Assets will be stranded and investors will walk away unless mining companies show they are dealing with water scarcity, mine bosses said on Tuesday.
After the hottest year on record in 2016 water has shot up the agenda at mining board meetings.
“Investors say to us: ‘don’t talk to us about returns’; they want to know how we’re managing water,” Nick Holland, CEO of Gold Fields,, said at an international mining conference in Cape Town.
Mining requires water at almost every stage of the process and the bulk of the assets of major mining companies are in water-stressed regions, such as Africa, Australia and Latin America.
Anglo American says it is striving to use as little water as possible. It has limited water consumption by using 65 per cent recycled water and its goal is to reach 95 per cent over the next decade.