L12- Mining

• matters to everyone→ smartphones/laptops rely on mining, contain deforestation metals

Global mining trade:

• forestry and agricultural products are very important but don’t make much money

• metals are doing better than the above

• fossil fuels are dominating→ making the most money

• major trade flows into Europe

• China→ epicentre of global growth

• India→ gold is popular

• EU→ involved too

  

• extraction/production are concentrated in a few nations e.g. China, Australia

  

Are mines replacing tropical forests?

• most mining takes place in the Southern hemisphere/at the equator

• Study→ rates of gold mining in the Amazon using landsat imagery (high resolution) and ground-truthing (on the ground)

  

  • get a huge expansion in the 10 year period→ less than 10,000 hectares in 1999, more than 50,000 hectares now

    

    → have lost lots of forest

  • looked at the amount of suspended sediment in rivers with or without gold mines→ before mines had low sediments, there are now much higher sediment rates in rivers, don’t find much sediment in rivers without mined areas

    

  • get lots more in the wet season and in rivers with mines, rivers without mines have less sediment, especially in the dry season

    

    → gold mining is having a big impact on deforestation and sedimentation in rivers

Why the rapid expansion of gold mining?

• 2008 international financial crisis, 8x increase in gold prices

  • want to make money, locally and nationally

• study looking at change in forest cover at known gold mining sites in the Amazon from 2001-2013

  

  • 10-15% reduction in forest cover in Suriname

  • massive loss in Peru

    

    → gold mining expansion is a massive driver of deforestation in the amazon

    

Other types of mining:

• low volume, high value→ gold, diamond, coltran (lots of small mines)

  • businesses→ fly-in, fly-out

  • artisanal mining→ poor people, is illegal, is environmentally damaging

  • blood diamond→ a diamond mined in a war zone to finance

• high volume, low value→ iron ore, copper

  • mined by large corporations→ major investments needed

  • built a 101km railway out of the Amazon in Brazil

Protected Areas:

• study looked at global spatial coincidence between protected areas and mining activities

  

  • 30% of PAs have mines in them or within 10km

  • impacts of mines→ more mining, more impacts e.g. fish dying, mercury poisoning on brain, most impacts are felt 10-15km away

  

Driver of deforestation in the tropics:

• biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture in the tropics

• mining- 10% of deforestation→ secondary effects of mining may be more important

Secondary effects of mining:

• outside boundary of mine

  • expansion of roads, rails, pipelines

  • accessing sparsely populated areas→ land clearing, bushmeat hunting

    • 30,000 in 1999→120,000 people in 2002 in Geita township, Tanzania

  • allows land to be reached by industrial-scale agriculture

  • resource curse→ investment, weak governance, corruption, civil unrest, ignoring of environmental policy

    • e.g. Guinea tragedy

      

• Positives for conservation:

  • large-scale mines can invest in areas for biodiversity e.g. Dja World Heritage site, Cameroon

  • brings people out of poverty

  • improved transport networks→ sparing land with higher yield

  • investing in low-income artisanal mining

Where are new mines going to be created?

• Congo basin, central Africa→ second largest remaining forest

• mapped minerals and overlayed this with conservation values→

  • percentage of forest cover x where minerals are

    • heart of congo basin doesn’t have minerals, more around the edge- good but does have potential for oil

      

    • protected areas x where minerals are

      • lots of purple shapes (PAs) are overlapping with potential mining areas

      • 10% inside PAs, 23% within 10km

        

      • is bad as there are high potentials to downgrade, downsize or degazette (remove official status) a PA e.g.

        

      • PAs on a bigger scale→ 62% of PADDD events are associated with mining

        

    • endemic bird areas x where minerals are

      • 27% of mining areas are in EBAs

      • 850 of these EBAs have no protection anyways

        

      • have already signed up who can go and mine for oil in the Congo

        

Will it actually happen?

• China, India, Brazil, Russia, Canada and Australia are all investing billions into mining in Africa

• are investing in roads and railways in DRC, railway Mozambique, railway Cameroon, dam and railway through Congo rainforest, road through Serengeti

• developmental pathways in Africa→ are next to or going through mines→ will open up wilderness areas

  

Policy Options:

• Land use planning→

  • spend more money in railway construction to build them around forest

• Strengthen government’s capacities to plan, manage and monitor the mining sector→

  • Samarco disaster, Brazil→ toxic sludge into a river, killed people and wildlife

  • having an independent global funding body→ miners pay into this that go and check, police construction, management and maintenance of mining infrastructure

• Promote offset impacts

• Improving management of artisanal mining

• Carbon payments

  • Ecuador plans for drilling oil→ world bank planned to be given half the market value in place of drilling but were only given 13million rather than 3.6billion so drilled anyway

    

• Identify market choke points

  • boycotts, publicity e.g. Juniors sell to major→ intercept at Junior point

  • lower corruption in stock markets external to tropics→ intercept here

• Reforestation post-mining

  • there is limited recovery after mining:

    

  • study→ replaced top 15cm of soil, replanted with native tree species

    

    • there was recovery on these mined areas

      

• Recycling metals

  

  • 10billion dollars of precious metals are dumped every year

  • 57billion dollars of raw value metals are thrown away

    

  • Northern Europe→ generate the most electronic waste, do recycle but not enough

    

Summary:

• mining is a trillion dollar industry

• affects tropics, especially Africa, directly and secondarily

• there are possible conservation positives

• policy initiatives need to be developed

• there is little scientific understanding in this area