We understand that our stakeholders expect us to grow continuously. However, our economic growth should not come at the expense of biodiversity and precious water, land and air resources or at the cost of a reduced contribution to climate change. For this reason, we make daily progress in our continual improvement process, aware that optimizing our environmental footprint will, in turn, yield increased operational efficiency. Our commitment has translated into a corporate Environmental Policy that is supported by this management system and applied at all our sites.

An environmental management system at the core of our prevention effort

Our environmental management system is our greatest asset in dealing with environmental issues. We make environmental protection an integral part of our management process in order to support our mining activities while effectively dealing with the environmental challenges we face.

In this light, the effectiveness and compliance of our environmental management system are regularly audited by a third party. These external audits cover all elements likely to have an impact on the physical, biological and human environments. Their recommendations feed our company's continual improvement process. In this way, we enrich our knowledge and understanding of the stakes, and we honour our commitment to promote respect of the environment.

Responsible management of the quantity and quality of water resources

Water is a crucial resource for mining, as it is for a number of other industries, such that the entire sector can be affected by problems related to this precious resource. SEMAFO is committed to using water responsibly, since the best way to reduce our vulnerability in terms of this resource is to improve its management efficiency. By educating employees to avoid water waste, regularly monitoring our consumption and using innovative water treatment processes, we encourage prudent use and achieve the highest possible recycling rate while maintaining the lowest possible consumption.

Greenhouse gases and climate change

The need for energy in our industry is considerable. Direct sources of greenhouse gas emissions include fuel used in our fleet of trucks and mining equipment, as well as electricity generation on-site.

We are exploring a number of initiatives to reduce our consumption. In particular, a number of projects to optimize our power generators have reached the planning stage, the results of which will be measurable in 2013.

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