What is sustainable development?

Sustainable development is commonly defined as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

While it cannot be achieved by one organisation on its own, we believe that our business can make an important contribution to the ongoing, global transition to sustainable development.

Our strategy

Our strategy of investing in large, long term, cost competitive mines and businesses means that we operate on extended time horizons. Some of our projects last 40 years or more from mineral discovery through to closure, representing large scale, long term investments in fixed capital, often situated in remote locations. 

These long term commitments provide opportunities for us to plan, implement and deliver sustainable contributions to social wellbeing, environmental stewardship and economic prosperity, within our strong governance systems.

Our focus on sustainable development provides the framework in which our business operates. This allows us to maintain a highly regarded reputation that ensures ongoing access to people, capital and mineral resources. This in turn helps us to deliver better return for our shareholders, manage risk effectively, reduce environmental impacts, cut operating costs, attract and retain high calibre employees and provide more business development opportunities. These factors help differentiate Rio Tinto from its competitors and contribute to our goal of being the undisputed sector leader in creating value for our stakeholders.

The minerals and metals produced at our operations contribute to society's needs, creating wealth to support community infrastructure, health care and education programmes, and delivering financial dividends for our shareholders. Our activities also provide the means and opportunity to develop new approaches to solving the world's environmental and human development challenges, such as climate change and poverty.

We also recognise that, if not managed appropriately, some aspects of our activities have the ability to detract from sustainable development, such as options for the future use of water and land; amenity impacts on local communities; and greenhouse gas emissions from our operations and the use of our products.

We have developed and implemented a structured framework to ensure that we meet the goal of contributing to the global transition to sustainable development. This framework contains the "must have" building blocks, which represent Rio Tinto's high level business drivers.

Our global code of business conduct, The way we work, reinforces our commitment to integrate sustainable development thinking in the way we make decisions about finding, acquiring, developing, and operating assets around the world.

This approach begins with our corporate policies, which are supported by strategies and standards that lay down the minimum acceptable requirements for behaviour or operating conditions. Our policies are also supported by a range of leadership tools and accountabilities to ensure appropriate implementation across the Group. We monitor and report against our performance using established indicators and metrics with a suite of Group wide goals and targets.

By communicating and raising awareness of our approach to stakeholders, we are embedding a sustainable development culture that touches every part of our organisation.

We use a global leadership competency model, Leading at Rio Tinto, to help our people understand what is expected of them. This requires seven leadership competencies to be demonstrated at each level of our organisation, including promoting sustainable development. Leading at Rio Tinto is being incorporated in our recruitment and selection, performance management and development planning processes.

Further details on our approach to sustainable development and our performance can be found in our Annual report, in these sustainable development web pages and in our business units' own sustainable development reports.