Environment
Nordgold prioritises responsible environmental stewardship
We strive to minimise our impact on the environment in the communities and natural habitats where we operate. Our management teams encourage and strengthen a shared, company-wide culture of environmentally responsible stewardship.
The Group complies with all applicable national environmental standards, environmental laws, and regulatory requirements at each of its mines and strives to adhere to international best practices across its asset base.
Nordgold’s sustainability objectives are incorporated into related operational improvement and development programmes. Through these, we seek opportunities to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, water consumption and strive to ensure preservation of biodiversity.
Our commitments:
- Sustainable development in accordance with environmental commitments.
- Risk identification and management.
- Compliance with environmental regulations.
- Continuous improvement of the environmental management system.
- Integration of environmental aspects into all stages of operations.
- A high level of environmental awareness among our employees, suppliers, and contractors.
- Preserve biodiversity and avoid operations in highly sensitive areas.
- Incident reporting and data transparency.
- Reduce pollutant emissions.
- Reduce waste generation.
- Compensation measures for negative impact on the environment.
Key Highlights
Environmental policies and procedures
Our environmental policies and procedures help us to guide our planning and operations in an environmentally responsible manner.
Nordgold’s core environmental regulations include:
- The Environmental policy
- The Statement of Biodiversity Commitment
- The Guidance on Handling Hazardous Materials
Nordgold’s Code of Conduct for Suppliers requires our partners to comply with all applicable laws as well as Nordgold’s policies and procedures.
Environmental management
Environmental Management Systems of our corporate office in Moscow, the open pit Gross and Taborny mines in Yakutia, Russia, as well as at the underground Suzdal mine in Kazakhstan are certified vs. International standard for Environmental Management Systems ISO 14001.
Nordgold plans the completion of certification vs. ISO 14001 standard across the Group’s remaining mines by 2023.
Appropriate environmental protection practices are employed at every stage of exploration, design, construction, operations, and mine closure. Across Nordgold we regularly monitor our environmental performance through inspections, reviews, and audits to ensure that environmental risks are identified and addressed, to minimise our impact on the environment.
We strive to continuously improve our environmental management system (EMS) to strengthen our environmental performance. The EMS provides a consistent and holistic approach to environmental safety management for all mines establishing comprehensive frameworks and procedures (including on governance and risk management) that apply to environmental risks and set the basis for how we manage those risks and achieve our environmental objectives.
We are guided by Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reporting standards at each mine, which helps us to better understand and communicate the impacts we have on issues such as climate change, human rights, and corruption.
We empower our managers and supervisors and provide the necessary resources to achieve established targets and to promote environmental initiatives. Responsibility for planning and implementing environmental measures is allocated among environmental specialists at mines, heads of divisions and mine’s general managers, and managers of Nordgold headquarters. Nordgold employees and contractors commit to complying with all the Group’s environmental commitments.
We continually communicate our environmental policies and procedures to our people and our suppliers. Training and motivating our people to exercise environmentally responsible behaviour is an integral part of our human resources development strategy.
We are continuously looking to introduce measures to both improve energy efficiency and promote cost-effective power generation.
Learn more
Water is one of the most important resources in our industry and a vital consideration in environmental protection. We closely monitor water usage at all our operations, seeking to minimise our consumption of freshwater and to prevent the contamination of water bodies.
Learn more
We endeavour to minimise our impact on local biodiversity through analysis and monitoring programmes along with biodiversity conservation projects at our mines.
Learn more
We work hard to ensure we effectively manage and minimise our waste, continually improving our processes, implementing new technologies, and seeking opportunities to recycle and reuse resources.
Learn more
We plan mine reclamation at the early stages of each project development to ensure each phase of our operations is sustainable.
Learn more