Harmony Gold names first Chief Sustainability Officer

South African mining firm Harmony Gold has announced Urishanie Govender as its first Chief Sustainability Officer, effective from October 1.

Govender has been leading sustainability initiatives in the mining sector since 2018, first as Group Head of Safety and Sustainability at DeBeers, then as Director of EHS and ESG at Vedanta Group since 2022.

She is Harmony Gold’s first Chief Sustainability Officer: the firm’s sustainability strategy was previously led by Melanie Naidoo-Vermaak for 14 years, but she left to take on the CSO role at Sibanye-Stillwater in January 2024.

Govender holds a PhD in business leadership and is a Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) certified sustainability practitioner.

“I am confident that Urishanie will bring valuable insights and a fresh perspective to our ongoing initiatives and will play a key role in advancing our sustainability goals,” said Harmony Group CEO Peter Steenkamp.

Harmony Gold sustainability performance

Harmony Gold, which employs more than 45,000 people in South Africa, Papua New Guinea and Australia, reported a 15.5% increase in revenue in 2023, to US$2.8 billion. It has a target to reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions 63% by 2036 from a 2021 base year – approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).

The miner’s long-term net zero commitment has been removed from the SBTi dashboard, meaning that it failed to submit a 1.5ºC-aligned net zero target within two years of committing to do so. Harmony Gold’s 2023 sustainability report states that the company is aiming to be “net zero by 2045 (including carbon removal, agriculture, forestation and water beneficiation)”.

Most of Harmony’s emissions (77%) are Scope 2, since the majority of its operations are based in South Africa, where the grid produces mostly fossil fuel-generated electricity. As a result, its plans to reduce its carbon footprint involves improving energy efficiency and transitioning to renewable energy.

Energy efficiency measures so far have helped the firm reduce energy intensity, from around 0.15 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per tonne of gold produced in 2019 to around 0.1 tonnes of CO2e per tonne in 2023.

However, absolute emissions increased from 3.86 million tonnes to 5.46 million tonnes in the same time frame, which Harmony attributes to the acquisition of AngloGold Ashanti’s South Africa assets in 2020.