While absolute results remain low overall, Anglo American shows the strongest results in five of the six thematic areas: Economic Development, Business Conduct, Lifecycle Management, Community Wellbeing and Environmental Responsibility. The company shows one of the stronger three results in the remaining thematic area, Working Conditions.

Anglo American’s relatively stronger results in the company-wide assessment are due to its establishment of formalised commitments and company-wide systems on a wide range of issues. For example, in Economic Development, Anglo American has put a standard in place for collaborating with producing country regional governments on socio-economic development planning. In Business Conduct, the company discloses the payments it makes to national and sub-national governments, disaggregated on a project-level basis. In Lifecycle Management, Anglo American is the only company to have put in place guidelines designed to ensure its operations plan for post-closure transition for workers as well as for communities. In Community Wellbeing, the company has systems designed to ensure its operations design and implement strategies to respect the rights of potentially affected Indigenous Peoples.

Anglo American shows some evidence of improvement since the RMI Report 2020, including new guidelines on identifying and mapping artisanal and small-scale mining and assessing the need for technical and livelihood support to ASM miners, as well as requirements to consider the human rights impacts on vulnerable groups.

On the other hand, Anglo American’s results are limited by lack of evidence on a number of issues, particularly on public disclosure matters (such as legal titles, beneficial ownership and water quality data), and on reviewing and tracking its performance, for example on managing the impacts of its activities on women.

Anglo American ranks 13th out of the 40 companies on mine-site-level results, with an average score of only 11% in the mine-site assessment. Moreover, Anglo American’s results in the mine-site-level assessment are very variable. While one of its mine sites – a joint venture with BHP and Glencore - shows one of the five stronger results (scoring 26%) among the sites assessed, five of the eight other Anglo American mine sites assessed show very weak results (scoring 10% or lower). Three of the assessed mine sites do not show any relevant evidence on five of the fifteen issues covered in the mine-site assessment: local employment, water quality, safety of communities, women workers, and living wage.