Global Reporting Initiative checklist
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is an international, multi-stakeholder effort to create a common framework for voluntary reporting of the economic, environmental and social impact of an organisation. The GRI seeks to elevate the comparability and credibility of sustainable development reporting practices worldwide. The most recent Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (the Guidelines) were released in 2002.
As a member of the International Council for Mining and Metals (ICMM), Rio Tinto was involved in the work of the ICMM and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) to develop a Mining and Metals Sector Supplement to the 2002 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. ICMM member companies have committed themselves to move to reporting in accordance with the guidelines.
By identifying and targeting economic, environmental, and social performance issues and indicators specific to the mining, minerals and metals industry, the Supplement can help companies to address these issues in a common fashion, producing more relevant, meaningful, and comparable reports.
We believe that the reporting principles identified in the GRI Guidelines are as important as the elements and indicators. The following sections provide a guide as to how Rio Tinto's reporting activities incorporate these principles and where information relevant to the elements and indicators can be found in our 2004 Sustainable development review. Where elements and indicators in the Guidelines are relevant to Rio Tinto we aim to report against them. In other areas we have reported against indicators and elements that are more relevant to driving performance improvements within our business.
Reporting principles
The 2002 Guidelines identify eleven principles which are 'essential to producing a balanced and reasonable report on an organisation's economic, environmental, and social performance' (GRI 2002 Guidelines, page 22). These are transparency, inclusiveness, auditability, completeness, relevance, sustainability context, accuracy, neutrality, comparability, clarity and timeliness.
Rio Tinto has a number of programmes in place to support these principles, including:
- Policies on openness and accountability in The way we work, with supporting guidance to assist implementation of these policies;
- External assurance of the relevance, completeness and accuracy of the information reported in this Sustainable development review and that policies and programmes are reflected in activities at operations;
- An internal data quality programme which includes data quality reviews at all business units.
Download of Checklist
Rio Tinto has also produced a PDF of the GRI checklist [link opens in a new window] which can be downloaded.
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