Integrated approach to solving the mining-environmental issues based on the analysis of internal and external factors

Abstract

Introduction. ESG – Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance is a set of characteristics of company management, in which the involvement of this company in solving environmental, social and management problems is achieved. ESG criteria appeared as a response to environmental degradation, global warming and increasing economic inequality between rich and poor countries, which created additional ground for the emergence and development of new investment evaluation criteria. Modern society has begun to impose additional requirements not only to the business activities of companies and their financial statements, but started to evaluate it in terms of investments in sustainable development. Methodology. It seems that the ESG-approach could be an integral part of the general approach to the description and evaluation of the functioning of a nature-technology system which is based on the mining of mineral resources. The article shows the possibility of depiction of a mining enterprise as a nature-technology ESG-system for solving combined mining and environmental issues. Results and their analysis. As an example a mining system is described consisting of three subsystems, presented in the form of intersecting sets: “mining operations that are a source of nitrogen pollution of drainage waters” – “natural-technical complex for the purification of polluted waters” – “organization of the discharge of purified waters”. Such a representation of the said system fits into the generalized scheme of the socially-centric approach to ESG-assessment of investments. The area of intersection of the sets is the area where the optimal solution of the problem lies in terms of achieving an acceptable concentrations of nitrogen compounds when the purified water is discharged to the water body. The said problem could be solved by an appropriate combination of the technological, management and investment decisions. Conclusions. Making such kind of decisions in relation to a nature-technology system requires a periodic assessment of the system external and internal environment as well as in-system interconnections. For such type of assessments SWOT and PESTEL methodologies can be effectively applied being spread from economic factors assessments only to a wide range of environmental, technological and environmentally related economic factors.