Performance
Land
Our mining and processing activities require access to and management of land and the ecosystems associated with this land. We manage 38,000 square kilometres of land, excluding our exploration leases.
At the end of 2008 less than five per cent of this area was disturbed for mining activities. In line with leading practice, we aim to rehabilitate land as it comes out of mining use rather than waiting until all operations at the site have ceased.
Our footprint increased by almost 17 per cent in 2008, 175 square kilometres of which was related to the acquisition of Alcan.
By the end of 2008 almost 26 per cent of the disturbed land had been rehabilitated, a similar figure to 2007.
Through the implementation of our land use management standard we are positioning Rio Tinto to take full advantage of the future opportunities that ecosystem service assessment methodologies and green markets will present. Former Alcan operations continue to refine their understanding of their land holding through implementation of the Rio Tinto land use stewardship standard.
During 2008 we participated in the World Resources Institute (WRI) ecosystem service assessment project, where we piloted the WRI methodology at our La Granja copper project in Peru. We are also a participant in the Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) Environmental Services, Tools and Markets Corporate Working Group, which as part of its programme is conducting comparative assessments of various ecosystem service assessment methodologies. The outcomes from these processes will be applied to our development projects to ensure that we adopt an integrated approach to land management through ecosystem service assessment.
