In 2024, we laid the foundation for many of the initiatives currently in progress for managing our negative impact and risks associated with failing to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights and ensuring FPIC in our own operations. We began by developing a global guidance for social and human rights impact assessments, which will allow us to proactively manage these risks and impacts before the construction of new projects.

Furthermore, we finalised our internal guidelines for free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC), a framework designed to ensure respectful and transparent engagement with Indigenous communities. These guidelines guarantee that we secure consent from Indigenous communities before initiating projects that might impact their lands or cultural heritage.

As part of our ongoing commitment to transparency and accountability, we assess whether affected communities are aware of and trust the grievance mechanisms available to them through ongoing community engagements. However, our assessments in this area are still a work in progress. While we can evaluate communities’ awareness during engagements, we do not yet have sufficient comprehensive assessments to fully measure their trust in these channels. We are actively working to strengthen our approach to ensure greater transparency regarding affected communities’ grievances. Further to this, it is our aim to ensure that our whistleblower hotline is widely available to affected communities, although we cannot be certain that all affected communities are aware of this channel and know how to access it. However, we ensure individuals who use these grievance mechanisms are protected from retaliation, and that whistleblower reports are handled confidentially, in line with our 'Good business conduct policy' and 'Whistleblower policy'.