Sustainable development management

We believe that making a contribution to sustainable development should be integrated into all aspects of our business including how we make decisions about finding, acquiring, developing, and operating assets around the world.  A structured framework is needed to ensure that we accomplish this goal.

The board committee on social and environmental accountability ensures that we have the policies, standards, systems and people in place to meet our social and environmental commitments and that our businesses, projects, operations and products are developed and implemented in line with our commitment to sustainable development.

Our sustainable development policy is laid down by the board of directors in The way we work and applies across the Group to drive our business culture. This policy is supported by standards, which lay down the minimum acceptable requirements for behaviour or operating conditions wherever we operate.  We then put together strategies for reaching the goals of the policies and standards. 

These are in turn backed up by guidance notes that are designed to help us achieve the standards and strategies.  Finally, we use performance indicators to measure how well we have done against the targets that we have set ourselves.

How we intend to reach our goal

We have developed a number of focus areas to help us achieve our goal of leading the sector in sustainable development. These include:

• A sustainable development culture, similar to that already in place on safety
• Key performance indicators
• Effective communication
• Supply chain management
• Taking account of sustainable development in risk management, long term planning and the 'mine of the future'

To help explain the concepts of sustainable development, both to existing employees and newcomers, we continue to use training and awareness raising tools throughout the Group. This includes an e-learning programme for managers called Chronos, developed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and Cambridge University in the UK. By the end of 2007 more than 2,000 managers had signed up to the programme.

Rio Tinto's demonstrated values in contributing to sustainable development are matched by those of Alcan. This is greatly assisting in the integration of the two businesses.