan, specifically that to prosper over time every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it's making a positive contribution to society. This reflects a general trend we are seeing across the investment world. There's been a significant increase in firms and funds that have a socially responsible investment mandate. The United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, PRI, has more than 1,800 signatories, including many of the people either in this room or listening to us on the webcast.
That now represents $68 trillion of assets under management, an increase of 50% since 2014. Dedicated SRI funds, socially responsible investments, assets under management grew to $23 trillion last year, more than a quarter of the world's total and up 27% since 2014. In the U.S. and Canada, three of the world's largest institutional investors, the aforementioned BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, representing $14 trillion in assets under management, as well as state pension funds like CalPERS, have publicly stated climate change disclosure and risks associated with that is one of the key areas of focus in 2018. Consequently, to reflect this changing landscape and to not be left behind as a company, we have to change our strategy in order to align with this. Now let me talk about how we're doing this.
There are really three things that I want to focus on in terms of what are we doing internally to reflect this change and to lay the foundations of improved sustainability performance going forward. The first is around compensation and incentives. Corporate social responsibility or CSR metrics now make up 40% of our annual incentive bonuses. Effectively, the way we compensate our people directly drives behavior. That's the philosophy that sits behind this. These key performance indicators are associated with health, safety, environment, and compliance. If a significant safety or environmental incident does occur, the overall mine site result is capped even if all economic and production targets are reached. The second is around energy and climate change, in particular a focus on energy management and climate change itself.
In 2017, we set up a climate change committee led by Peter Sinclair, and in that we defined what is Barrick's climate change strategy, and you'll read about it in the sustainability report we've put out. There are three pillars to that strategy. One, understand and mitigate the risks associated with climate change. Two, reduce the impact, our impact on climate change, and the third is improve our disclosure on climate change. We've carried out already a company-wide risk assessment, and we've reported on that in our year-end results. In February, with our Q4 results, we announced a target of 30% greenhouse gas reduction by 2030 from our 2016 baseline. All sites will be presenting energy plans in their upcoming annual life of mine planning sessions, the first of which kicks off at the end of June.
Greenhouse gas emissions and carbon pricing are now taken into account as part of our investment process. A direct outcome of this focus is the Quisqueya I conversion from heavy fuel oil to natural gas that we announced earlier this quarter at Pueblo Viejo. Now, it also makes us money, so it has the benefit of both reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing costs over time. Perfect for the CFO. The third pillar is around improved disclosure, and in particular improved disclosure and greater investor engagement. Over the last three years, we've overhauled our proxy with the aim of providing greater transparency and clarity, whether it's on our board, on compensation, or on our approach to calculating compensation. We've held over 100 ESG-focused engagements in 2017, a marked increase relative to previous years, both push and pull, I would say.
Last year we hosted our first sustainability day, of which this is the second, to better communicate what it is we're doing and also to get a forum where we can get feedback in terms of how we're doing it and how we're communicating about it. In addition, we're one of the few mining companies and the only gold company to sign up to the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, which is developing voluntary consistent climate-related financial disclosures to better align corporate disclosure with investor needs. To conclude, understanding how important the impact of managing sustainability well is, I believe, a key differentiator for a good mining company. One that is a good custodian of shareholder capital, and a differentiator between the alternative, which is essentially a far more volatile stock with the potential for much greater downside risk.
On that, I will leave it there and hand over to Greg at Veladero. Thank you.
Thank you, Catherine. As Catherine said, couldn't be there today, which was unfortunate, but we're dialing in from Veladero, and I'm here at the mine site with Jim Whittaker, who you'll hear from later on. My name's Greg Walker. I'm the Senior Vice President of Operational and Technical Excellence at Barrick, a role that I've been in since January this year. I've actually been with Barrick for 15 years, and I've held many senior leadership roles in that time. The last 12 years, I've been General Manager or Executive General Manager at Barrick's mines in the Dominican Republic, Papua New Guinea, and Tanzania. My 39-year career in mining has taken me around the world, often to places with serious social and economic challenges. Today, I'm going to kick off by talking about the decentralization and why this is well-suited to managing sustainability issues.
I'll also touch briefly on how we've ensured that joint venture partnerships meet our sustainability standards. From there, I'll discuss our environmental and safety performance, then conclude by talking about local employment and procurement, why this is so important in helping us to secure a strong license to operate. We're moving to a model where we're going to have the right people to make the right decisions at the right time, in the right place. This starts with our decentralized model, in which our country leaders, the General Managers, and the Executive Directors, are fully empowered to make decisions informed with local context and shaped by our corporate policies and standards. Execution is owned by the site. It's their responsibility, and they are accountable for those actions. This model used to predominate through Barrick. However, we've drifted away from that as our company has grown.
We'll be making personnel changes, eliminating duplication, and again, ensuring we have the right people in the right place to make the right decisions. If someone's working in head office but primarily supports Goldstrike, then that person should be based at Goldstrike. Some redeployments will be occurring. Certain roles no longer making sense under the decentralized model, there will be some headcount reduction. This is a philosophy that involves reducing bureaucracy, of very clearly defining roles and responsibilities which we firmly believe will allow us to maximize value. It is not simply a cost-cutting measure. One thing that will not change is the relationships between the general manager and the executive directors on the sites. If anything, this partnership will be stronger because decentralization places greater responsibility on these individuals.
They work closely, ensuring that each is fully informed in a timely manner about the key events and decisions in their respective areas, allowing them to work collaboratively to manage risks and to maximize opportunities. Over the past three or four years, we've entered into a number of joint venture partnerships at our operations such as Porgera, Jabal Sayid, and Veladero. The importance of these relationships is such that we formed a separate group under Steve Holmes, Vice President, Joint Venture Operations. Steve's responsibilities will be managing our joint ventures, both on an operational level and on a license to operate perspective. The key here is that when we enter into a JV, we don't compromise our standards. On the contrary, we strive to achieve the same high operational, environmental, and safety standards in which we would operate in one of our own mine sites in Barrick.
Steve, together with Andrew Hastings, Vice President, Joint Venture Governance, who's with us here today, will be working closely with the senior site leadership, the boards of the JVs to make sure that this happens. To safety. There's nothing more important than safety for our people and the environment. Our partners and employees expect us to be responsible environmental stewards and to safeguard their lives. Since 2014, the number of reportable environmental incidents at our mine sites has trended sharply downwards from 53 back in 2014 down to just eight last year. That's a decrease of 85%. One of our goals this year is to reduce that by a further 50% through investigations and follow-up action plans. For example, last year, we made numerous structural improvements at our heap leach pads at Veladero after experiencing our third processing solution leak at the mine in three years.
At our Pascua Lama project, to share another example, we've made real-time water monitoring data publicly available since 2016 to enhance transparency and to improve our water stewardship. Another way we're increasing transparency is by supporting community water monitoring programs at many of our sites. More generally, we're continuing to drive transparency through digitalization of our environmental data. The data is real time, and the systems are able to assess the quality of the data when it's produced. In 2017, our safety performance, as measured by our injury frequency rates, was the best in the company's history. Unfortunately, this result was marred by the two fatalities we had at our mines. Bob Gutierrez was killed when he was struck by an underground loader at Hemlo Mine, and Williams Garrido was fatally injured when a roll of liner material struck him at our Pascua Lama property.
Our commitment is that each person who comes to work for Barrick goes home safe and healthy every day. We failed in achieving this. In fact, the last time we went a year without a fatality was 1993. This is totally unacceptable. While we continue to work diligently to reduce the reportable injury frequency rate, we are intensely focusing on eliminating fatalities. To this end, we're implementing fatigue management systems at our sites, having seen good progress at Lagunas Norte, Pueblo Viejo, and at Barrick Nevada. We're also working on implementing a collision avoidance system underground at Turquoise Ridge, which will prevent interactions between underground equipment and people. In Barrick Nevada, we've commenced autonomous trucking project at one of our open pits. The intent, once the pilot has been successful, is to roll this out across all of our operations.
Our sites are also working together to build a common life-saving control management system. This will enable early detection of critical control failures and to share these learnings quickly across our business. Finally, our sites have developed environmental health and safety improvement plans. As Catherine mentioned earlier on, these form a portion of the site's annual compensation. Is tied to their successful implementation of these plans. As I said at the start, I've worked in some very challenging locations during my career. Places where people often lack the means to feed their children. I've seen what the lack of opportunity can do to people and what people have to do to just merely survive on a day-to-day basis. This is a humbling experience, and it changes your perspective of the world.
Which is why I personally see it as a moral obligation to do whatever we can to improve the lives and livelihoods of the communities and the countries where we operate. This means providing jobs along with opportunities for local businesses to prosper in our presence. We are providing these opportunities. As we said earlier on, 97% of our employees, nearly 11,000 people, are from the countries where we operate. 60% are from the local communities near our mine. That's an improvement on last year of 51%. When you factor in the employees of third-party contractors at our mines, the numbers go up by thousands more. As you can see from this slide, local procurement is also substantial and increasing. Thanks to the projects and the number of countries where we are helping build the capacity of local and regional suppliers.
A strong operating and sustainability performance not only allows us to operate smoothly, but also helps us to grow our business and create value for our shareholders. We firmly believe that a decentralized operating model in which our in-country leaders are empowered to make and execute decisions is the best way to facilitate a strong performance, create opportunities for partners, and to earn their trust while ensuring we have the right people in the right place to make sound decisions. That includes creating new leadership positions so that our joint venture partnerships live up to our standards. When it comes to safety and environment, we're redoubling our efforts to eliminate fatalities and to reduce our reportable environmental incidents. Finally, underpinned by our decentralization model, we're continuing to work with our host communities and our country partners to create opportunities for local hiring and procurement.
With that, let me hand back over to Peter, who can introduce our next speakers. Thank you very much.
Great. Thanks very much, Greg. Very useful. Nice to hear those personal reflections on quite a career. Let's now turn to our in-country leaders. As with last year, you'll hear from a range of sites, including several colleagues from Nevada, for a deeper dive into that region that is so critical to our future. Before turning to Nevada, you'll hear from James Whittaker, the general manager at Veladero with Greg, and then Juana Barceló, the executive director for the Pueblo Viejo project in the Dominican Republic. Jim, over to you.
Hi, I'm Jim Whittaker, general manager and CEO of Minera Andina del Sol, a 50/50 joint venture company between Barrick and Shandong Gold that operate the Veladero mine. I've worked for over 25 years in the mining industry and at Barrick previously served as general manager of the Lagunas Norte mine in Peru. Veladero is among the more unique and complex sites I've worked at. From an operational perspective, it's a high altitude and very isolated site. From a government perspective, the joint venture with Shandong is still relatively new, having been formed in June of 2017. From a sustainability perspective, the mine has gone through three very public leach pad incidents that have affected our relationships with government and communities.
As a result of the last point, our thinking on sustainability and reestablishing our license to operate has necessarily evolved over the past year, and I'll talk more about this later. On the Shandong partnership, things are progressing smoothly. We have used the past year to build our relationship through weekly meetings with Shandong representatives who are based here in San Juan, and regular exchanges with other executives in China, including co-hosting an investment tour in March. Shandong shares our focus on sustaining and improving the mine safety and environmental performance, on improving our operational efficiency and driving down our costs, and also on the importance of sustaining positive community relationships. I think that's because Shandong and Barrick know that our longer-term ambitions here depend on us getting these things right.
Before I comment on our progress in these areas, let me briefly talk about our views on the context of mining in Argentina and the province of San Juan, where Veladero is located. Mining is currently well-positioned in Argentina, with President Macri being one of the most vocal supporters and promoters of the mining activity in the country over the past two years. He has increased his interest in the sector and sees mining as synonymous with investment. However, this is in the context of a political establishment that may still be somewhat uneasy about mining as the discussion around the recently opened National Glacier Law has illustrated. In the province of San Juan, we operate in a leading mining region that ranks third in the Investment Attractiveness Index for Latin America in the 2017 Fraser Institute annual survey.
Like President Macri, the governor of San Juan also sees the economic upside of mining in the province. While we see general government support for mining activities, we do operate with the legacy of three leach pad incidents between 2015 and 2017. I know many of you are familiar with these incidents, which we've discussed in the past, including at last year's sustainability briefing. Understandably, these incidents affect our community and government relationships, not to mention local trust and confidence in our operations. Given this, I want to update you on what we've done to regain that trust over the past year, both from an operational and community perspective, and how I think things are progressing. From an operational perspective, first and most important is that we continue to strive to be a safe operation.
This matters to everyone, government, communities, and most importantly, the families of our employees. We have had a 45% decrease in our injury frequency rate since 2013, and at a 0.26 in 2017, we outperformed Barrick's company target of 0.32. I like the direction we're heading with Veladero. From a mining perspective, significant improvements were made to the leach pad infrastructure during 2017. We added a new dropbox system to control flow and pressure of processing solutions. This runs through new non-corrugated high-density polyethylene pipes, in addition to the new tertiary containment facility. We've enhanced double bench mining and increased overall wall angle from 50 degrees to 54 degrees, which we will expect will result in 20% less waste tons in the life of mine. Less waste is good for our bottom line and also good for the environment.
We are advancing on the water quality digital monitoring system, which will do two things. It puts data more quickly into the hands of operational experts and will help improve our response time to avoid smaller issues becoming potentially bigger problems. On the community side, let me talk about the status of our relationships with the two communities near the mine, Jáchal and Iglesia. Generally, things are better than they were a year ago when relationships in Jáchal were particularly difficult, although it's still a challenging environment. One way we're going about improving relationship is to improve participation in sharing of benefits of mining. You can see the significant contributions we have made in the past year, including in purchasing more than $200 million of goods and services from businesses in the San Juan province.
An important example of this is the local workshops in San Juan we've supported technically and financially. They are now able to repair major components of the haul trucks for us and other companies in the industry. This is a business that didn't exist previously, and is just one example of how important mining is for the economy. One study found that the San Juan economy grew by about double the country average since the mine began in operations in 2005. Getting a job at a mine is also important, especially as mining provides good paying jobs, by some estimates four times higher than the average income in San Juan. We continue to prioritize local hiring, and in 2017, we hired over 100 people from Jáchal and Iglesia. This is in line with the 2018 target of having 18% of our total headcount being from these two specific communities.
This is particularly significant given that we, along with our partners, are overhauling the mine workforce, including our use of contractors. Knowing that the skills and workforce we'll need to run our mines will change in the future, today we are investing in digital training and learning programs, including with Cisco in Jáchal and Iglesia. To date, around 50 individuals have participated in this program, which is offered free of charge to those communities. We'd also opened up the mine in the past year to more visitors, including from the government. This has been a very deliberate effort to show our operations and rebuild confidence in our operations. In the past year, more than 430 individuals from government and communities have visited the site. And related to this, we added cameras at critical points of the leach pad, which anyone can access using the internet.
For such a remote site like ours, nearly 200 km away from the nearest community, this is really an important way to bring the mine a little closer and see firsthand and unfiltered what we're doing. We have had more than 13,000 visits to our website over the past year. Like I said, it's a tough environment and we still have work ahead of us to reearn the trust of the government, communities, and others. But I like the direction we're heading, and some recent polling has given me some encouragement. From a survey in January, 71% of people in San Juan think that the Veladero mine will have a positive impact on the province's economy. Getting things right operationally, environmentally, and socially are equally important to me. Our ability to permit, operate, and grow relies on strong record in all these three areas.
I have no doubt that Shandong shares this view, and I have the support of the board to implement the program subscribed in my remarks today. Now I'll hand things back to Juana Barceló in the Dominican Republic. Thank you.
Thank you, Jim. Good morning. My name is Juana Barceló, and I'm Executive Director President at the Pueblo Viejo mine, and I am from the Dominican Republic. I joined the company in 2009, starting as Legal Director, and after having worked as external counsel for the project since its initial stage in 2003. As Executive Director, much of mine and my team's work is focused on relationships with communities, government, and others. Our work is essential to ensure not only the day-to-day operations but also the future of our mine. Barrick owns 60% of the Pueblo Viejo mine, which plays a significant role in the economy of the Dominican Republic. Today, I'm going to talk about mining in the DR, the social and economic context in which we operate, the way that we're protecting our license to operate, as well as opportunities to extend our life of mine.
Mining activities at Pueblo Viejo began as far back as the 1500s. The Dominican government acquired the mine from Rosario Resources in 1979 and continued operations as Rosario Dominicana. Operations ceased in 1999, leaving a significant historical environmental contamination. The Dominican government did not have the funds to close the mine and determined that the best way to remediate the mine was to grant rights to a third party who would mine the remaining deposits. The government then launched an international bidding process. Pueblo Viejo was awarded the bid in 2001 under Placer Dome, and the Special Lease Agreement of Mining Rights became effective in 2003. This agreement was modified in 2009 and 2013, and many of you may be familiar with the amendments. In essence, the 2013 agreement increased upfront revenues to the government and provided a more equitable benefit-sharing over the life of the mine.
In less than a decade, Pueblo Viejo mine has become one of the world's biggest gold mines, helping to diversify the Dominican economy and becoming a significant contributor to the nation. The projected mine life is more than 25 years, with Barrick's shares of gold reserve and resources being 7.2 million ounces of proven and probable reserves and 8 million ounces of measured and indicated resources. The start of production in 2013 really contributed to the development of the mining industry. This slide tells you how significant the mine contributions are to the economy. For example, in 2016, the Country Internal Revenues Agency ranked Pueblo Viejo as the top income taxpayer, and in the country, we are the largest single exporter.
In 2017, we completed an initial study for a life-of-mine extension to increase throughput by 50% to 12 million tons per year, which has the potential to allow the mine to maintain average annual production of 800,000 ounces after 2022. Further study is going on. To realize this life-of-mine extension, we will rely on the support and trust of the local community, the government, and others. However, we cannot take this relationship for granted. Getting this right is critical for the future of the mine. Because of this, let me briefly talk about the social context of mining in the DR. While I won't speak to the political context, we're keeping an eye on the upcoming presidential election in 2020. Water is a major issue for nearly all of our stakeholders.
This is understandable given that prior to our arrival, the water flowing from the mine to the Margajita River was acidic, dark red with no aquatic life in certain areas due to historical contamination. For context, there are two major water sources around the mine, the Maguaca and the Margajita Rivers. The Margajita River is the only river that we discharge to. All water that we discharge is safely treated with the state-of-the-art technology and complies not only with the Dominican standards, but also the World Bank guidelines. While we do not discharge water at the Maguaca, at the government request, we're helping with the remediation of the Maguaca Basin, and specifically with respect to the closure work of the Mejita dam, which is under the government responsibility. Some of you may have read about communities demanding relocation and claiming environmental damage.
I think it is important that I explain what's going on. Prior to construction, more than 400 families were compensated and are relocated in a transparent and fair process following the World Bank guidelines. Approximately 35 families chose to remain and made it clear that they had no interest in relocation. However, since construction, many speculators have moved into the area around the mine with the intention of trying to be relocated and to benefit financially from that process. You can see this influx via these satellite images. Most of the families seeking relocation who are also claiming that Pueblo Viejo is contaminating the water, are located upstream of our operations and in the Maguaca River basin, where we do not discharge water.
Resettlement in communities near Pueblo Viejo has always been the Dominican government responsibility under the Special Lease Agreement, we continue to encourage the government to find a resolution. Since the mine began construction, these speculators have been making inaccurate allegations of pollution and sickness associated with the mine. Since 2012, we have been inviting the communities to join us in our environmental monitoring process, which includes water sampling. To date, we have conducted 25 monitoring events. The last one was in March 2018, with more than 100 participants from 20 communities around the mine, as well as from local university and the Ministry of Environment. We believe that by inviting the local communities and being transparent in what we're collecting and making them part of the process is the best way to build and sustain trust, as well as counter accusations that have little basis in truth.
In similar vein, we partnered with a major university in the DR, the one I graduated from, to train more than 100 journalists on environmental and sustainable mining. These seminars have promoted an open dialogue and a more informed public conversation about mining. As the mine prospers, another important issue is how communities see that we're sharing in the benefit of mining. This is why we hire locally, 95% of our people, nearly 2,000 employees, are Dominican and have come from the communities near the mine. We also contribute to indirect employment since five to eight indirect jobs are created for every direct job. This is also why we buy locally. In 2017, Barrick increased its purchase from local suppliers by 19%, nearly to $20 million in goods and services. Since our arrival, the number of community-based business has increased from 30 to 330.
As a result of this and other contributions, the poverty rate in the province of Sánchez Ramírez has been reduced. Knowing we need to do more than this, we have established a unique public-private partnership where communities near the mine are deciding how the mine's revenues are invested into the economic development. This has led to very important projects that the communities have said are important, including bringing electricity to 19 communities near the mine that had no electricity whatsoever. We will always face social and political pressure managing our environmental impact.
I believe that by being open and transparent with people and enabling the communities to obtain benefits from the mine will help us manage the risk that we actually come from and will also put us in a stronger position to meet our business objectives, including realizing our life of mine extension plans and being an important part of the Dominican Republic for years to come. As a Dominican, I've seen firsthand the social and economic impact of Pueblo Viejo, and I'm proud of what the mine has brought to my country. It also makes me feel proud that our work gets recognized by local authorities, the central government, and most importantly, the communities. Thank you for your attention, and I will now hand it over to Michael Brown in Toronto.
I'm Michael Brown. I'm president of Barrick Gold USA. I have been with Barrick for It's my 24th year at Barrick. I was recruited by Peter Munk and worked with Barrick legends like Greg Wilkins and Bel Mulligan and Bob Smith, and previously was six years earlier at the Gold Institute. Today, I'll be followed by two emerging legends, Rebecca Darling, our new director of CSR in the United States, and Bill MacNevin, the CEO of Barrick Nevada, who carries on Bob Smith's tradition of being a miner's miner. I want to talk to you about some of the unique dynamics in Nevada that are occurring in the state. I report here to Kelvin Dushnisky with responsibility for our strategic engagement and license to operate. I live in Las Vegas and in Washington, D.C., two cities grounded in reality entertainment and seeking to take your money.
I'm past chair of the Nevada Mining Association and a member of the governing executive committee of the National Mining Association. Barrick USA includes our mines in Nevada, the Golden Sunlight Mine in Montana, the Donlin Project in Alaska, numerous JVs, multiple legacy sites now in closure, and a power plant in Reno. This creates a diverse portfolio of LTO issues, including North American affairs, energy, water, taxes, land access, healthcare in Washington, D.C. and in 10 states. Most associate the term license to operate- LTO with the term license to operate. However, in the U.S., there is no bureau that issues a social license to operate. In fact, in the U.S., there's no mine minister advancing mineral development. I prefer to think of LTO as long-term operating. Success comes from operating successfully at our mine sites and a long-term engagement on issues of direct interest to stakeholders.
LTO includes government relations, CSR, community affairs, and communications in support of operations, exploration, permitting, development, and closure, the whole cradle to grave. We organize ourselves with a rolling 3-year plan that bridges the federal election cycle. I like to see Barrick's LTO mission as one of protecting our operations and our workforce in the communities where we operate, advancing our development and growth projects, and to foster a positive business climate for mining and Barrick in the U.S. and in Nevada. Mining in the U.S., gold mining, is concentrated on lands owned by the federal government in the Western U.S. In fact, Nevada has the highest percentage of public lands in the U.S. Regulatory powers are shared between the federal and state governments. The permitting process for a new mine includes broad public participation rights under the National Environmental Policy Act.
While there is no minister of mines, we have seen new policies in the Trump administration that streamline the permitting process and legislation moving in the Congress prioritizing mineral development. In a nation that is increasingly diverse, urban, and young, not white, rural, and old, we have learned to hold the interest and support of stakeholders and policymakers. We have to move beyond messages of job creation in rural areas and demonstrate a commitment on broad public policy issues affecting the larger population. Following the adage of Speaker Tip O'Neill, all politics is local. Our ability to influence national affairs comes from strong operational performance at our mines and sustaining public support in the states where we operate. I want to focus specifically on Nevada. 2011 was an inflection point in Nevada history.
The combination of the Great Recession, the adoption of term limits in the legislature, and larger demographic changes. I want to point out 71% of voters live in Las Vegas. The state is nearly majority minority, and it is a purple state that is trending blue. These have produced a massive power shift in the political structure from Reno to Las Vegas and altered our operating climate in the state going forward. To frame this in American politics, mining is perceived as a red industry. We're operating in a purple state that frankly, is heading to becoming a blue state, much like California. With these changes, though, in Nevada, came new expectations from Nevada's political leaders, particularly Southern Nevada leaders, who simply were not satisfied in the period between 2011 to 2013 with mining operating in isolation in rural counties.
They wanted to know more of what we were doing for the larger state, especially what we were doing for Southern Nevada. This was driven home to me by a longtime friend and key policymaker who looked at me one day and he says, "Why does mining only come to me on a mining matter? Why aren't you here like other corporations helping us on issues affecting the state in areas like education and economic development?" Hiring the firm that truly invented what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, we did an extensive battery of polling and focus group research and opinion analysis on what we needed to do. We discovered that for our business to thrive in rural Nevada in this changing state, we needed to create a business presence in Southern Nevada and build trust by engaging on the issues confronting the state.
We also learned that urban audiences would unlikely to ever understand our business. Instead, we had to capture their hearts and minds by branding Barrick through our community engagements. I don't mean simple philanthropy. We had to go beyond that. Barrick needed to develop subject matter expertise and actively participate in the civic efforts to address the challenges before Nevada. Explaining the challenges of ore grade does not win public support. Helping kids in urban schools does win public support. Talk a little bit about southern Nevada here. A business presence in Las Vegas area was created with the opening of our shared services center in suburban Henderson. That's Governor Sandoval there cutting the ribbon, opening that facility with Kelvin and John Thornton. This is home to our digital and technology employees. That center is supported by Switch, Nevada's leading technology company, where we recently hosted a large hackathon.
It networks Barrick into the state's emerging technology sector. We have friends in mining; we have friends in technology now. It fulfilled the Governor's objectives of broadening mining's reach and economic development to bring high-skilled mining jobs to urban Nevada. We took the extra step of actually putting it in a suburban location so we could integrate this multinational corporation into local affairs. With that presence came the invitation for the first time for Barrick to join the Council for a Better Nevada, the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance, the Latin Chamber of Commerce, and other boards. We took the potential sting of being a foreign company in Nevada out by creating the Canada-Nevada Business Council. To benchmark our new CSR endeavors, we founded together with MGM and NV Energy, the Nevada Corporate Giving Council.
From those engagements, for the first time, Barrick has a seat at the table with the 200 key influence leaders of Nevada. I like to joke that you can't actually put 20 business leaders in a room in Nevada, and I'm not invited to it. Polling shows that education is the number 1 issue in Nevada. It's the root from which all other issues flow. Improving education is seen to have a domino effect on other issues. A company seen to be working in this field is viewed positively by the public. We partnered with Elaine Wynn's Communities In Schools to provide wraparound services for challenged schools in Las Vegas and Elko. At the Public Education Foundation, we sponsor an innovative program to retrain principals in agile leadership in partnership with Harvard and Georgetown Universities.
This has put us squarely into the education issue. We've actually developed in-house expertise. We anchor that engagement with a commitment to the arts through Nevada Ballet Theatre and in social justice, sponsoring the No Place for Hate campaign with the Anti-Defamation League. All of this is infused with policy support from Brookings Mountain West on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Our research shows that we need to communicate to about five different audiences in Nevada. However, in my mind, the swing voter for mining, the key influencer, is the listener of public radio, a college-educated, moderate-to-liberal urban voter. In four years, we have found certainty in new Nevada. We are one of the state's few all-Nevada companies. We've localized a multinational company and built trust with the public and policymakers across the state because we've been focusing on issues of interest to them.
Once they have our trust on those issues, then we can go talk to them about the mining issues. From that trust comes our ability to successfully engage on mining issues, and it's built a network, frankly, that we can tap to support in project permitting. Along the way, we've been recognized with a series of awards, including the prestigious Education Hero Award, which we won last year, and Governor Sandoval has just been announced as winning this coming year, and the Corporation of the Year from the Latin Chamber of Commerce. The tag in our branding campaign is, "Nevada is to help kids shine." I think with this innovative approach, Barrick will continue to shine as Nevada continues to change for decades to come.
I'll now hand it over to my colleague, Rebecca, to discuss what we're doing in the local communities, followed by Bill MacNevin, who will talk about operations and workforce. Thank you. Just before we leave the podium.
Thank you, Michael.
Full disclosure, one second, Rebecca.
Okay.
You're based in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., which team did you choose? Oh, I got up in a meeting, and I thanked the owner of the Golden Knights for naming them the Golden Knights. Sorry, Rebecca. Go ahead.
Thank you, Michael. My team and I are delighted to be here today. My name is Rebecca Darling, and I'm the Director of Corporate Social Responsibility for Barrick's U.S. operations. While I'm new to Barrick, I've been working in the mining industry and in development for more than a decade. In the time I have with you today, I'd like to share how my team is helping to protect and strengthen our license to operate through community partnerships and relationship-building in Nevada. I see three important parts to the CSR function in Nevada: help secure access to resources, enable community involvement and support in what we do, and create positive legacy by making meaningful contributions to the region. Unlike my colleagues in production or finance, sometimes success in what we do in CSR is hard to measure. It's the permit that didn't get delayed by social issues.
It's the litigation that doesn't happen because of CSR concerns. It's the grievance or complaint that isn't received or lodged and ultimately taking up management time. It can also feel pretty far away from the haul truck drivers, the underground electricians, the mine engineers. On this latter point, this is why my team and I spend not only a lot of time in the communities, but also with our own people, especially in operations, to make them aware of Barrick's commitment in the host communities. Since our workforce is our community, this builds pride in the company and in their work. One of my goals in joining Barrick was to make it clear to the Barrick Nevada team, to our host communities, to local government and others what they can expect when hosting a Barrick operation in their community.
That is that we are about respectful, transparent, and consistent engagement that balances our interests with those of the community. I think it's safe to say, and we've talked a lot today about we can't expect to operate in the long term, let alone grow, if we don't get engagement right at the local level. Probably one of the biggest costs to poor community relations is an inability to expand or acquire a new project in the future. Getting engagements and relationships right with community stakeholders is a business priority. It isn't about throwing money at problems. In fact, it's to avoid that sort of approach altogether. This is about creating an environment for our social investments to focus on sustainable outcomes for communities, and ultimately to help Barrick achieve its business objectives.
Let me shift gears a little bit and talk about how we actually go about doing this. We see a role for community relations to support all stages of mining, from exploration through to closure. A recent example of this on the operations side was CSR's collaboration with the Barrick Nevada supply chain team. Since Barrick's commitment to CSR extends to our supply chain and our contractors, we worked with the supply chain team to develop CSR requirements as part of the bidding process for an operations-related project. These CSR requirements included CSR onboarding and refresher training for the contractors, local procurement targets, local hiring targets, coordinating any community engagement or social investments through this team for consistency and continuity in the area. As a result of this work, we've since created CSR requirements for contractors to address and request for proposals on large projects.
Basically, any contractor bidding for a large project in Barrick Nevada will have to develop a CSR plan. I will be involved in assessing that plan and ultimately working with the successful bidder to finalize the plan, including reporting requirements. You can understand how excited I am to be part of this process. Let me now share two partnerships in Nevada that I think are quintessential examples of the value of relationship building and being a good neighbor, which is not only about contributing to our ability to operate and grow, but frankly, what we should be doing if we want to be a leading company in the 21st century. The first has to do with Native American communities, specifically the eight Western Shoshone tribes and bands with whom we partner. The Western Shoshone have important historical and cultural ties in the land where we operate.
Let me be frank, this relationship has seen some tough times. However, over the last six years, Barrick has focused on engagement and partnerships to build trust and mutual respect on which those relationships stand today. I think it's worth highlighting the importance of showing up and maintaining the relationship through open communication and consistent participation at a senior level on both sides. Through this ongoing dialogue, we know that jobs, economic development, cultural heritage, and environment are key priorities for the Western Shoshone. Knowing this, we established the Western Shoshone Scholarship Foundation, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month, and to date has given more than 1,400 scholarships to Western Shoshone youth pursuing post-secondary education.
This year, one family from the Yomba Band is celebrating three graduates, one with an Associate of Arts, two with Bachelor of Arts degrees, two of whom were supported by the Western Shoshone Scholarship Foundation. All three of whom have a very proud family and were supported by that family throughout their education pursuits. At the anniversary banquet last week, we launched the Western Shoshone Scholarship Foundation Alumni Association, which will enable alumni to network and support each other as their careers progress over the years. It will also continue the relationship between the recipients, the foundation, and Barrick. As an important bookend to this, we recently hired two scholarship recipients and recent graduates to support our Native American Affairs program. Each is putting her degree to work with us, one in communications and the other in stakeholder engagement and facilitation.
The second example I'd like to share with you is between Barrick and several government agencies and The Nature Conservancy, an environmental NGO. In 2015, we entered into a voluntary agreement called the Bank Enabling Agreement on Sage Grouse Habitat Restoration, which is a really long name with an equally long acronym, so we shortened it to the BEA. We entered into the BEA with the Department of the Interior to help protect this bird species. Basically, the agreement developed a habitat conservation bank to compensate for significant impacts of future mining activities. Sage Grouse has been deemed an indicator species, so if the habitat in which the Sage Grouse thrive is healthy, then so too is the overall ecosystem. One of the ways that we frame this for our ranching stakeholders is what's good for the bird is good for the herd.
Barrick agreed that it would not disturb certain areas important to Sage Grouse without providing a net positive benefit to other land. We've already begun implementing restoration activities on private land and are now working through the permitting process with the Bureau of Land Management to do those restoration activities on public lands. Importantly, The Nature Conservancy developed the methodology, this lends even more rigor and credibility to the process. This unique partnership has helped strengthen relationships with important government, NGO, and community stakeholders, we anticipate it will help facilitate our permitting activity in Nevada going forward.
I started off talking about how sometimes it's challenging to measure the success in CSR, I hope you can see some of the ways that we have seen success, such as having the trust of important community stakeholders, having the confidence of our colleagues in supply chain to embed CSR requirements and contracts, working in a supportive environment in Nevada to advance our interests alongside those of our stakeholders. Our goal remains to support the business through partnerships and engagement with our host communities. This will be especially important as we enter into a significant permitting period in Nevada, we will do that by pursuing win-win partnerships such as the ones I've described today. This puts us in the strongest position to leave a positive legacy in our host communities. I'll now hand it over to Bill MacNevin. Thank you.
Thanks, Rebecca. I'm Bill MacNevin, CEO of Barrick Nevada. Having worked in mining for over 30 years, including in Australia, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, Zambia, and now the U.S., I know firsthand the value of partnerships, which, as you can see, is a core part of our business in Nevada. Like others, my views on sustainability have been shaped by my experiences in many of the countries I've worked in, particularly in Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, and Zambia. You understand why I think that what Rebecca and Michael have been saying is absolutely essential, the things they do as a key part of our business. Developing and sustaining those relationships with communities, regulators, and others, which gives us the support we need to drive our growth ambitions and our current obligations as being a good neighbor, is essential.
By the way, I couldn't agree more with Michael that the observation that our success in permitting and expansion is going to be driven by a solid record of operations performance. Getting the mining right builds the confidence with our stakeholders, and having the confidence of our stakeholders helps us grow and continue mining for the long term. We can't do any of this without having the right people and the right kind of workplace to get the job done. Because of that, I'm going to focus some of my remarks on the kind of workplace culture I think that we have at Barrick Nevada. Before doing that, I'd like to talk a little bit about one of our key growth projects. Nevada is a significant part, not only of Barrick today, but what Barrick will be in future.
Our mines in the state contribute about half of the total production for the whole of the Barrick company at present. Nevada remains the focus of our 2018 exploration programs and project development activities. These programs and activities are focused on replacing our gold reserves and resources, and in many cases, we can quickly incorporate these into our current mining plans. Let me briefly talk a little bit particularly about Goldrush. Goldrush is a, We produced the feasibility studies that show we were producing 500,000 ounces from there for over 16 years. We're continuing to work on doing a positive program of converting our resources into reserves. Current steps ahead. As you see in the picture there, we're currently completing the decline portals. What we're about to commence is advancing our decline developments.
Along with that, what we're doing is a lot of work on the value engineering to develop the plans for how we will operate, producing a modern world-class mine for a long future ahead. The key with all of this is our permitting. We kicked off with the Bureau of Land Management, BLM, these projects in April of 2018. These initial conversations with the BLM to show the plan of operations and for them to help provide guidance on how we partner with the agency to complete this process are all progressing. Thanks to the relationships we've developed with the BLM, including through the work you heard from Rebecca speak about with the sage grouse, these are constructive and productive engagements, and things are progressing well.
Now, in terms of our workforce culture and context, what's going to help our realize our growth projects, and in a timely manner, is making sure we have these supportive relationships as Michael, Rebecca, and others are developing. Also ensuring our day-to-day sustainability performance in the operations is exemplary. This is key around, as you heard before, it's key, making sure our safety performance and getting our people home safe every day is happening. Also making sure we're managing our environmental impacts. All of this depends on the people and the key people we have working in our business at Barrick Nevada. Whether they come from exploration, mining, processing, human resources, community relations, finance, or any of the other assortment of functions within the business, every role has its part to play.
Our workforce is nearly 3,000 people, and it's almost entirely with people here in Nevada. Of those, we actually make up 8% of the Elko County workforce within a working age. You see, we're a sizable part of this community. Keeping it local matters. People want to benefit from the mine and a good-paying job and development within their role is how you really get that. In terms of what we're focusing on, we're doing lots and lots of work with people development. Let me talk a little bit about that. We're investing in our people in many ways, and part of investing in the future talent is through partnerships with the local college, and training up future mechanics, welders, and tradespeople. Every year with that partnership, we bring in 30 new people into our business.
These people come from the Elko County, they're part of our community. Also what we have is a very strong program with summer students and interns. This is our future. This is our talent for the future. This gives the students the opportunity to get some workforce experience, provide some context to apply in their future studies and engagements, and also, it's a pipeline for the talent we're looking for. Through these programs, it helps us focus on that pipeline of young Nevadan talent coming into our business to help us grow our future. With a lot of those people also coming, being children of our employees and others from the local schools. One of the other things about our workforce that surprises people a little bit is the diverse backgrounds of, and also the biggest cohort of people we have is actually millennials.
This is a significant shift from what people think of the mining industry, right? Where they often think we're a lot older workforce around my generation or more so. Why this matters is, we often talk about mining having a tough time bringing people in. What we find is, with the exciting industries such as IT and tech is where people want to gravitate to. I think with a lot of the work we're doing in Barrick Nevada, a lot of focus on digital and innovation. What we're finding, this is helping us attract some of the best and the brightest people, and it's with these people that we'll have a long, successful future, because those technologies are what we're incorporating into our business, and they'll make us successful in future.
As one of my team members said, we're not your grandfather's mining industry anymore. It's a very modern industry, and it's growing and changing quickly. Along these lines, we've also set up a partnership with Cisco's Networking Academy and the Great Basin College. This provides both our people as well as people in the community and our employees' families, the opportunity free of charge to get training in these digital technologies. This was launched in fall of 2017, and already we've had 80 people go through this program with lots of those learnings being applied both within our business and throughout the greater community.
The last thing I'd like to say about our culture, maybe it's got to do with having that large millennial cohort, is our people who live near where the company is also want to see and they want to work for an organization where they see what we're doing and contributing to the community they're working within. Some of the things we do is making sure we set up opportunities for our people to volunteer, to contribute to educational programs in the schools, and also things like helping clean up the community, et cetera. Our local emphasis on education and linking that into our business is the key thing that relates to what Michael was presenting in terms of that linkage into the greater development of the holistic Nevada education program.
Also, what we have is programs that enable people to participate in many of the local volunteer programs, which essentially is the cornerstone of how we are one great community here. Overall, let me end with Barrick Nevada and our strong focus on growing our future and having a long history here. As you can see, we've got a lot of very exciting projects here. What we'll continue to do is work hard and earn the right to grow. The key things in doing this will be by attracting and keeping some of the best and brightest talent and investing in their skills, to both grow them as individuals and help grow us as a business as a whole. Through also emphasis on partnerships.
This means with our communities that we operate with and also all the different partnerships we have with all the businesses and organizations that we interact with. These will be the cornerstones how we will grow both now and grow for a long, prosperous future in Nevada. Thank you very much. I'd like to hand back to Peter in Toronto.
Okay. Thanks very much, Bill. That's wonderful to hear stories of the importance of the people and the work they're doing in Nevada. We'll now move to our final two speakers, who give you a more external perspective. First will be Nancy Lockhart, Chair of our Corporate Responsibility Committee, who presented last year. Nancy, as Kelvin mentioned, is deeply immersed in the company's sustainability performance and so visible on the ground as well, which really matters to our teams and the communities. Then you'll hear from Bob Fowler. To say Bob's led an interesting life would, I think, be an understatement. As a highly respected diplomat, political advisor, and humanitarian, we're delighted to have Bob on our Corporate Social Responsibility Advisory Board.
If you're lucky, over lunch, you might even get Bob to tell you about the story of his visit to China with Trudeau, Pierre, not Justin, or his 130-day ordeal with Al-Qaeda in the African desert. First, let me hand it over to Nancy Lockhart.
Thanks, Peter. Good morning. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Nancy Lockhart. I've been a director at Barrick and chair of the Corporate Responsibility Committee since 2014. I'm happy to be here again and happy to see some familiar faces in the room, thanks for participating. I'd like to talk with you today about the CR Committee, its mandate, and why I see it as being ever more relevant. In order for me to fulfill my duties as chair, it's important to get out into the field, meet people on both sides of the fence, and see firsthand how we're operating. I can't be effective if my only view is from a boardroom chair.
Today, I'll also provide some commentary on what I've seen in the field over the past year, specifically as it relates to my responsibilities as chair of the CR Committee. The Corporate Responsibility Committee plays an important governance role at Barrick. At a high level, the committee supports the board in fulfilling its governance responsibilities regarding a host of areas under the rubric of sustainability, environmental, safety, community relations, security, and human rights. The committee helps the board understand how sustainability issues pose both threats and opportunities to the business and gives the board a nuanced look of the risk and compliance issues. We do this by understanding sustainability issues and trends existing and on the horizon that might impact the company's ability to maintain its global license to operate.
We also do this through our quarterly committee meetings where we receive management briefings on operational issues, especially those that could affect reputation and license to operate. For instance, tailings management, community relations, and closure. The subtleties of these issues are discussed along with the company's plans for dealing with them. We monitor progress on all these initiatives. In addition, in the event of a social or environmental crisis or a fatality, I am immediately informed alongside senior management. Tragically, as you heard Greg mention, we had two fatalities in 2017, William Garrido at Pascua Lama and Eulogio Gutierrez at Hemlo.
I was notified within hours of each incident, the committee then had a subsequent in-depth briefing from the mine General Manager, including a root cause assessment, subsequent action to avoid a similar incident from occurring in the future, and equally importantly, what we are doing to provide ongoing support for the family and for any employees who might have been traumatized by the event. When such an incident occurs, I remain in communication with the General Manager and executive team until I feel satisfied with the response and action being taken by the company. I just want to add that doesn't mean that I phone up Kelvin and say, "Can I have an update on the incident or further?" It means I get on the phone myself and talk to the General Manager or email the staff involved with the incident.
There's no filter between the board and the employees. On any of these matters, the speed of communication between management and the board is important to me, as is how learning is being shared across the company. Externally, as chair of the committee, I regularly engage with a range of stakeholders to stay current on sustainability issues. Apart from these briefings, I participate in one-on-one meetings with investors throughout the year. For example, just last week, Peter Sinclair and I had a call with a key investor who sits on a government commission panel related to climate change and sustainable finance. I feel it's important as a board member that I contribute to Barrick's strategy of being a more accessible, transparent company. This kind of engagement, together with regular board education, helps me stay fluent and versed on sustainability matters.
As mentioned, I consider visiting sites to be a very important part of my role as chair of the CR committee. These visits provide a firsthand opportunity to meet local management and sustainability leads, see environmental and social programs in action, and engage with communities and other important stakeholders. For me, this kind of interaction is imperative to understanding the nuances of our business, something you simply can't get from quarterly and ongoing briefings alone. An important part of this is my annual trip with the CSR advisory board to a site, as well as additional site visits that I take with Barrick executives. In the past seven months, I've visited Jabal Sayid in Saudi Arabia, along with Anne Massey, our Vice President of Health, Safety, and the Environment; Porgera in Papua New Guinea, my second trip there; and China, the latter visit with the CSR advisory group.
I found the visit to Saudi Arabia tremendously informative. The site is disciplined and well-organized, and there is a visible emphasis on safety. There's innovative work going on related to the use of water, naturally a priority in a desert country, rather. This includes the site's use of non-fresh water, including seawater and treated sewage water for processing. As you can imagine, every ounce of potable water is used judiciously and recycled. I visited Porgera in April with John Ruggie from our CSR advisory board. John is a world leader in business and human rights, and he has been exposed to many challenging operating environments around the world. Like many of us who visited Porgera for the first time, he was taken aback by the complexity of the issues there.
Just to name a few, where there were once 3,000 people in the immediate area of the mine, there are now 60,000 people, the majority attracted by the possibility of profiting from illegal mining. Poverty, tribal fighting, gender-based violence, and gun violence exist in the area and impact our employees on an almost daily basis. The Porgera mine plays a very important part in keeping the area around the mine safe, and it supports local initiatives such as Women in Business. It also ensures that the local population has access to a robust grievance process for any wrongs they feel they have endured. When we were there, we met with the grievance management team, while the system is not perfect, the team clearly understands how vital it is to listen and respond to issues raised by the community.
While it is a very complex operating environment, it's important to remember that the site has been operating with the support of the landowners for close to 30 years. Finally, during our recent China visit, we met with the executive Shandong Gold in Jinan, followed by a visit to their underground mine near Laizhou. You'll hear Bob's perspective on this in a minute, but I was particularly struck by how the tone from the top was being set. Shandong's commitment to the environment is commendable, and they have measurable, sustainable goals around energy reduction, remediation of lands, supporting the communities in which they operate, and pursuing a culture of innovation and progress. I was also pleased to see several women on their executive team, and their chairman was very open to a range of questions from the Advisory Board, which he answered with candor and clear command.
Sustainability thinking has never been more relevant. Now more than ever, Barrick's success relies on taking a long view. I take my role as chair of the CR Committee seriously. Our committee helps to identify and translate sustainability risks and opportunities for the rest of the board to be sure we are prepared to manage the risks where they exist. Our people and the culture in which they work will be the catalyst and enabling factor. Thank you. Now let me introduce Bob Fowler, one of the four extraordinary members of our CSR Advisory Board.
Thank you, Nancy. As the Barrick website states, the mission of the CSR Advisory Board is to engage with senior management in constructive discussion and lesson sharing, providing intelligence on emerging trends and guidance on best practices in social environmental performances. I'm the exception among the four-member CSR Advisory Board. The other three possess world-renowned expertise in different aspects of the CSR field. They are Aron Cramer, the president and CEO of Business for Social Responsibility, BSR; Harvard Professor John Ruggie, as Nancy has just said, one of the premier authorities on business and human rights; and Gare Smith, chair of the corporate social responsibility practice at the law firm of Foley Hoag. I, though, am not a CSR expert.
I spent 39 years in public service, including six as the foreign policy advisor of Prime Ministers Pierre Trudeau, John Turner, and Brian Mulroney, six more as Canada's deputy minister of defense, a further six as Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, including two representing Canada on the Security Council, and a final six as ambassador to Italy and the three Rome-based food agencies. In addition, I was the personal representative for Africa of Prime Ministers Chretien, Martin, and Harper. My role on the advisory board is that of a broad generalist, bringing to our deliberations an understanding of the geopolitical and geostrategic contexts in which Barrick operates and perhaps an insight into policy governance and decision-making at national and international levels. Early in my career, I concluded that development was all about jobs and greatly enabled by the kind of investment companies like Barrick provide.
I've not wavered from that view. Of course, it must be intelligent and culturally aware investment based on the imperative of obtaining and maintaining that valid license to operate. It must also be monitored regularly to ensure that it conforms to or exceeds all major standards of business behavior and internationally accepted principles and guidelines. That Barrick so clearly is committed to walking that talk is what drew me to the CSR Advisory Board in the first place. The advisory board has been active for six years now. Each year, we meet in the fall in Toronto for a day and a half with Barrick senior management.
I should add that each of us has been impressed by the degree of senior management engagement and involvement in these meetings, over which Kelvin presides and which regularly includes Executive Chairman John Thornton, Nancy from the Barrick board, and most of the company's relevant senior executives. In the spring, as you've heard, the CSR board goes on the road, and it is from these on-the-ground visits, which have included Nevada, the DR, Chile, Papua New Guinea, Zambia, and just last month, China, that I have learned the most and from which helped me serve more effectively as an advisor to the company. Let me share a few observations gleaned from these visits. The first example is from our visit to Porgera in 2016.
In every way, the Porgera mine seemed to offer the most demanding and daunting challenges from a CSR perspective, from the complex social context in which the mine operates to its challenging and isolated physical environment. Part of my role is to challenge the company in sustainability matters that concern me. Thus, I made no secret that I found the Porgera mine's riverine disposal method highly objectionable and used our visit as an opportunity to share my concerns directly with mine management.
In so doing, I learned, first, that the monitoring of the Porgera River system has not detected any significant quantity of cyanide, mercury, or any other dangerous pollutants, and perhaps more germane, second, that there are no other practical solutions from an environmental, geological, or economic perspective, such as tailings ponds and dams, given that the region is beset with high rainfall, dramatic elevation, numerous and often deadly landslides, and unstable seismic activity, such as the 7.5 magnitude earthquake, which occurred on 26 February this year, killing 160 people, the epicenter of which was only 88 km from the mine site.
There's the ever-vexing issue of what would be the impact of mine closure on the 4,000 employees and the ever larger and extremely remote Porgera community, where there are few alternative sources of employment, to say nothing of the impact of the loss of about 15% of the GDP of one of the poorest nations in the world. While I'm certainly no fan of this disposal method, I will continue to advance the topic with the company, the trip and my time with management did allow me to come away with a better understanding of the particular circumstances there, I was encouraged as well to see the company's public commitment later that year saying it would avoid this disposal method in future operations.
My second observation relates to Barrick's efforts to seek educational opportunities for its employees, which you've heard a fair amount about today, and their families. In Zambia, we met with a truly remarkable group of young high school students who Barrick was sponsoring to pursue their studies at university. They were all anxious to acquire qualifications, which would then allow them to return to their extremely remote northwestern corner of Zambia and work in management in the mining industry. To me, this program was very much part of Barrick's commitment to reduce the number of expatriate staff members at each of their sites in favor of local employees at all levels of responsibility.
Fresh from the advisory board's visit to China a few weeks ago, let me offer a comment about our time with Shandong Gold, Barrick's partner at Veladero in Argentina, which I saw as a unique opportunity to better understand how one of Barrick's strategic partners thinks about sustainability and what that looks like on the ground in China. Over the two days spent with Shandong, I was struck both by their evident technical excellence and that these are early days in their knowledge and experience of mining outside of China's borders. I had the impression that they were aware of China's buccaneering reputation abroad, gave no indication that they considered such behavior anything but poor business practice, and further, that it had little to do with them.
Similarly, I had no doubt that their determination to become one of the world's top gold miners was fully matched by their commitment to be among the best performers across the spectrum of CSR issues. It is here where I think that Shandong probably has the most to learn as they go out into the world. That said, I did not harbor any doubt of their appreciation of the imperative of obtaining that license to operate, both in China and abroad. All in all, I was inspired by the prospect of what such partnerships could accomplish. Gold mining, any mining, in the remotest parts of the world or even here in North America, is a complex and challenging business. Expectations of appropriate behavior on the part of mining companies are appropriately high. Visibility regarding what they do and what they don't do is unprecedented.
From my perspective, the maintenance of this transparency is essential, and over six years, I've observed Barrick's unwavering efforts to do so while adhering to international best practices and acting in a manner which benefits all company stakeholders, employees, local communities, host governments, and shareholders alike. Barrick's record is not perfect, I am quite convinced of the strength of their corporate commitment to seek perfection. Helping Barrick address these sustainability issues intelligently, sensitively, transparently, and effectively is what the CSR Advisory Board is all about. Thank you.
Great. Thanks so much, Bob. It's great to hear your perspective. We are running a little bit behind time, 20 minutes behind time. I want to turn it over to Q&A now. I'll facilitate the questions from the floor initially, and then turn it over to the webcast to see if we have any questions coming in. As a reminder for those on the webcast, if you have a question, please use the button on the bottom right-hand corner of the webcast. We'll take as many as we can. We've got about 10 minutes, we'll see if we can stretch that. Who'd like to go first here on the floor? Greg.
How has Barrick changed the way it approaches groups, NGOs, that are hostile to the company, who are opposing your plans, who don't want you to develop mines? What are you doing to engage with them?
Okay. Well, I can take that one, Greg. I think the simple answer is that we have done a lot more to engage with them, to be proactive, and sit down and speak to them. I think that over time we've realized is the most effective way to manage issues and to raise awareness about what we're doing, to hear people's perspectives. We've done that with a number of different NGOs this year, both at this level. An example is a couple groups stood up at the AGM and said their piece, and we had been engaging with them in advance of that. We continued to offer further engagement.
That's happening at the site level as well. PNG is a good example where I think this year we've kind of made a breakthrough in terms of collaborating and engaging in a much more constructive way with some of the people we, over the years, haven't really done that with. I think that's the simple answer, really. It's continued engagement, getting around the table and hearing people and letting them say their views and offering a view in return. David.
Thanks, Peter. We heard a few people talk about alignment of Barrick and their joint venture partners. Rebecca spoke about onboarding. Robert spoke about Shandong visits. Instead of Barrick just putting your views forward, have you actually learned anything from the JV partners? Have they brought anything to you for you to perhaps say, maybe they've got the best practice that we should step up to?
Right. Yeah, that's a good question, David. That's a good question. I know Michelle came in the room halfway through the briefing, I might hand over to you, Michelle, for that question to start off. We might get Greg or Jim to reflect on that as well.
Certainly from an innovation perspective, we've spent a number of visits, both with Shandong coming to see our operations and also us visiting theirs. There's a number of things that we have learned and are actually working with them on, whether that be no cyanide, whether that be some of their grinding techniques, which are significantly lower in energy than some of the ones that we've been looking at. Whether it is some of the ways that they've operated their underground mines, especially the Sanshandao mine, which I think is one of their premier mines. There are a number of things. Even on the closure site perspective, we've visited two of their sites where they've done a tremendously good job recovering mine sites and recovering tailings ponds.
In one case, putting a golf course on, the other example, putting what they call a geological park on. I think they have a lot of expertise that they can help us in, especially closure sites as well.
I'm not sure, Greg or Jim, do you have anything to add from the Argentina perspective?
Hi, Peter. Jim here. I just wanted to bring up, nothing specific to CSR or environment, for example, but I want to talk a little bit about an exercise that we did with Shandong focused on values. When we were going to form Minera Andina del Sol, we didn't want to just take the Barrick value statement and mission and paste it on top or take Shandong's and paste it on top.
We actually got together as a full team, and after several long days of translation and hammering out what it is that we want for the new company, we really focused back on what are the common values between the two companies. Why are we here, what do we believe in, and how does that roll out into our mission statement, which eventually falls into the operation.
I think that's just a relevant point to make.
Yeah, Peter, I'll just cover a slightly different aspect, and that's with Zijin when I was in Porgera back in 2016, 2017. We went over and had a look at Zijin operations, and Michelle just touched on it quickly, but their rehabilitation and their progressive rehabilitation and the park areas that they've developed over in China were something for us to look at and better standards than we even put on ourselves.
As a company, we're not arrogant enough to say that our standards are the best. Certainly, Zijin and Shandong have brought aspects that are better or as good as ours. It's been a really good learning curve for us, but also for our partners as well. Jim's explanation of sharing values is where I see those relationships have all come from.
Okay, thanks. Thanks, guys. Any other questions in the room? Jackie?
Hi, just was wondering if you could expand a little bit on your commitment to reporting under the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures recommendations. A really critical part of the TCFD recommendations for investors.
Right.
is the climate change scenario analysis part. I was a bit struck by the comments made by your vice president and controller at the Responsible Investment Association conference this week, who, in response to a question on scenario analysis, said, "We really can't put anything in our financial disclosures that we can't absolutely rely on relative to the quality of the information." I think this is something that's a really critical piece for investors to know.
They know that scenario analysis is not perfect. I'm wondering if there might be a bit of a disconnect between the ambitions of the sustainability team and what your legal department will allow you to report. If you can comment on what you guys are doing on the scenario analysis front.
Well, happy to take that, and thanks for the question. Catherine can back me up. We committed to the recommendations. We think it made a lot of sense, the TCFD recommendations. We were headed down that track in terms of our climate change strategy anyway, so it was really quite consistent. We thought the disclosure aspects did make a lot of sense. We also gave ourselves a three-year timeframe to implement the recommendations.
We're taking incremental steps, and every year the disclosure will be improved. It's going to be a combination of what's in our regulatory filings and our sustainability report, eventually. I think the idea is that we will follow through and meet those recommendations, comply with the recommendations, including the scenario analysis. How we do that is yet to be defined. That's one part of it which we're just setting out on.
We're going to have that debate internally about what should be put in which area of our disclosure. I think a lot of people are struggling with the same things in terms of materiality and what goes in where. We will comply with the TCFD. That's a commitment we've made. I don't know if you've got anything to add, Catherine?
Only to support that statement. Julie is on the Climate Change Committee, along with myself, Peter, and a number of others. This discussion is exactly the one that we're trying to have, which is how do you deal with something that at the moment is quite vague
To be as precise as audited financial disclosures requires and marrying the two. Again, this point about materiality, which is at what level are you required to do that because it's material versus not being material. We're probably on it a hell of a lot earlier than any of our competitors are because we see this as a trend that whilst it's voluntary today, will not be voluntary in the future. That's how we're trying to manage it.
Okay. We're Dana, sorry.
Dana from Sustainalytics. To follow off from the joint ventures, I was just curious if Barrick is looking at all at other failures in the industry like Samarco 50/50 joint ventures, and how are you looking at accountability and responsibility in order to manage risk? I have another question that's slightly different. If you see any disruptive technologies that are coming your way, and how are you looking at that in terms, again, ESG risk and opportunities maybe?
Okay.
Either of you.
No. I might point to Andrew Hastings. We absolutely are looking at other joint ventures, and I think that's significantly influenced why we've set up this organizational structure like we have with a focus on joint venture operations. Andrew, do you want to speak to that question?
Sure. We not only look at other joint ventures, but we also look at our joint venture partners and their experiences at their own operations. We're constantly learning from our partners, whether it's Antofagasta in Chile, Newmont and their recent experiences with safety in Africa. We are picking up those learnings, not just in the context of joint ventures. In the context, though, of a joint venture, how do we make sure that we're maintaining our standards and we're also watching carefully? We do it through a three-pronged approach.
One is we make sure that we're picking the right people to represent us on the boards with the right experience. People with deep technical and operational experience. Sometimes it's financial, sometimes it's relationship arrangements, and things like that. The other aspects are through governance structures and rights. That's with policies and procedures.
Many of our joint ventures were formerly 100% Barrick-owned operations. Those operations have continued to have Barrick standards and procedures as agreed to by the partners and can only be changed through a majority approval. In a 50/50 context, of course, that means both partners need to agree. Policies and procedures aren't sufficient in order for that to be implemented. You also need to have audit rights, access rights, and information rights, all of which we have at every single level through the sustainability group, through the safety group, and other functions like that. Finally, obviously, we have to have continuous engagement. We're constantly engaging with the mine managers, whether it's through weekly or monthly reporting, as well as at quarterly board meetings and management committee meetings. Those are the tools we utilize.
We've got a practical example here. We've got a very physical, practical example here. Greg Walker is at Veladero, which is a joint venture. We engage with our joint ventures from an operational perspective in a wholehearted manner because the reputational risk, whether you own 50% or 100%, is the same.
I might pass back to Michelle in a minute on the disruption question, second half of that. From my perspective, just while she gets a microphone over there, social media has been the biggest disrupting factor, both pros and cons, I think, in terms of our industry, how that's changed, and will continue to change how we communicate with our stakeholders and how they communicate with us and the rest of the world.
Yeah. One of the key roles of the innovation team is to be not only looking at the five system-level innovations, but also disruptive technologies and almost as importantly, how sometimes technologies are being used in a disruptive way. Monitor not only how we can harness those technologies or those new ways of working on new processes, but also how they are informing society. We're looking at a number around energy reduction, waste reduction, water reduction, as well as how communities and governments' expectations are changing and what that means in terms of the feedback loop into technology and into our processes. There's a number of projects we're working on.
Okay. Let me turn to the webcam. Any online? No? No. Okay. All right. We're close to five after then. I think we'll close the Q&A questions. There will be time over lunch. Let me take the opportunity now to thank a few people. They're all in the back row there hiding away. Simon Jimenez and Tamara Cook, excellent preparation for this, and Bill Gray as well who can't be with us today, and the rest of the IR and sustainability team. Thanks very much for the preparation. I'd like to thank everybody for coming today. We absolutely welcome your feedback. I'm not sure if we have forms that we'll be handing out, given out to you, and it would be really helpful if you could fill out those. Just take a minute to fill out your evaluation forms. I think you have them now.
That will help us improve today and for next year. As I said last year, we really see this session as part of an ongoing conversation. We do engage regularly with investors on our ESG issues and things move quickly, our door is always open. If there's anything specific you wanted to follow up on today or going forward, please reach out to myself or the sustainability or IR teams. With that, I'd like to thank you again and invite those of you in the room to join us for lunch. Thank you.