As investors increasingly pressure corporations to incorporate and report on sustainability goals, the world's largest miners are running the risk of appearing disingenuous due to selective reporting on universal goals, a new report from the Responsible Mining Foundation concluded.

"The [sustainable development goals, or SDGs] provide a valuable societal framework for reporting and action on economic, social and environmental concerns, but an unbalanced emphasis on the 'good' that companies do may obscure the negative impacts, be they inherent or unintentional, that may impede the achievement of the SDG goals," Responsible Mining Foundation CEO Hélène Piaget said in a Feb. 24 news release. That sort of one-sided reporting fails to inform stakeholders and risks the appearance of "SDG-washing," the foundation said in the statement.

Investors are focusing more on environmental, social and governance issues. For example, BlackRock Inc., the world's largest asset manager, recently said it would divest certain coal companies from its actively managed portfolios due to climate change concerns as ESG issues take on a more critical role in selecting the firm's investments. Deloitte Insights recently identified appealing to socially conscious investors as one of the top issues facing the mining sector in 2020.

"Even late capitalism's supposedly unvarnished practitioners have suddenly discovered the merits of a social conscience and now say they will not invest in a business that does not have a satisfactory ESG rating," Barrick Gold Corp. CEO Mark Bristow said Feb. 4 at the Investing in African Mining Indaba conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

The Responsible Mining Foundation's Responsible Mining Index Report 2020 examined the policies and practices of 38 large-scale mining companies accounting for 28% of the world's mining activity in terms of production value. The report also assessed 180 individual mine sites in 45 countries, using 10 basic indicators of responsible mining.

The report showed a modest overall improvement on many issues by most of the companies since the assessment was completed for the 2018 report, the foundation noted. Much of that improvement, however, came from companies making commitments but not necessarily showing evidence of following up with action.

"The weakest results relate to companies' efforts to track, review and act to improve the effectiveness of their actions on [economic, environmental, social and governance] issues," the Responsible Mining Foundation said. "So while commitments are a step in the right direction, the mining sector as a whole would benefit — both in terms of its performance and its trust-building with other stakeholders — from being able to demonstrate more consistent implementation of commitments across operational portfolios and across issues."

The Responsible Mining Foundation also criticized the industry for a disconnect between companywide policies and standards versus on-the-ground action at mine sites. Companies also have little evidence of engaging with local stakeholders on important issues, the report said.

"While the trust-deficit with society is recognized as the number one risk for mining companies, the RMI Report 2020 acts as a prompt to the industry to eliminate the need to respond to multiple information requests," Piaget said. "In fact, more proactive data disclosure will reduce the demand for companies' reporting."

The report is being made available online, along with source documents and other data. Companies analyzed in the report included Anglo American PLC, Barrick Gold, BHP Group, Freeport-McMoRan Inc., Glencore PLC, Peabody Energy Corp., Rio Tinto, Teck Resources Ltd. and Vale SA.