Making progress on our journey
The development of the Bettercoal initiative over the last three years has been rapid and challenging. Through assessment against the Bettercoal Code, which sets out ethical, social and environmental performance standards, we aim to provide coal buyers with robust data that they can use to make informed coal purchasing decisions. At the same time we aim to bring improvements on the ground.
In 2014, we engaged coal suppliers on both self- and site-assessments in countries including, Australia, Colombia, Germany, Indonesia, Russia, Norway, S Africa, UK and the USA. We also completed a site-assessment in Colombia. And having listened to suppliers, our members and stakeholders we adapted some of our processes and in some cases put in new ones.
Our focus in 2015 is to expand our assessment program, recruit new members and to step-up our communication and engagement. We are also assisting members in implementing Bettercoal in their own due-diligence processes. We wish to remain pragmatic and bring value to relevant parties, therefore we also aim to help suppliers reinforce and benchmark their compliance efforts against their peers. In 2015 we will publish our first public report, spelling out the progress we have made, the challenges we face and our aspirations for the short- to medium term.
