Monitoring
Monitoring
A Board-level Sustainability Committee was established in 2006. The Sustainability Committee is independent from the executive management. It oversees all aspects of environmental and social management, setting priorities for the Group and reviewing progress in implementation. The Committee is responsible for monitoring, reviewing and making appropriate recommendations to the Board on the best industry practices, the most recent requirements of the London market and the state of health, safety and environment, social and community relations issues in the Company, making use of an independent consultancy and management reports where appropriate. Its role is to oversee the continued implementation of the Group's environmental programme including the implementation of reporting in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative and the Group's compliance with the IFC's environmental and social requirements.
The Group's Natural Resources Management and Ecological Department which is based in Moscow, supports the Board, provides guidance and support to OAO Pokrovskiy Rudnik, the operating company at the Pokrovskiy mine, carries out internal environmental audits, oversees all environmental activities of the operating companies in the Group throughout Russia and liaises with the regulatory agencies based in Moscow.
One of the most important parts of the Group's environmental policy is a comprehensive daily mining environmental monitoring system. This system mitigates negative environmental impacts, protects subsurface and water resources and provides for the occupational safety of the workers.
The Group's laboratories are state certified and are authorised to monitor air, water and soil quality, tailings and waste management and rehabilitation and restoration programmes at the mine and in the surrounding area.
Monitoring is undertaken both by the Company and by a number of accredited State institutions and accredited privately-owned organisations. Irgiredmet, a well-respected scientific institute which is 98% owned by the Group, also performs extensive sampling and analysis of environmental samples from the mine.
On a six-monthly basis, complete records of all monitoring activities are submitted for inspection to the Amur Region branch of Rosprirodnadzor (Environmental Protection Agency) for inspection. On a bi-annual basis, records are submitted to the Moscow headquarters of Rosprirodnadzor for supervisory review.
The Group is implementing a strategy to align its sustainability reporting with the requirements of the GRI. As such, the Group has begun the process of introducing a system of quantitative KPIs to be used for the reporting and management of environmental performance across its operations. Details of these KPIs can be found in the Group's latest Sustainability Report and by navigating to the relevant tab to the left of this page. The KPIs were debated during an internal conference on sustainable development, social responsibility, industrial safety, work safety and environment that the Group held in its Moscow office in January 2008. The purpose of the conference was to define how the Group manages environmental, health and safety issues as it grows into a multi-project mining operation and to establish effective communication between the Group's operations and the Board.
The conference was attended by members of the Board and the Sustainability Committee, representatives from the International Finance Corporation, an independent consultant from Citrus Partners LLP and key members of staff from the Group's mining operations. The necessity to ensure that all the Group's operations are managed to a consistently high standard, and that the Board has a clear picture of what is happening at such operations was emphasised at the conference by
all participants.
As a result, a new and simple performance monitoring and reporting system for environmental, health and safety issues across all the Group operations was introduced and a set of KPIs agreed. The results of this first set of KPIs are included in the Group's 2007 Sustainability Report and can be found by navigating to Key Performance Indicators tab on the left.
