Australian-listed precious and base metals explorer, Adriatic Metals (ASX:ADT) has become the first private company in Bosnia and Herzegovina to complete an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment a major milestone for the sector.
Managing Director and CEO, Paul Cronin, spoke about the importance of having a robust ESG framework and how Adriatic embed ESG into everything they do.
Paul says “our ESG framework is value based […] there are 4 pillars: community environment, sustainability and people, and then on-top of that we have 10 key behaviours”. The pillars permeate throughout every action and decision that the company makes.
Paul continues to explain the behaviours “are there to install in our staff that they have an obligation to our community and have an obligation to our environment and all of our policies are framed to support that”.
“ESG is not something you think about when you go into production. ESG is something you think about really early on, you have to layout a pathway and framework” explains Paul. The framework at Adriatic includes setting up The Adriatic Foundation, which aims to support and promote local sustainable socio-economic development, with a particular focus on the communities associated with Adriatic’s operations.
Finally, Paul believes the industry has a bright future if ESG is embedded from the very beginning, “if all junior companies can [have a pathway and a framework], then what we will find is that the industry is self-fuelling of ideas that it comes up with in terms of creating a much better and much more robust framework of how we interact with our environment, how we interact within our communities and how we we install the very best corporate governance in our companies”.
Read more about Adriatic’s sustainability and ESG efforts on their website.