Barbara Radwanek-Bąk, Dr Eng.
Polish Geological Institute, Cracow, Poland

 

 

Problems of mineral resources protection

in the aspect of space and environmental limitations

 

 

Mineral resources are one of important components of our natural environment. They need to be protected because of non-renewability and irregular occurrence in the space. This refers as well to identified resources of mineral deposits (in particular undeveloped or abandoned mineral deposits) and to the prospected areas, as reconnaissance resources in perspective areas. There are several reasons confirming a necessity for a quick creation of effective mechanisms of mineral resources protection.

The first one is that the dynamic growth of urbanisation causes a dramatic reduction of „free space“ and makes a base for many strong conflicts between mineral resources areas and spatial planning. The core of those conflicts is that the deposits and prospected areas which comprise broad territories under different land use, often jeopardise a built-up or infrastructure development. The protection of rich areas of raw material often remains in conflict to short-term interests of local inhabitants and planning officers. On the other side the availability of such areas is important as well in the aspect of competitiveness of the mining industry, as a future base for new generations of people - in the aspect of sustainable development.

The second thing is that mineral resources are usually seen by prism of mining, which is often associated with negative influence on the environment and sometimes directly on human beings. This aspect is important particularly in some countries of Central and Eastern Europe, where a mining industry has been intensively developed without taking a proper care and respect to natural environment and human health protection. In common consciousness, mineral resources are treated only like a source of raw material, but not as components of the natural environment. In case of common raw materials it is relatively easy to get them and therefore they seem to be almost inexhaustible.

Law regulations related to wide-understood problems of natural environment protection also show that kind of disproportion. The nature of animals is strongly protected but there is a feeble tolerance in authorities and in the society for mineral resources protection, and the growth of urbanisation gives a lot of restrictions for mining activities by proclaiming various protection zones of roads, autoroads, rivers, built-up areas etc.

 

Lack of a suitable mineral resources protection may cause its deficit. It concerns not only the important minerals with a strategic value but also the common rocks. Referring to those last-mentioned, mainly with local importance only, it may result in the necessity of their transport from distant locations, what undoubtedly would cause their price growth. Another serious consequence could be a crash of some local firms and rise of unemployment with all its social effects like: a poverty growth, people migration to find a job, negative influence over family life and also breaking out traditional, local ties between producer and customer.

All briefly described aspects impose the necessity to find compromise solutions in frames of priorities in spatial planning. The protection of mineral resources has to be developed in four main domains:

1 - by developing new technologies to find out supplementary resources and also for better utilisation of recycled raw materials,

2 - by popularisation of new material-saving and energy-saving standards of living. Those are frequently convergent to the ecological standards, promoting „the healthy way of living“ (traffic reduction, development of cheaper municipal transport, using of low-processed products etc.) Good example to illustrate this kind of pro-ecological goals - which also helps in saving resources - are some foundations referring to the energetic sector: alternative (renewable) energy sources development, energy-saving machines usage, promotion of ecological way of living (bikes, municipal transport).

3 - by rationalising management of mineral deposits. It refers to many detail factors. One of the most important is the complete exploitation of economic reserves of the raw material from a deposit and minimisation of all kinds of output losses. Another one is many sided management of all types of raw material. Realisation of these goals in normal practice is not so easy and obvious as it seems because it is often contradictory to requirements to minimise the mining activity influence on natural environment and also - considering the economic aspect of mining – to make maximum profits. The typical conflict situations - connected with a necessity of taking into account the three aspects of extractive activity mentioned - above are the following ones:

a) mineral utilisation is not always adequate with regard to its quality (only common utilisation); that is because of technologic (lack of appropriate transformation and production technologies) and economic (demand, gain) reasons. It is also caused by unqualified research, at documentation stage, in particularly - lack of quality parameters;

b) a considerable part of resources is abandoned in deposits because of technical lacks and also for economic reasons;

c) in larger areas of deposits lack of the complex utilisation of raw materials causing the growth of losses in resources. It is an effect of separated exploitation on small sites – every owner has private „mine“ so there is a lot of protective areas and safety pillars between the pits. Such a situation intensively occurs especially on territories rich in natural aggregates.

4 - by controlling of areas rich in raw materials (both in the documented deposits and perspective areas) against fast building. It concerns mainly on raw materials favourable for open-pit mining.

The task of protecting the raw material rich areas like mineral deposits and perspective areas, is approached very diversely – from legal protection of all known (although unexploited) raw material deposits, as it is in case of the Czech Republic, to no regulations, as it is in case of Germany, Finland, Portugal or Norway. General remarks referring to this problem are expressed in the opinion of the European Commission. It points to the importance of accessibility to the terrain rich in raw-materials as a crucial element in competitive mining industry (Berlin II., 2002). The most straightforward and detailed regulations in the field of exploitation in the sustainable management frame are given in Great Britain where prevention against needless investments on the terrain of raw material occurrence is requested. The latter can be fulfilled owing to compulsory devising of the raw material consulting areas, which are then taken into account in planning documents, i.e. in the so-called management plans. It allows to find a compromise between various groups of interests and to identify contentious terrain with respect to limitation of the deposit accessibility by various investments and to environmental hazard related to mining exploitation activities. Such plans have reservations imposing a duty of resource exploitation prior to a permanent surface investment. Legal regulations of Great Britain show many similarities with those of the USA, where one of the tasks of the state geological surveys is to devise the deposit and perspective terrain for a purpose of spatial planning and further discussions concerning the future landscape management.

Availability of mineral deposits and perspective areas forms a need of a new complex assessment of mineral resources using the same, uniform and precisely defined criteria, to give a possibility to compare them and to create a mechanism for their protection. It is a difficult task because of complicated relations and conflicts between different forms of land management, problems of real property and negative influence of mining activity. The huge number of factors defining a value of raw material deposits and mineral rich areas is a reason making the natural values estimation difficult.

Geological and mining assets of the deposit and of the mineral raw material are the most important in their evaluation. Such evaluation depends on several parameters like: quality of the mineral, range of its possible usage and substitution, frequency and size of the deposit, geological and mining conditions and variability of the main geological, mining and quality parameters.

The second group of criteria is connected with the level of certainty when evaluating geological and mining factors. It shows the degree of our knowledge about the mineral and the deposits.

The ecological and spatial planning controls of the second group of criteria which points possible difficulties in the access to the deposits and in the mining activities. The following aspects should mainly be considered: location in the areas under legal nature protection (like national or landscape parks, the European NATURA 2000 network etc.), water reservoirs protection, distance from the built-up terrain as well as the permanent infrastructure in the area of a deposit. Another factors of economic nature like the distance from market are less important by evaluation of common raw materials. A smaller distance is preferred especially in the case of the deposits of bulk raw materials where the transportation costs are significant components of their final costs.

 

The proposed evaluation allows to compare different raw materials deposits and provides the background for formal differentiation of the range of each protection, according to the rule: the more valuable is a mineral deposit or perspective area, the bigger is the range of its protection.

To assure a legal protection of mineral resources effectively it is necessary to make it obligatory in the system of the country decision-making agencies. In Poland and also in many other European states the division is three-levelled: from the superior authority, such as Ministry of the Environment, through voivodship (district, region) to the lowest level – local community. Some scarce mineral deposits most valuable in the country state scale could be given to the GMES system as important objects of nature with high level of usefulness or as unique geological objects.

Valorisation and evaluation of the raw materials rich areas allows to include them to the process of landscape planning.

A similar approach should be followed when evaluating perspective areas because the reconnaissance resources are potential for future needs in the domain of mineral deposits. Their protection is very important in the context of sustainable development in any country.

 

 

References

Berlin II – Guidelines for mining and sustainable development. U.N., 2002.

 

Barbara Radwanek-Bąk, Dr Eng.                                                     

Polish Geological Institute, 31-560 Cracow, Skrzatow 1, Poland

e-mail: barbara.radwanek-bak@pgi.gov.pl