While absolute results remain low overall, Rio Tinto shows one of the three stronger results in Business Conduct. The company publicly disclosing its taxes, its strategy relating to its presence in low-tax jurisdictions, and the tax benefits and tax holidays it receives. The company also discloses the payments it makes to sub-national and national governments, based on the Canadian and UK regulations on this issue.

Rio Tinto ranks 7th among the 38 companies on its mine-site-level results, though with an average score of only 19% in the mine-site assessment.

In the company-wide assessment, Rio Tinto’s results are above the average across all 38 companies in all thematic areas. Rio Tinto shows a relatively stronger result on the issue of monitoring the outcomes of involuntary resettlement. In addition, the company shows evidence, from one mine site, of reviewing and acting to improve its performance on ensuring that affected people’s livelihoods are improved or restored following any involuntary resettlement.

Rio Tinto is associated with several leading practices, including its disclosure of data on the location and safety of its tailings storage facilities in a machine-readable format, in line with one aspect of the open data principles.

Rio Tinto’s overall results are limited by a lack of evidence of action on a number of issues, including for example planning for post-closure just transition for workers, tracking the quality of its relationships with affected communities, addressing the health and safety needs of women workers, and tracking its performance on reducing its adverse impacts on water quality.

Moreover, Rio Tinto’s results in the mine-site-level assessment are very variable. While one of its mine sites shows one of the three stronger results among the 180 sites assessed (with a score of 42%), the other five mine sites assessed show much weaker results. Three of these mine sites show no relevant evidence on four issues: worker grievances, water quality, water quantity and emergency preparedness.