Environmental stewardship

Environmental stewardship forms a significant part of our sustainability efforts. As a cornerstone of the Group’s strategy, we strive to integrate climate and environment-related risks and opportunities into our strategy and operations. We aim to ensure our communities and stakeholders recognise and trust us for purpose-led social impact and nature-based solutions that aims to enhance lives. Our strategies, targets and implementation plans are designed to ensure we extract natural resources in a way that is environmentally responsible and sound, and considers the needs of our stakeholders – particularly those communities impacted by our operations.

Gold Fields set 2030 targets for three environmental priority areas: decarbonisation, tailings management and water stewardship. We detail these targets, along with our 2024 performance, in this section, as well as our 2024 Climate Change and Environmental Report. We have initiated a mid-point review against these 2030 targets, which will be concluded in 2025. Apart from a status update and an assessment of underlining assumptions, like relevant technologies and other context drivers, the mid-point review will address any gaps to close the 2030 targets and consider the impact of portfolio growth and technology readiness.

All our operations are certified to the international ISO 14001:2015 standard, and our environmental management systems provide a structured framework to effectively and efficiently manage our environmental risks and opportunities while driving continuous improvement and ensuring legal and other compliance. As at 31 December 2024, all Gold Fields operations that use cyanide were fully certified to the ICMC. Subsequent to year-end, St Ives’ certification was reduced to substantial certification. The operation is implementing a corrective action plan due for completion in May 2025.

Sustainable Development Policy

We take guidance from industry best practices and thought leadership, predominantly provided by the ICMM and the WGC. Our commitments are set out in our Sustainable Development Policy statement, summarised below.

Gold Fields sustainable development commitments

Integrate sustainable development principles into the Group's business strategy and operational execution towards a zero harm mindset

Cultivate a respectful, safe, ethical and inclusive working environment

Build a culture of continuous environmental and socio-economic review, analysis, improvement and disclosure, based on the precautionary approach

Maintain good governance and compliance

Ensure an ethical, strategic, consistent and Company-wide approach to materials and supply chain stewardship that generates sustainable value

Maintain proactive, transparent and respectful stakeholder engagement

Implement effective enterprise risk management

Ensure we sell gold and copper to responsible buyers and that we do not contribute to unlawful armed conflict

Increase awareness of sustainable development among our employees and stakeholders

Environmental incidents

Gold Fields is committed to sound environmental performance and mitigating the adverse impact of our operations on affected stakeholders and the environment. As such, we consider our environmental impact a stakeholder-related focus area as we seek to deliver nature-positive performance that enhances lives. We have consistently maintained zero Level 3 - 5 incidents since 2018, demonstrating a limited environmental impact by our operations on neighbouring communities.

During the year, 18 localised, minor incidents across the Group were reported (2023: 8), categorised as Level 2 incidents, bringing the total Level 2 - 5 incidents to 18^RA in 2024. The majority of these incidents related to loss of containment. A common thread across many incidents was improved reporting as well as change management, with employee turnover at several operations impacting continuity. All incidents were investigated and closed out. We seek to ensure that all environmental and social risks are identified, assessed and effectively controlled to reduce the number and severity of these incidents.

Group environmental incidents

For more information, refer to our Climate Change and Environment Report.