Bruce Harvey
Rio Tinto
Bruce Harvey is Global Practice Leader – Communities and Social Performance for Rio Tinto. In his
early career as an exploration geologist, Bruce developed an affinity and love for working with land
connected peoples and set up Rio Tinto’s first exploration access agreements with Aboriginal people
in Australia. In 1998, Bruce completed an MBA majoring in economics and humanities, and returned
to Rio Tinto to help develop its fledgling community relations function. He took up his current role in
2007 and maintains that communities and social performance in the resource sector is essentially an
economic proposition. Rio Tinto wants to build mines in local people’s neighbourhoods with
irreversible changes to their natural and social landscape, some induced by mining and some
occurring anyway. In return, the company is promising to help build a local economy. This economic
development must be broad-based if it is to lead to societal stability and be sustainable. Bruce is
currently leading Rio Tinto’s agreement making with host communities and government authorities
around the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in the South Gobi region of Mongolia. With many years’ field
experience in different parts of the world, Bruce can usefully reflect on successful and unsuccessful
approaches to community agreement-making.