Environmental management

We develop and implement practical programmes covering the management of our energy, use, our emissions, the way we use water, biodiversity, both mineral and non-mineral waste, maintaining air quality. These activities, overlap with more complex initiatives to address climate change, land stewardship and closure, requiring input from our local communities as well as from external experts in these fields. The aim of these activities is to reduce our footprint, improve the efficiency in which we use resources and minimise our wastes.

Our leading policy and technical position on land stewardship, water and biodiversity management has resulted in invitations to participate in a number of international and national policy development forums. Rio Tinto is also playing a significant role in bilateral initiatives with organisations such as the World Conservation Union, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, The World Resources Institute.

How we manage our environmental work

We reduce our footprint through planning and design. We operate our facilities with care and in line with our licenses to operate. Where possible we reduce our impacts on ecosystem processes in a practical and sensible manner. We endeavour to rehabilitate land when it becomes available rather than waiting until all operations at a site have ceased. All these activities require complex systems and controls that are audited and independently certified. We monitor and track what we feel is important to us or of a legal requirement or of concern to our local communities. Targets are in place for key measures that help us to improve performance. These range from group wide, public targets, through to targets for individual businesses and in some cases operations and divisions. Progress against our targets and trends in performance against our key indicators are reported to various internal audiences are various times throughout the year. Assurance is sought annually on all environmental data used to communicate publicly our performance.

Our results

Examples of our activities in 2007 included:

• Developing and implementing a biodiversity values assessment tool designed to prioritise risks and opportunities.
• Developing and implementing a new protected area of national significance in Madagascar in collaboration with other stakeholders.
• Discovering and protecting several new species of rare troglofauna (air breathing subterranean invertebrates) at an iron ore development in the Pilbara.
• Identifying risks to the water supply at 34 sites with opportunities identified to save water.
• Testing a programme to improve mineral waste management at three sites to help operations reduce the financial risks and increase environmental protection.

We are not on track to meet all our 2008 environment targets particularly for water, energy and emissions. While we aim to meet all our targets these are stretch targets aimed at pushing us to improve our performance.