Water stewardship: a shared responsibility
Access to safe, clean water is a basic human right and essential to maintaining healthy ecosystems. BHP’s vision is for a water secure world by 2030. This is a world where water resources are conserved and resilient so they can continue to support healthy ecosystems, maintain cultural and spiritual values and sustain economic growth; where the human right to safe and accessible water and the traditional rights of Indigenous peoples are realised and upheld; and where water governance is effective and beneficial, ensuring communities and ecosystems thrive for future generations.

Water is integral to our business and vital to the longevity of BHP. We cannot operate without it. We use water in many ways, including but not limited to:
extracting it for activities including ore processing, dust suppression, ecosystem irrigation and processing mine tailings
managing it to access ore through dewatering (extraction of water from below the water table to allow access to ore), and at our legacy assets (legacy assets refers to those BHP-operated assets, or part thereof, located in the Americas that are in the closure phase)
providing drinking water and sanitation facilities for employees and townships
discharging it back to the receiving environment
interacting with marine water resources through our port facilities
utilising marine water for desalination
For a more detailed example of how we use water in our operated assets, refer to our Olympic Dam Case Study.

We have a responsibility to effectively manage our water interactions and avoid or minimise our potential or actual adverse impacts on water resources. We also recognise the importance of working with others to enable more effective water governance and stewardship across the communities, regions and countries where we operate.

Effective water stewardship must begin within our operated assets. From there, we can more credibly collaborate with others toward solutions to shared water challenges.

Responsible water management will ultimately make BHP more resilient and will contribute to enduring environmental and social value.

On this webpage, we describe how we manage our interactions with water and our water-related risks. BHP’s Risk Framework is described in the BHP Operating and Financial Review 9 – How we manage risk and this webpage provides specific information in relation to the nature of our water-related risks and how we manage them. We also share our performance in relation to our water withdrawals, consumption, discharges and recycling, and against our FY2018 to FY2022 public sustainability target.
see & read more on
https://www.bhp.com/sustainability/environment/water