Purpose of Reporting
Our Sustainable Development Policy states that we are committed to 'regularly review our performance and and publicly report our progress'.
We make this commitment to publicly report our sustainability performance because we recognise it is important:
- as a useful demonstration of accountability and transparency
- as a central element of effective stakeholder engagement
- as a management tool, providing a collation of performance data and articulation of key issues and related management approaches.
Our reporting approach is evolving in line with changing stakeholder and societal expectations, report feedback received and our own learnings. We have reported annually since 1997 when we began with environmental reporting. By 2000, we had produced our first Environment and Community Report, and by 2001 this report had evolved into our first integrated Health, Safety, Environment and Community (HSEC) Report. In 2002, we adopted the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines and have been endeavouring to progressively improve our compliance with these guidelines.
Our 2005 Sustainability Report represents the next step change in this evolution. The change has been a result of the increasing breadth of our reporting, reflecting the maturing of BHP Billiton's approach to sustainable development through the improved integration of social, environmental, ethical and economic factors into all that we do.
