Successful community and external relations are essential for the success of our business. We engage with shareholders, employees, governments, non government organisations, international organisations, local communities and others interested in our business. The expectations these groups hold of corporate behaviour have changed over time. We seek through dialogue and partnerships to understand these changing expectations.

Community relations are about working closely with people neighbouring our operations to arrive at an understanding of what we can do for mutual benefit and then to secure implementation of agreed objectives. Through continuing participation in forums with non government organisations and partnership programmes, Rio Tinto endeavours to contribute to emerging debates, to gain information and, ultimately, to improve performance.

We set out to understand public issues through membership of international bodies, by undertaking opinion surveys to determine what is important to business, government, education, environment and community leaders, and by conducting non government organisation forums to allow us to consider a range of views about the Group's progress and direction.

Rio Tinto recognises there is no agreed standard for verification of social and environment performance. We are closely involved with the work of the Global Reporting Initiative.

Another approach is to expand our external assurance programmes through improvements to verification through dialogue with organisations working in this field such as our participation in the Mining Certification Evaluation Project, under the auspices of the World Wide Fund For Nature. Project partners include the mining industry, non government organisations, labour, government agencies, the financial and accounting sector and research institutions. The project aims to evaluate whether independent third party certification of performance can be applied to the mining sector.

For information about Rio Tinto's community relations work.

Community relations five year plans

Community studies and surveys

Consultation

Our contributions to communities

Our contributions to the economy

For information about engagement with the wider community

Our partners and programmes

Industry and government programmes

Opinion surveys