Yamana is committed to the highest standards of corporate governance and we recognize our inherent responsibilities to our employees, shareholders, communities and local governments to ensure we operate ethically and responsibly.
HSEC is embedded across all levels of leadership at Yamana. We believe everybody has a responsibility for HSEC, not only at our operations but at regional and corporate offices as well.
The Sustainability Committee of the Yamana Board oversees management’s efforts and contributes to the management of health, safety, environment, community, tailings, and human rights matters, including reviewing policy, compliance issues and incidents, and monitoring key risk indicators. In addition, other committees of the Board of Directors oversee matters of corruption and business ethics and human capital. The Sustainability Committee also:
The Executive Chairman is directly responsible for reinforcing the merits of evaluating Company performance across various measures, including ESG. The Executive Chairman acts in a senior capacity representing the Company to key governments and other stakeholders. Responsibilities include:
More information on the role and responsibilities of the Executive Chairman can be found in the Management Information Circular.
Executive-level accountability is imperative to successfully develop and implement strategy, risk management processes and improve performance. As such, the SVP HSSD is directly responsible for overseeing all of these aspects regarding community relations, human rights, environment (including biodiversity, climate change and water), closure, and health and safety. This includes:
At a corporate level, we have a dedicated HSEC team, located in the head office in Toronto, as well as individuals who are located in regional offices. Our corporate HSEC team is made up of Directors for Health and Safety, Environment and Community, Tailings, a Manager and Analyst of HSSD as well as a Senior Manager of Water and Mine Reclamation. The corporate HSEC team is responsible for:
The Director, Tailings has an indirect reporting line to the Executive Chairman, on behalf of the Board, and a direct reporting line to the Senior Vice President of Health, Safety and Sustainable Development. The Director, Tailings is responsible for:
For more information on our governance of tailings, please see our Tailings Management page.
Yamana has a Regional HSEC Director who is a direct liaison between operational-level HSEC teams and the corporate HSEC team. Responsibilities include:
Our operational level teams are comprised of dedicated and experienced HSEC professionals who are responsible for implementation of the requirements of the HSEC Management Framework. Teams include individuals who are trained on each functional aspect of HSEC (health and safety professionals, environmental engineers, community relations experts).
These teams manage and oversee the day-to-day aspects of operations, including:
We ensure our operations, as well as corporate and regional offices, operate to the highest degree of business ethics through the use of extensive internal policies and training. We have many internal policies and standards covering a broad range of functional areas and topics that can be accessed at any time by all employees through Yamana's internal Sharepoint. The ESG-related policies are identified below. All employees are trained on these policies, with refresher training required regularly. These policies dictate appropriate conduct for a variety of situations and cover all employees. Policies identified below are publicly available on the Ethics & Governance page.
In addition to our rigorous internal standards, Yamana complies with a variety of external standards and certifications. More information on these can be found below in our External Standards and Certifications section.
Yamana aims to capture and solidify our corporate commitments toward the highest social and environmental standards by which we will work to continually improve our HSEC programs, practices and performance. We are in the process of revising our HSEC policies and standards and will update this section once finalized.
The Board of Directors has adopted a Code of Conduct that is applicable to all directors, officers and employees of Yamana; in addition, contractors must sign and abide by the Code of Conduct.
In conjunction with the adoption of the Code, the Company established the Yamana Integrity Helpline, a channel of communication open to directors, officers, employees, contractors, consultants and other third parties with whom Yamana conducts business, to report concerns arising from items outlined in the Code of Conduct on a confidential or anonymous basis. The Yamana Integrity Helpline can be accessed by calling a toll-free external phone number or online at www.yamana.ethicspoint.com.
The Anti-Corruption and Anti-Bribery Policy is a component of the Code of Conduct and prohibits Yamana employees or agents from giving or offering anything of value to government officials, political parties or their employees, as well as various other individuals and activities. Yamana complies with Canada’s Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act and the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. More information on this policy can be found within our Code of Conduct.
To supplement our policies, all of our sites have been assessed by a third party for bribery and corruption risks, which includes ongoing audit reviews, testing and monitoring, with anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses being added to purchase orders. Higher-risk departments such as Government Relations, Procurement and Accounts Payable have also received specific and detailed anti-bribery and anti-corruption training, along with all members of the Senior Executive Group. Accountability for business ethics and corruption issues lies at the Board level.
Yamana upholds the highest standards for respecting the human rights of all individuals affected by Yamana business. Our Human Rights Policy is informed by international law standards and evolving international best practice, including:
The policy describes Yamana’s human rights commitments to ensure that all employees know, understand and comply with their responsibilities towards respecting human rights of employees, contractors and people in host communities while undertaking business activities on behalf of the Company.
Yamana holds our suppliers to the same high degree of business ethics as ourselves. Prior to contracts being awarded, all suppliers must sign and comply with Yamana’s Code of Conduct (described in more detail above). In addition to the Code of Conduct, the operational-level HSEC professionals provide HSEC topics as criteria for evaluation according to the material/service related to the respective bidding. Yamana's Third-Party Risk Management System is based on the holistic approach to optimizing the risk exposure in strategic and operational procurement and identifies the relevant procurement risks, including HSEC risks, as early as possible to protect Yamana’s reputation, physical and intangible assets and avoid business losses.
Yamana maintains an Integrity Helpline that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by phone or through the Yamana website. The helpline is confidential and concerns or issues may be reported anonymously.
Yamana recognizes our commitment to the principles of diversity and the importance of diverse cultural and geographic backgrounds, age, skills, experience and gender. This policy focuses on incorporating diversity aspects in the hiring of director and senior leadership candidates, including executive officers, who have the core skills and qualities to serve on our Board or executive management team.
Together with our management approaches, we also maintain a number of external commitments and certifications. The landscape of external standards and certifications is continuously evolving; our approach to select the standards we will incorporate into our management systems and apply at our sites consists of understanding the value of each standard in terms of improving our performance, managing risks and understanding stakeholder needs.
ISO 14001 is an international framework for an effective environmental management system. This framework helps our sites ensure compliance with legal requirements, improve resource efficiency, reduce waste, reduce environmental costs and reduce our environmental impact.
OHSAS 18001 is an international framework focusing on occupational health and safety management. In 2018, OHSAS 18001 was superseded by ISO 45001. It helps organizations identify, control and decrease risks associated with health and safety in the workplace.
We use sodium cyanide (“cyanide”) at our operations in compliance with the International Cyanide Management Code (ICMC or the “Code”). This voluntary initiative for managing cyanide in the gold production chain (gold miners, producers/handlers and cyanide transportation) was created to minimize risks to human health and the environment. Essential to the gold mining industry, cyanide is a chemical product used in many of the world’s gold mines.
As signatories of the Code, all of Yamana’s operations have undergone independent audits to demonstrate the implementation of the measures complying with ICMC standards. All of the operations in our primary portfolio have full code compliance certification.
As members of the World Gold Council, we assure that our gold does not contribute to conflict through the completion and assurance of our Conflict-Free Gold Report. This extensive report covers information from all of our mines, our security practices, as well as chains of custody to assure that our gold is truly conflict free. This report is externally assured by Deloitte and available here.
In September 2019, the World Gold Council released the Responsible Gold Mining Principles (RGMPs). This over-arching framework identifies 10 principles to promote responsible gold mining and is designed to provide confidence to investors and supply chain participants that gold has been produced responsibly.
The 10 RGMPs focus on areas of importance to investors and consumers, building on existing frameworks and initiatives:
Yamana is committed to produce gold in a responsible manner. As a member of the World Gold Council, the Company endorsed the RGMPs and began their implementation in 2020.
In 2017, Yamana became a member of the Mining Association of Canada (MAC). MAC’s Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) initiative is designed to improve public perception of the industry based on operational-level performance improvements. TSM enables mining companies to meet society’s needs for mineral, metals and energy products in the most socially, economically and environmentally responsible way. TSM protocols address eight significant business risks, is globally recognized as an industry-leading practice and has been adopted by various national mining associations outside of Canada. TSM is required for MAC members’ Canadian operations, however Yamana has voluntarily decided to implement the TSM protocols at our international operations.
Towards Sustainable Mining Protocols:
Yamana is compliant with the Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act (ESTMA). This report is generated annually and submitted to the Government of Canada. This Act is an equivalent level of reporting to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Standard and seeks to increase transparency by ensuring companies report annually on payments to all levels of government. More information regarding ESTMA and its equivalency to EITI is available on the EITI website at https://eiti.org/supporter/canada.
In addition to our formally stated commitments and certifications, we align our operational management systems with the standards listed below. Yamana has been reporting against the standards developed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) since 2007 and we have also voluntarily reported to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) since 2016.
Yamana is a member of several industry organizations, including: