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Denhere Mhlanga 2023 Article
Denhere Mhlanga 2023 Article
Denhere Mhlanga 2023 Article
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2 authors:
All content following this page was uploaded by Varaidzo Denhere on 28 March 2023.
Varaidzo Denhere
College of Business and Economics
University of Johannesburg, South Africa
vdenhere23@gmail.com
&
David Mhlanga
College of Business and Economics
University of Johannesburg, South Africa
dmhlanga67@gmail.com
Abstract
1. Introduction
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Environmental Reporting: Comparing Mining …
establish whether the mining companies that are listed only on the
ZSE or those listed on both the ZSE and externally lead in
reporting environmental information; and
establish if company size influenced the extent of environmental
information reporting.
The following are the research questions of the study:
Which ones between the mining companies listed only on the ZSE
and those listed on both the ZSE and externally lead in reporting
environmental information?
Did company size influence the extent of environmental
information reporting?
2. Literature Review
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3. Methodology
3.1 Approach
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exchanges. Only four mining companies were listed on the ZSE at the
time of data collection for this study. Therefore, this study did not use
any sampling method but employed the whole population since the
number of mining companies incorporated in Zimbabwe and listed
either on the ZSE or externally in 2020 was very small. The mining
companies included in this study are Bindura Nickel Corporation
Limited; RioZim Limited; Zimplats Holdings Limited; and Caledonia
Mining Corporation. These were ranked based on market
capitalisation which, according to Chen (2018), is related to company
size apart from sales or total assets figures.
For the current study, data were collected from the 2020 financial
reports which were the latest published financial year reports available
for each company at the time of data collection. These were accessible
from the different company's websites. A record of the total mentions
of environmental-related keywords in line with the environmental
standards according to the GRI and literature was done. A careful
analysis of the context of each environmental indicator was done with
the occurrence categorised as related to the environment. The total
number of keywords mentions related to the GRI G3 (2020)
environmental standards were recorded, and the number of counts of
each environmental indicator (Materials; Energy; Water; Water and
effluence; Biodiversity; Emissions; Waste; Environmental compliance;
and Supplier environmental assessment) (GRI Standards, 2020), for
each of the mining companies was determined and compared with the
companies under study. The numbers of counts for each of the
environmental indicators were employed to describe the extent of
environmental sustainability reporting in the different companies and
to show the differences in the two categories of the mining companies
in the study. Further, the density of environmental-related keywords
mentions relative to the annual report‘s size as well as market
capitalisation were used to compare the extent of environmental
sustainability reporting among the different companies.
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4. Findings
Varied lengths of the annual reports for the four companies were
noted, ranging from 100 to 220 pages. Table 1 indicates the total
number of environmental keyword indicators per company's annual
report and the total number of pages for each company‘s annual
report.
Table 1 shows the two mining companies listed on the ZSE – Bindura
Nickel Corporation Limited and RioZim Limited. Their total number
of report pages are 102 and 100 respectively. Also, their total numbers
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5. Discussion of Findings
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Mining activities over the years proved to have the greatest potential
of contributing towards negative environmental damage. On the other
hand, society is increasingly becoming aware and more sensitive to the
significance of environmental sustainability. Hence the current study
sought to investigate the extent to which mining companies report on
environmental sustainability issues in Zimbabwe. Using quantitative
content analysis to assess and compare the environmental
sustainability reporting by mining companies listed on the ZSE
against those listed locally and externally, the results indicated that
companies listed both in and outside Zimbabwe took the lead in the
extent of environmental sustainability reporting. The findings also
proved that, for those companies listed on the ZSE, company size did
not influence the extent of reporting. The extent of reporting
environmental issues was only directly influenced by company size for
those companies listed both in and outside Zimbabwe. To avoid
inconsistencies and variations in reporting, this study recommends
that the government of Zimbabwe should do more environmental
sustainability audits through government agencies like the
Environmental Management Agency, and the Ministry of
Environment and Tourism to ensure that the true picture of
sustainability is revealed.
References
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Toscano, N., & Grieve, C. (2020). Rocked to the core: Mining giants
facing ancient risk. Sydney Morning Herald (Business), 20–21 June, 4.
Trading Economics. Zimplats Holdings Ltd | ZIM - Market
Capitalisation. (2020). https://tradingeconomics.com/zim:au:mar
ket- capitalization#:~:text=Zimplats%20Holdings%20Ltd%20
reported%201.42,second%20fiscal%20semester%20of%202020
UNDP (2021). Sustainable Development Goals.
https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-
development-goals.htm
Walt, C. V. D. (2018). Sustainability reporting practices in small-to-medium-
sized enterprises [A master's thesis, University of Tampere, Finland].
Zimplats Holdings Limited, Integrated Annual Report (2020).
https://www.zimplats.com/data/2020/10/ZIMPLATS-
INTEGRATED-ANNUAL-REPORT-2020.pdf
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