Hey there, welcome to The Forward! I’m Bronwyn, I spent many years leading social performance and community relations in mining, including as Head of Social Performance at Rio Tinto. Now I run Cantilever, where I advise mining and resources companies on sustainability strategy and complex stakeholder engagement.
If you want to talk about your strategy, get in touch with me here.
Read time: 5 mins
Last week we looked at Glencore and the McArthur River compensation judgment. This week we're looking at water.
Some background first. Almost every water disclosure in a sustainability report leads with a single number: megalitres. Last month, the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) released its Global Mining and Metals Water Dataset, and its key finding is that competition for water with other users, not volume, is the greatest physical water risk facing the industry. In other words, the number every report leads with is not the number we need to be thinking about. The dataset also names western Australia as a water risk hotspot, which brings me to our feature company.
Gold Fields runs four mines in the WA Goldfields. So I read their 2025 Sustainability Report with one question in mind: can the disclosure tell me whether their water is competing with anyone? The answer hangs on a footnote, and on one mine that reported withdrawing no freshwater at all.
— Bronwyn
Gold Fields
Source: 2025 Sustainability Report · Published April 2026 · 78 pages · Prepared with reference to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Universal Standards · Member of the International Council on Mining and Metals · Selected indicators independently assured by PwC.
Gold Fields is one of the world's largest gold producers, headquartered in South Africa, with nine operating mines. Four of them sit in the WA Goldfields: St Ives, Agnew, Granny Smith and Gruyere, which became wholly owned when Gold Fields completed its acquisition of joint venture partner Gold Road in 2025. In 2024 the Australian operations produced almost half of group production. Water stewardship is one of the company's three 2030 environmental priority areas, alongside decarbonisation and tailings.
Passage 1: The number and the footnote
"…total freshwater withdrawal¹ of 9.72GL improved on both 2024 levels and our 2025 target"
9.72GL, or 9.72 billion litres of water (equivalent to almost 3,900 Olympic-size swimming pools) is not how much water Gold Fields took last year. It is how much freshwater they took. The full amount, 17.8GL, sits in the tables at the back of the report. So nearly half the water Gold Fields withdrew doesn’t appear in the headline number.
Why not? Because it isn't fresh. The report defines what fresh means, in the footnote under the headline. For this report, freshwater is water with less than 5,000 mg/L of dissolved salts. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standard, which most reports reference, draws the line at 1,000. Neither is wrong, and Gold Fields states its definition plainly but it means this report's freshwater number and another company's freshwater number might be different measurements wearing the same name.
The same sentence in the report opens with a second number: 74% of water recycled and reused, ahead of a 73% target. The 74%, for the record, is a share of total water used across operations, counting water that circulates more than once. Not a share of withdrawal. Even the percentages in this section need their definitions checked.
Plain english: The headline counts only the water the report defines as fresh, and that definition changes between companies. Read the definitions before comparing.
Passage 2: The mine that withdrew no freshwater
"... reuse and recycling of freshwater have limited value and cost benefits"
Here is why that sentence matters. Much of the groundwater beneath the WA Goldfields is hypersaline: saltier than seawater, drawn from ancient buried river channels, and unusable for farms, towns or nearly anything except the mines that pump it. In 2025, Gruyere reported freshwater withdrawal of 0.0GL.
Zero, for the second year running.
Across all four Australian mines, freshwater withdrawal was 3.5GL, from operations producing almost half the group's gold. The targeted withdrawal of water that cannot be used for other purposes is something to be highlighted.
Now recall the question from the top. ICMM's map calls western Australia a water risk hotspot, and it is. But the dataset measures quantity risks: stress, drought, depletion. It does not measure usability. A mine running on hypersaline groundwater can withdraw large volumes while competing with almost no one, because nothing else can drink what it drinks. Total withdrawal can't show you that. Only the freshwater split can, and only once you know how the report defines it.
The Australian recycling figures look weak next to South Deep's 85.7%, until you understand the report's point that recycling freshwater has limited value where the water is hypersaline and abundant. The 2035 commitments abandon uniform absolute water targets altogether, shifting to catchment and asset-specific context-based targets that the company says will incorporate Indigenous water values and cultural connections to catchments.
Plain english: In some regions, they type of water matters more than how much of it there is, and Gold Fields has rebuilt its targets around exactly that point.
The Frame
We asked whether the disclosure can tell you if a mine's water is in competition with anyone. The answer: yes, but only if you read past the headline figure to the quality split, the site table and the footnote that defines the terms. Gold Fields discloses at that granularity, which is what makes the exercise possible.
Aggregation and uniform targets are what reporting conventions have instructed for years. It’s useful when comparing apples with apples. The interesting development for Gold Fields is that the company’s water profile is not necessarily comparible and they’re not even drawing down on freshwater in some instances.
Two practical takeaways for anyone who writes or reviews a water disclosure:
Read the footnote along with the headline number. Freshwater at 1,000 mg/L and freshwater at 5,000 mg/L are different measurements wearing the same name, and consumption and withdrawal are different facts again. Before comparing any two reports, or any two years, confirm the definitions match. If your own report's definitions differ from the standard, disclose that as plainly as Gold Fields does.
Judge every water metric inside its catchment, or not at all. Recycling rates, withdrawal totals and reduction targets all change meaning with the water quality and the neighbours. The question that survives context is the ICMM one: who else depends on the water you draw, and would they recognise your description of the catchment?
Glossary
Water withdrawal. All water taken from any source for any use. Gold Fields reports total withdrawal of 17.8GL for 2025, defined as the sum of all water from all sources including surface water, groundwater, rainwater, wastewater from other organisations and municipal supply.
Water consumption. Total withdrawal less discharge; the water that doesn't go back. 13.0GL for Gold Fields in 2025.
Freshwater. There is no single definition. The GRI standard draws the line at 1,000 mg/L of total dissolved solids. Gold Fields draws it at 5,000 mg/L with a pH range of 4 to 10, and discloses this in a footnote. Same label, different measurements.
Hypersaline groundwater. Groundwater saltier than seawater, common beneath the WA Goldfields in palaeochannels, ancient buried river systems. Suitable for some mining and processing uses, unusable for almost everything else.
Context-based water targets. Targets set per asset and catchment, reflecting local water quality, stress, hydrology and other users, rather than one uniform group number. Gold Fields' 2035 commitments shift to this approach.
ICMM Global Mining and Metals Water Dataset. Released July 2026 with WWF and the World Resources Institute: 12,000 facilities in 148 countries mapped against physical water risks. Headline finding: competition with other water users is the industry's greatest physical water risk.