Sustainability

Sustainability is at the core of our business, and must be visible in all operational areas; through compliance with research ethical principles, employer responsibility and social responsibility, financial management, and our impact on the environment.

Research ethics

Our research activities must be carried out in line with research ethics rules and principles, such as the commitment to truthfulness and responsibility towards colleagues, other people, animals, the environment, and society. As a research institution, we and our researchers have responsibility for our own role in societal development, and a collective responsibility to contribute to sustainable development and greater global justice.

Our internal guidelines and practice are based on provisions given in Norwegian Law on Organization of Research Ethics, The Vancouver rules, the NENT Guidelines for research ethics in science and technology, and the FFA Guidelines on research ethics.

Sustainable work life

The Nansen Center strives to be an attractive workplace for existing and future employees.

Our employer policy includes, among other things, regulated working hours and flexible time arrangements, good pension schemes and career facilitation for parents of young children. We work continuously to offer a good physical and psychosocial working environment and are concerned with promoting a good balance between private life and working life. It is a goal that most of our researchers are employed in permanent positions.

Ensuring diversity, inclusion and equality is important to us. We have drawn up a strategy for equality and non-discrimination, and adopted a separate action plan to increase the proportion of female researchers.

Social sustainability

We promote human rights and decent working conditions through the implementation of our research and operational activities, ensuring that human rights and working conditions are upheld when purchasing goods and services.

Everyone has the right to ask companies for information about how they deal with negative consequences on basic human rights and decent working conditions. The Nansen Center is obliged to respond to such information requests, and potential inquiries can be sent by e-mail or regular mail.

A statement of due diligence assessments is to be published annually by June 30th. Here you can read the Nansen Center’s board’s last statement according to the Transparency Act.

Environment and climate impact

We have climate-neutral office operations as our goal, and emphasize responsible purchasing, use environmentally friendly products and limit paper use. Other office operations are ensured through criteria set by our environmental lighthouse certified landlord, the University of Bergen. We have prepared our own climate accounting to get an overview of our direct and indirect emissions of greenhouse gases, and which shows us how we can reduce our climate footprint.