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Anglo American plc (‘Anglo American’) engaged us to review selected sustainable development performance indicators and targets (‘sustainable development criteria’) in its Report to Society 2006 (‘the Report’) and its assertion that the report has been prepared “in accordance” with the Global Reporting Initiative 2002 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (‘the GRI Guidelines’).
This report is made solely to Anglo American in accordance with the terms of our engagement. Our work has been undertaken so that we might state to Anglo American those matters we have been engaged to state in this report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone, other than Anglo American, for our work, for this report or for the conclusions we have reached.
Anglo American’s directors are responsible for the preparation of the Report and the information and assessments contained within it, for determining the Group’s objectives in respect of sustainable development performance and for establishing and maintaining appropriate performance management and internal control systems from which the reported information is derived.
Our responsibility is to express our conclusions to Anglo American on the findings of our review, based on the work referred to below. We also report if, in our opinion, any of the relevant disclosures are misrepresented or inconsistent with our findings, if we have not received all information and explanations we required to conduct our work, or if we became aware of additional information, the omission of which may result in the selected sustainable development criteria in the Report, or the assertion that the report has been prepared “in accordance” with the GRI Guidelines, being materially misstated or misleading.
Anglo American applies its own Safety, Health and Environmental Reporting guidelines, Community Engagement guidelines and Socio-Economic Assessment Toolbox for reporting (‘Anglo American’s sustainable development guidance’). The Glossary of the Report gives further information on specific definitions.
We conducted our work in accordance with the International Standard on Assurance Engagements 3000: Assurance Engagements other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Information issued by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board. Our work was carried out by a multi-disciplinary team of safety, health, environmental, stakeholder engagement and assurance specialists.
We selected the following sustainable development criteria for review, drawing on an understanding of the risks associated with reporting sustainable development performance and the systems and processes in place to mitigate these risks during the period of review. We conducted our review of sustainable development criteria on Anglo American’s future core businesses, as defined on Scope of this report. We also reviewed Anglo American’s Report to Society in the context of the requirements of the GRI Guidelines.
We selected 22 sites for visit and review by considering the risks and issues that may influence reporting in a geographically and operationally diverse organisation like Anglo American.
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total work-related fatal injuries set out on Safety Data of the Report
- total lost-time injury frequency rate including restricted work cases set out on Safety Data of the Report
- total new cases of occupational disease set out on Safety Data of the Report
- total HIV prevalence, total number of employees who received VCT during 2006, total number of employees on HIV disease management programmes and total number of employees taking ART set out on Safety Data of the Report. HIV data are reported and therefore assured for southern Africa only.
- total energy used and total CO2 emissions from processes, fossil fuels and electricity purchased set out on Data tables of the Report
- total number of Levels 2 and 3 environmental incidents set out on Environmental overview of the Report
- total coal mine methane CO2 equivalent emissions set out on Data tables of the Report
- total water used for primary activities set out on Data tables of the Report
- total number of waste facility audits set out on Materials stewardship of the Report.
We planned and performed our work to obtain all the information and explanations that we considered necessary to provide sufficient evidence for us to give reasonable assurance over the sustainable development criteria set out above in italic text and limited assurance over the sustainable development criteria set out above in plain text and Anglo American’s assertion that its Report has been prepared “in accordance” with the GRI Guidelines set out on Scope of this Report.
- obtaining an understanding of systems used to generate, aggregate and report information based on Anglo American’s sustainable development guidelines and the selected sustainable development criteria at 22 selected sites, business unit and group levels;
- conducting interviews with management at the sites, business unit and group levels and review of relevant supporting documentation to obtain an understanding of the consistency of the reporting processes and explanations of the trends in sustainable development performance;
- performing an analytical review of the sustainable development criteria submitted for central aggregation;
- testing the accuracy of the aggregation process for the selected sustainable development criteria; and
- reviewing the presentation of the selected sustainable development criteria in the report in light of the findings from site visits, business unit and group levels and our cumulative knowledge of the industry and the group’s operations.
We reviewed Anglo American’s assertions that its Report is “in accordance” with the GRI Guidelines through reviewing whether it:
- includes the numbered elements required in Sections 1 to 3 of Part C of the GRI Guidelines (vision and strategy; profile, governance structures and management systems);
- refers to a GRI content index, which is publicly available on its website as specified in Section 4 of Part C of the GRI Guidelines;
- responds to each core indicator in Section 5 of the Guidelines by either reporting on the indicator or explaining the reason for its omission;
- is consistent with the principles set out in Part B of the GRI Guidelines through assessing how Anglo American incorporates the principles in its reporting process; and
- contains a statement that the Report has been prepared in accordance with the Guidelines which has been signed by the Chief Executive Officer.
Based on the work described above, in our opinion, Anglo American’s sustainable development criteria set out in italics text above, under the Work performed section for the year ended 31 December 2006, are fairly stated.
During the course of our work, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that:
- Anglo American’s sustainable development criteria set out above in plain text under the Work performed section for the year ended 31 December 2006 are not fairly stated; and
- Anglo American’s assertion that its Report has been prepared “in accordance” with the GRI Guidelines is not fairly stated.
KPMG LLP (UK)
Chartered Accountants
London
30 March 2007
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