Environmental policy of resource corporations in commercial mineral production in the Arctic Zone of Russia

The ecosystems in Russia’s Arctic feature weak sustainability and low regenerative capability. It is especially important to maintain integrity and life support of ecosystems during commercial-scale mining and processing of mineral resources toward sustainable social advancement and health. Aiming to survey the macro-regional environmental policy, the volume of production, the level of factual costs of environmental measures and the change in ecological indices of a period from 2011 to 2018 have been analyzed in terms of five largest resource corporations in Russia, namely, NOVATEK, Severstal’s division—Severstal-Resurs, Norilsk Nickel, Apatit’s division in Kirov—PhosAgro and ALROSA, operating in the Arctic region and offering open access to corporate information. The survey reveals that these corporations undertake certain efforts to improve their environmental policies but environmental protection performance shows no substantial upward trend. It is proposed to administer a corporation’s environmental policy using technological innovations, and the suggestions are formulated to simulate the environmental efficiency of the commercial resource corporations with regard to the unique features of ecosystem in the Arctic.

Tsukerman V.A., Ivanov S. V. Environmental policy of resource corporations in commercial mineral production in the Arctic Zone of Russia. MIAB. Mining Inf. Anal. Bull. 2020;(10):56-66. [In Russ]. DOI: 10.25018/0236-1493-2020-10-0-56-66.

V.A. Tsukerman¹, Cand. Sci. (Eng.), Head of Department of Industrial and Innovation Policy, e-mail: tsukerman@iep.kolasc.net.ru,
S.V. Ivanov¹, Researcher,
¹ Luzin Institute for Economic Studies — Subdivision of the Federal Research Centre «Kola Science Centre of Russian Academy of Sciences», 184209, Apatity, Russia.

V.A. Tsukerman, e-mail: tsukerman@iep.kolasc.net.ru.

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