OUR RESPONSIBILITY

• To the community
  • Kisankala Village relocation
  • Building the new Kisankala village
  • Wheelchairs for kids
  • Memorandum of understanding with Ministry of Social Affairs Kinshasa
• To the environment
  • Environmental performance
  • Environmental management
  • Environmental and Social Impact Assessment
  • Kalakundi flora and fauna
  • Rehabilitation
• To ourselves
  • Safety and health
  • Community health
  • Community initiatives

Environmental performance

Environmental performance is an indication of how the operation is progressing in relation to it's environmental programs and commitments. This includes results of environmental sampling of air, soil and water, progress on revegetation projects and conformance with regulations and other commitments to government.

The Kalukundi Project is currently an exploration operation, with clearing for, and construction of, the mining and processing phase not yet commenced. Hence the environmental performance for the operation currently relates only to exploration activities. The annual environmental report for 2006 exploration activities can be downloaded Rapport Environnemental Annuel 2006 Projet de Kalukundi (PDF - 421KB)

The current impact of the Kalukundi operation on the environment is minimal, being restricted to track construction, drilling, and hand digging of test pits and trenches. However there is a significant impact visible from the ore washing operations carried out by local artisanal miners in the Kii and Kisankala streams, as can be seen in the photos below. Africo will begin rehabilitation of the streams within the concession once the mining phase commences. There is also increasingly significant logging and charcoaling activities being carried out by the local people, which are putting pressure on the surrounding environment.

Environmental impacts

Environmental impacts occur when any human activity takes place. Natural events such as fire, wind and rain also have an impact on the environment. It is the aim of the Environmental Management Program of the Kalukundi Project to ensure all potential impacts of existing and proposed activities are identified and measures put in place to ensure negative impacts are minimised as much as possible, and positive impacts are increased.

The potential impacts for the environment and for community, health and safety were assessed as part of the regulatory approvals process. Potential environmental impacts were assessed in the areas of:

• Impact to air - emissions of gases and dust
• Impact to water - surface and subterranean
• Impact to soil - contamination and soil structure
• Impact to flora and fauna - loss of habitat

Impacts arise from activities of exploration, construction, mining and processing of the ore. Each activity was assessed to identify how it might affect the environment, and a management plan was proposed to manage each of those potential impacts in each area to ensure that negative impacts were minimised or eliminated if possible. (See environmental management.)