Building De Beers Group to be fit for the future
De Beers conservation & sustainability
agenda
Two
significant De Beers Group gatherings were held this month, highlighting the Group’s
role in setting the agenda on sustainability and hearing from researchers on
topics that are critical to our commitment to protecting the natural world. First,
there was the Sustainability Conference and then, two weeks later, came the 9th
Oppenheimer-De Beers Group Research Conference, both held at the Group’s
Johannesburg campus.
The
Sustainability Conference’s theme was building De Beers Group to be fit for the
future. It provided the opportunity for delegates to share, engage and network,
and raised awareness on the link between sustainability and the company’s
strategy, including our brand, people and approach to innovation. Delegates
were able to gain an understanding of the Group’s sustainability priorities and
key programmes to drive zero harm and increase positive contributions to
society.
More
than 180 delegates, including business executives and sustainability
practitioners from across safety, environmental, social and health disciplines,
gathered to share the latest thinking in the field of sustainability. Speaking
at the opening of the conference, De Beers Group CEO Bruce Cleaver said he
hoped there would be constructive engagements on developing an integrated,
systems approach to sustainability.
“For
me, sustainability is not a ‘nice-to-have’,” he said. “It is absolutely
mission-critical for De Beers Group. I don’t think there is any business out
there that feels that sustainability is not important – and for us, as an
industry leader, it is even more important. Consumers are telling us, quite
rightly, that it is important to them that diamonds are sourced responsibly and
sustainably.”
Delivering
the keynote address under the theme ‘Setting the global context for the need to
build a future fit business’, Dr Gary Kendall, Strategy and Sustainability
Specialist at Nedbank, highlighted the fast-evolving global context related to
sustainability challenges and changing expectations of stakeholders on the role
of the private sector to assist in addressing these challenges.
The
first panel discussion of the day covered ways in which De Beers Group is
planning to utilise technology and innovation to support its strategy, and how
the business plans to empower people to embrace this.
This
was followed by an overview presentation on the importance of having a
corporate social purpose and how ‘Building Forever’ encapsulates our approach
to sustainable business and to ‘living our purpose’.
As
David Prager, Executive Vice-President of Corporate Affairs, said: “Great
brands are a shortcut to trust. They reflect the values of their consumers,
they have clear social purpose and they embed this authentically throughout
their business.”
Delving
into our two core Building Forever pillars – Standing with Women and Girls, and
Protecting the Natural World – representatives from UN Women, WomEng and Fauna
& Flora International joined De Beers Group panellists to discuss the
importance of these two areas to the future sustainability of the business.
This
exciting and packed first day of the conference was followed by a further day
and half of in-depth parallel sessions for all the safety, health, social and
environmental discipline participants to discuss a wide range of topics and
look to improve sustainability performance.
In
recognition of the participation of all conference speakers and delegates, De
Beers Group made a donation to the South African College for Tourism. The
college is run by Peace Parks Foundation, one of the Group’s valued partners
and guardians of the elephants in the ‘Moving Giants’ initiative, which has
seen the translocation of 200 of these amazing creatures from De Beers Group’s
Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve in South Africa to Mozambique.
The
college shares the priority of standing with women and girls, and, since
opening, has trained more than 1,000 young women in hospitality services.
Ninety-two per cent of these women have successfully secured employment. While
the Sustainability Conference provided a holistic view of sustainability and
its many facets, the Research Conference focused specifically on biodiversity
conservation.
This
two-day annual event is hosted jointly by De Beers Group and Oppenheimer
Generations, a long-term association that highlights our joint interest in
investing in conservation research. More than 220 attendees had the opportunity
to discuss the latest research and findings from various projects that took
place on Oppenheimer Generations and De Beers Group conservation properties,
helping to guide future research and postgraduate opportunities.
Mpumi
Zikalala, Deputy CEO of De Beers Consolidated Mines, opened the conference by
emphasising the importance of conservation to De Beers Group and diamonds. Two
excellent keynote speakers helped set the global context for conservation, with
Peter Fearnhead, CEO of African Parks, touching on the role of his organisation
on the continent and the importance placed on the more than 10 million hectares
of protected land African Parks manages across nine countries.
With
a focus on the future, Fred Swaniker, founder of the African Leadership
University, spoke passionately about developing problem-solving leaders who are
able to address systemic challenges such as wildlife conservation, climate
change, infrastructure development and education in Africa.
Presentations
and posters over the course of the two days covered a diverse range of topics.
From De Beers Group, these included marine biodiversity, Botswana’s beetles and
spiders, a broad-scoped project on giraffe at our Rooipoort Nature Reserve in
South Africa and palaeontology in Namibia.
Nicky
Oppenheimer, from Oppenheimer Generations, closed the event by remarking on the
uniqueness of the conference in the research world due to the diversity of
exciting research by a variety of researchers (both well-established researchers
and young researchers/postgraduate students) from a wide range of institutions.
Organisations
represented in the presentations included NGOs, private companies and
individuals, government agencies and 45 universities from South Africa,
Botswana, Zimbabwe, DRC, Swaziland, France, UK, Portugal, Australia, Canada and
the US.
He
awarded the prize for the best presentation to Professor Andre Ganswindt,
Director Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria, for his talk
on non-invasive monitoring of stressors in wildlife. He also handed over the
best poster prize to Saeed Mohammadi, a PhD student at the University of
Pretoria, for his poster on DNA barcoding in ants.
De
Beers Group is committed to being fit for the future and investing in protecting
the natural world through its conservation efforts. At the sustainability
conference, Group executives emphasised the criticality of operating
sustainably and the role we all play in that. At the research conference, we
valued the chance to hear from a range of partners about the research they
conduct towards achieving improved conservation outcomes.
Comments
Post a Comment