BHP Billiton: Climate Change Leader or Laggard?
Introduction
BHP Billiton, as a leading global resources company, has explicitly declared its commitment to operating sustainably. It is thus imperative for the company to seriously take into consideration the issue of environment and climate change and other relating issues. This essay therefore will first look at BHP’s environmental stand from a sustainable international business aspect and then some existing issues of the company’s current operations and managerial decisions.
BHP’s environmental stand from a sustainable international business perspective
BHP Billiton, as a large mining company, is voluntary submitting transparent reports on their environmental initiatives. In particular, the company is focused on creating long-term trust and support from external stakeholders and therefore, it also relies on investing in large-scale, long-life diversification policies. Currently, the company focuses on the analysis of water footprint and strives to provide tax payment regularly. Therefore, the readiness to approach climate change issue and its dedication and commitment is congruent with the current global perceptions. At the same time, the political context can become a significant obstacle to developing their climate-change oriented strategies. As such, although the company has a strong commitment to environmental concerns, it cannot ignore the fact that the Australian government issues the legislature rescinding their adherence to a carbon price. In response to these changes, the company decides “to give away 1 % of pre-tax profit to community programmes every year – in 2013 this came to $ 245,8 million supporting initiatives such community enterprise in Colombia” (Mehra, 2013). Nonetheless, the company does not reject introducing their climate change reporting and can continue meeting their own environmentally friendly initiatives. What is more important is that the company introduces new programs and...