Land
Our land holdings are held both for exploration - where the land is predominantly passively managed - and for operational purposes. Our operational land holdings fall into two categories:
- Our operational footprint - Land disturbed for mining, processing and related activities, including rehabilitated land.
- Our land holding balance - Land outside our operational footprint, which may be used in the future for mining, processing and related activities as well as other land uses.
Understanding our "land values" enables us to put actions in place to reduce impact and maximise opportunities to conserve these values in a local and, often, regional context.
- Approach
- Rehabilitation
- Results
Our total land holding in 2010 was 102,405 km2. This land holding is held by two distinct business types:
- 66 per cent (79,027 km2) of the total land holding is held by the Rio Tinto Exploration business;
- 31 per cent (41,378 km2) of the total land holding is held by active operations and those in closure or post closure.
At the end of 2010 our activities had impacted 9.4 per cent of the land held by active operations and those in closure or post closure.
Our disturbance footprint doubled in 2009, as the land utilised for Rio Tinto Alcan's hydroelectric dams in Quebec was reported in terms of Rio Tinto's reporting definitions for the first time. These reservoirs were created in the 1940s and 1950s and were acquired by Rio Tinto in 2008 with our acquisition of the former Alcan operations.
By the end of 2010, 24 per cent of our disturbed land (excluding land disturbed for hydroelectricity dams) had been rehabilitated. External stakeholders play an important role in deciding what type of land is returned in our rehabilitation. In most cases (79 per cent), land we disturbed is returned to native vegetation.
We have established an internal rehabilitation target and are working with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to drive performance improvements in this area.
"Other" includes recreation and a variety of other categories including waste management facilities, grasslands and unknown land types.
