Our Approach To Sustainable Development
The Company's commitment to sustainable development has evolved over our long history of operational experience and through lessons learned along the way.
The most commonly stated definition of sustainable development is ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (source: World Commission on Environment and Development [Bruntland Commission], 1987).
For BHP Billiton, sustainable development is about ensuring our business remains viable and contributes lasting benefits to society through the consideration of social, environmental, ethical and economic aspects in all that we do.
Working through complex operational issues associated with our operations has highlighted environmental and social performance as a critical success factor for the Company. We are well aware of the costs of getting it wrong but, more importantly, we recognise the value that can be created by getting it right. Consequently, we adopt a holistic approach to business strategy, seeking to realise value for all our stakeholders through a sustainable business philosophy.
Line managers have ultimate accountability for ensuring our businesses contribute to sustainable development and move towards our aspirational goal of Zero Harm. This is implemented through a number of processes, such as our HSEC Management Standards and our Guide to Business Conduct.
Read more:
- Our Vision of what sustainable development means to BHP Billiton
- Our Strategy for working towards sustainable development
- Measuring Progress of our journey towards sustainable development
- The Business Case for sustainable development
- Governance for processes we have in place to implement our commitment to sustainable development.
Our Vision
Our vision for sustainable development is to be the company of choice — creating sustainable value for shareholders, employees, contractors, suppliers, customers, business partners and host communities. Central to our vision is our aspirational goal of Zero Harm to people, our host communities and the environment.
In simple terms,
Zero Harm means:
- we aspire to create a workplace that is injury, illness and incident free. We seek to minimise and, where possible, eliminate our environmental impacts over time.
Company of choice means:
- being selected by shareholders as a valued investment, based on strong financial performance and sound governance processes.
- being preferred by employees for providing a safe, healthy and equitable workplace and caring about the communities in which we live.
- being preferred by the communities in which we operate for our contribution to sustainable community wellbeing.
- being preferred by our business partners — customers, suppliers, contractors, governments and joint venture partners — as a committed and reliable partner in delivering sustainable value.
This emphasis on sustainable value means we have the willingness to invest for the future while ensuring we deliver value in the shorter term.
Our Strategy
Our sustainable development strategy comprises two dimensions – the business dimension and the sustainability dimension – that together contribute to bottom-line performance.
The business dimension represents traditional contributors to a financially successful and competitive business, as without a profitable business we are unable to contribute to the broader goals of sustainability. Our bottom-line performance is, however, dependent upon ensuring access to resources and gaining and maintaining a licence to operate and grow. This highlights the criticality of the value protection and value add that can be achieved through enhanced performance in non-financial dimensions – or sustainability dimensions.
BHP Billiton business dimensions
- business excellence and customer focus
- portfolio diversity
- deep inventory of growth projects across all CSGs, including greenfield and brownfield projects, as well as appropriate merger and acquisition activities
- quality, long-life assets.
BHP Billiton sustainability dimensions
- aspiring towards Zero Harm to people, our host communities and the environment
- ensuring effective governance and risk management processes are in place
- recognising the need to be socially responsible and contribute to sustainable community development
- ensuring the broader economic contributions of our operations are effectively injected into the regions where we operate.
Maximising bottom-line performance is about recognising the value protection and value add to be achieved through performance in non-financial dimensions.
A useful metaphor we apply to our sustainable development strategy is illustrated below. Together, our strategic dimensions combine to form a structure similar to that of a natural diamond. An inherently stable structure, with the strength in each dimension contributing equally to an even stronger, stable and more valuable whole, and a robust bottom-line, the diamond is symbolic of our approach to sustainable development.
Measuring Progress
Our Sustainable Development Road Map is a strategy map that provides a contextual framework for how we measure our progress on our journey towards sustainable development.
We encourage our managers to place their decisions in the context of this Road Map and question how they can better improve the sustainability performance of their operations.
The Road Map seeks to illustrate that there are three contexts to consider when making decisions that influence our ability to contribute to sustainable development:
- at the operational level, we encourage our managers to increasingly seek out leading practices across the HSEC dimensions.
- on a strategic level, we encourage management teams to identify opportunities that drive sustainable value creation.
- at the commodity level, we encourage our businesses to demonstrate stewardship by building partnerships across the life cycles of our products to deliver broader business and societal returns.
We encourage our operations to strive for excellence in areas where they perceive the greatest relevance to their stakeholders and business. This approach recognises that there may not always be a need for operations to excel in all aspects of sustainability. While each stage in maturity is distinct, the requirements of the previous stage must be maintained and built upon to progress in maturity.
A mature approach to sustainable development lead us to the strategic alignment of opportunities – for example, developing new ways to reuse coal dust and thus reducing waste disposal areas. Read more: Environment Case Studies: Waste Recycling and Reuse.
| Maturity phases | Indicative milestones | |
|---|---|---|
1. |
Compliance |
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2. |
Risk Management |
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3. |
Responsibility |
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4. |
Innovation |
|
5. |
Strategic alignment |
|
