A review of studies on sustainable development in mining life cycle

Sustainable development policies in Canada's mining sector: an overview of government and industry efforts

SUMMARY The exact application of sustainable development in the mining and minerals industry has precipitated considerable debate in recent years. Since the publication of the Brundtland Commission's Report, Our Common Future, numerous explanations have been put forth in an attempt to define sustainable development in the mining and minerals context. Specifically, the inability of the Brundtland Report to outline an effective sustainability framework, combined with its contention that no single blueprint for sustainable development exists, has prompted a number of academics and practitioners to provide personal viewpoints on the application of sustainable development in the mining and minerals industry. This paper focuses on one aspect of the mining and minerals-sustainable development debate: the corporate perspective. It first uses the burgeoning body of literature to define sustainable development in the corporate mining context. Second, it addresses, against the background of this interpretation, many...

Devising indicators of sustainable development for the mining and minerals industry: An analysis of critical background issues

Assessing sustainable development, especially of the mining and minerals sector, is a challenge. This paper is an attempt to address this challenge by developing a methodology using fuzzy logic that encompasses the definitions, fundamentals, economic underpinnings and criteria of sustainable development. The paper starts by distinguishing the newly conceptualized ‘assessment for sustainability’ from the generally practiced ‘sustainability assessment’, framework, clarifying that the former looks at the process in question and lays out the path to be followed to assess sustainability, while the latter is just a static report. It then highlights the inherent limitations of the three traditional sustainability assessment tools and attempts to improve upon these limitations by proposing a model using fuzzy logic, weak sustainability criteria and context-dependent sustainability indicators to assess sustainable development of the mining and minerals sector. As an illustration, the paper demonstrates how the proposed methodology can be applied to a reference town, where mining is the primary economic activity. The results derived can be used internally for identification of ‘hot spots’ as well as externally for sustainability reporting and stakeholder engagement. Assessment for sustainability also facilitates monitoring, estimating the degree of sustainability and defines a course of action for stakeholders as well as policy-makers to improve a project's degree of sustainability. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

A Fuzzy Logic Based Approach to Assess Sustainable Development of the Mining and Minerals Sector

Mining is a global business with international networks of production and consumption, but mineral deposits are place specific and the impacts of mining projects are mostly experienced locally. Hence, mining is an example of a glocal phenomenon par excellence: global processes are realized in local communities and environments. This paper discusses the social impacts of mining in eight communities situated in Northern Europe. The data consist of 85 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2013 and 2014. Using a qualitative approach and starting from the bottom-up, the analyses identified three impact frames that combined individual experiences and meanings expressed in the interviews. The first impact frame focuses on environmental justice. Environmental impacts are corporeal, cognitive, and emotional, as they affect the real life of people living in the vicinity of the mine. The main finding is that environmental “bads” are experienced locally in the North, whereas the economic “goods” go to mining companies and consumers in the “South.” The second impact frame looks at the loss of livelihoods and the cultural way of life. Mining is seen as a threat, especially to reindeer herding and nature-based practices. In the areas where mining is a new industry, the activity is seen as antithetical to those small-scale activities of a local economy. The third impact frame centers on experiences and concerns about the dependency of a community on a single industry. When the fortunes of local communities are dependent on international business and the fluctuations of global markets, the residents feel that they have no power to influence the developments and can thus only adapt.

Social impacts of the “glocal” mining business: case studies from Northern Europe

All mineral deposits are finite. Their exhaustion may happen within a relatively short period of time, or over an extended period, even of centuries. In this narrow sense, of the ultimate exhaustion of individual mines, no mining activity is sustainable. That is, however, a very restrictive definition of sustainability. Mining as an economic activity should be considered more broadly. This article is taken from a much longer paper prepared for the International Council on Metals and the Environment (ICME). Its purpose was to provoke discussion within ICME about the measurement of sustainable development in the minerals industry, and to suggest possible indicators.

Mining and sustainable development: Measurement and indicators

This paper, written for a UNEP/World Bank sponsored conference on Sustainability and Global MiningFinance, takes an agnostic look at sustainable development. It rejects the narrow view that mining is inherently unsustainable and the belief that minerals are more valuable in the ground than mined. The paper emphasises that mining is an economic activity and that it should be assessed by the same yardsticks as any other economic activity. The creation of profit is the prime test of its sustainability, with environmental and social considerations acting as constraints but not objectives in their own right. The paper considers sustainability in terms of the economic rent liberated by mining and the uses to which that rent is put. The mining industry has not been sufficiently profitable, and financial institutions have reinforced its failings in that regard. Their main contribution to a more sustainable mining industry is to ensure that it is profitable. Rigidly enforced codes of conduct are likely to prove ec...

Sustainability and the economics of mining-what future?

The economist's concept of rent is purely technical and descriptive, yet it gives rise to many misconceptions and much emotional argument within the minerals industry. Many people in the industry, lacking the necessary theoretical background, even deny its very existence. Their objections are nearly always based on concerns about how any rent or surplus is to be divided between the various stakeholders, or, more narrowly, on resistance to the use of a theoretical concept as a basis for taxation policy. The concept of economic surplus or rent is, however, crucial to any understanding of the mineral industry's contribution to development, and of the extent to which that contribution is genuinely sustainable. This article tries to behind the emotions to the basic concepts involved.

Economic rent and the mining industry

The Business of Mining

Concern that non‐ferrous metals are non‐renewable resources influences public policy, and helps shape the debate about their sustainability. This paper briefly discusses the nature of resources and reserves, and shows how the reserve base of the main non‐ferrous metals has grown since 1950. Its growth has greatly outstripped that of production, notwithstanding the large tonnage that has been produced in the interim. This growth has taken place against a backdrop of flat or declining real prices. Charts for each metal compare cumulative production and the changes in reserve bases for each metal for the past five decades, and plot real prices since the 1880s. Today's reserve bases are more than ample to meet future demands. Also past production not only gives rise to a continuing stream of income from the products in which it is used, but it also provides a stock of metals forfuture recycling. Cumulative production over the past two hundred years is compared with the reserve base, and today's recyc...

Phillip Crowson

Papers

Mining and sustainable development: Measurement and indicators

Sustainability and the economics of mining-what future?

Economic rent and the mining industry

The Business of Mining

The use of non‐ferrous metal resources for economic growth