While absolute results remain low overall, BHP shows one of the three stronger results in Business Conduct and in Environmental Responsibility, and one of the five stronger results in Community Wellbeing. For the other three thematic areas, Economic Development, Lifecycle Management and Working Conditions, BHP’s results are above the average achieved across all 38 companies.

In the mine-site assessment, BHP ranks 2nd among the 38 companies, though with an average mine-site score of only 25%.

In Business Conduct, BHP shows one of the stronger results on the issue of tax transparency, publicly disclosing its taxes, its strategy relating to its presence in low-tax jurisdictions, and the tax benefits and tax holidays it receives. Furthermore, BHP discloses the payments it makes to national and sub-national governments, in line with the UK regulations on this issue. In Environmental Responsibility, BHP is the only assessed company to have made a formal commitment not to dispose of tailings in river or marine environments, and, along with other companies, has publicly disclosed information on the location and safety of its tailings storage facilities, following the recent investor request. In Community Wellbeing, BHP shows evidence of systems to ensure its operations conduct human rights due diligence processes, as a means of implementing its human rights policy.

As evidence of BHP’s continuous improvement efforts since the RMI Report 2018, the company has developed a stronger Code of Conduct on the respect for human rights, and now provides fuller disclosure of its management of human rights issues.

BHP is associated with several leading practices, including an initiative at a closed mine site (a Joint Venture operation with Rio Tinto) to extract water for use by local farmers while also preparing the mine for re-opening.

On the other hand, BHP’s overall results are limited by weak evidence of action on a number of issues, including for example tracking and reviewing its performance on preventing bribery and corruption, supporting procurement from local and national-level suppliers, and planning for the management of post-closure transition for workers.

Moreover, BHP’s results in the mine-site-level assessment are very variable. While one of its mine sites shows one of the three stronger results (with a score of 50%) among the 180 sites assessed, the other five mine sites assessed show much lower results. None of these five mine sites show any evidence of informing affected communities about their emergency response plans or of involving these communities in the testing of these plans.