The identification and evaluation of key sustainable development indicators and the development of a conceptual decision-making model for capital investment within Gold Fields Limited (GFL)

Abstract

The current trends in sustainable development (SO) were examined in this study, which brought about the realisation that SO has become a business imperative. Mining, which is a highly impacting industry, is faced with the dilemma of implementing the principles of SO despite the realisation that its activities are severely limited by· the finite nature of the resource it is capitalising on. This reality, however, does not detract from the non-negotiable requirement for the industry to meet the increasing pressures to act responsibly towards the environment and the community in which it operates. Gold Fields has stepped up to the plate and has already taken several steps to achieve this end. These include the adoption of SO in its Vision, Values and strategies and the development and implementation of a SO framework to ensure the integration of the principles of SO into the business. Furthermore, Gold Fields has also entered into voluntary activities that further cement the commitment the company has towards so. These other initiatives include, inter alia, its International Council on Mining and Metals membership, UN Global Compact participation, becoming a signatory to the cyanide code, IS014001, and so on. This study focussed on several indicator categories and the identification of a set of supporting sustainable development indicators (SOls) for each, which included environmental, social, economic, technological, and ethics, legal and corporate governance (not in order of priority). These indicators were assessed by a carefully selected group of respondents whose collective wisdom and expertise were used to identify and weight supporting SOls for each of the indicator categories. These supporting SOls were in turn used to develop a model that is able to assist in the business's decision making processes when capital investment is being considered . A water treatment project that is currently being considered by Gold Fields was utilised to demonstrate how the decision making model can be applied to two different scenarios. The result clearly and successfully demonstrated that by proactively taking environmental, economic, social, technological, and ethics, legal and corporate governance considerations into account, a gold mining company is able to increase the level of SO of a capital investment project.