Mining and Sustainable Development II - DTIE

Mining
◆ Aprovechar racionalmente los minerales y darles
valor agregado, dentro de procesos de ordenamiento
territorial concertado, y teniendo en
cuenta las generaciones futuras.
◆ Asesorar, en todas las escalas de minería, el
empleo de tecnologías de producción y transformación
apropiadas y limpias y promover una
cultura minera con responsabilidad social y ecológica.
◆◆◆◆◆
◆ Desarrollar veedurías de la salud ambiental
minera con participación de autoridades locales,
empresas y grupos de interés.
◆ Implementar una ética de la administración
pública que vele por la adecuada asignación de
excedentes financieros y de regalías mineras, conforme
con las necesidades esenciales de la población.
◆ Promover y fortalecer las organizaciones locales,
de mujeres mineras y afectadas por la minería.
◆ Promover alternativas culturales, sociales y económicas
que permitan la erradicación del trabajo
infantil en la minería.
Asegurar el reconocimiento de los derechos culturales
y territoriales de los pueblos indígenas y
comunidades tradicionales que son vulnerados
frecuentemente en las actividades mineras. ◆
Future challenges for the
large-scale mining industry
Amy Rosenfeld Sweeting, former Director, Energy & Mining Initiatives,
Conservation International, 2501 M Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20037, USA
Introduction
In the last several decades, the international mining
industry has expanded rapidly into all corners
of the world. Growing global demand for minerals,
combined with an increasingly open economic
and political climate for investment in much of
the world has meant that areas that were once all
but inaccessible to large-scale development are
now available and attractive investments. Much
of this expansion has been away from the more
traditional, developed mining areas and into
many of the less-developed and largely unexplored
countries of tropical Latin America, Africa and
Asia.
While many of these countries offer vast mineral
resources, they also often contain tremendous
stores of biological diversity, the wealth of species,
ecosystems and ecological processes that make up
life on Earth. As this expansion continues and
potential conflicts arise between industrial mineral
development and conservation, the challenge
for the large-scale mining industry will be to
ensure that its presence in ecologically sensitive
areas results in a net benefit for conservation.
Net Conservation Benefit
Large-scale mining projects in sensitive ecosystems
can present significant risks and opportunities
for biodiversity conservation in these areas.
While mining can cause serious direct and indirect
damage to air, water, soil, habitats and ecosystem
health, the presence of a large mining
company will also often represent an important
resource for support of and contributions to conservation
on the ground.
Increasingly, it is becoming apparent that the
ethical responsibilities of a large industrial developer
in a sensitive ecosystem do not end at simply
mitigating any potential negative environmental
impacts. In many ways, the “cost of doing business”
in such areas also includes contributing to
conservation in a proactive and meaningful way.
Ensuring a net benefit to conservation in an
area simply means that the positive benefits of a
project’s presence outweigh its negative impacts so
that the end result is improvement rather than
degradation of an ecosystem. This equation has
two basic components: minimizing and mitigating
the negative impacts of an operation, and
making some form of positive contribution to
conservation.
Positive Contributions to Conservation
In recent history, the large-scale mining industry
has come a long way in developing technologies
and techniques for understanding and minimizing
negative impacts. Yet, while much of this
knowledge is becoming standard practice
throughout the industry, the other half of the net
benefit equation, making a positive contribution
to biodiversity conservation, has yet to become the
norm of large mining projects worldwide. Nevertheless,
in remote and sensitive ecosystems,
improving the state of conservation is equally as
important as reducing any potential negative
impacts of a project.
The scope and type of any contribution to conservation
should be determined by the expected
impact of a project, based on data gathered during
the environmental assessment process, as well
as a baseline evaluation of the ecological characteristics
and needs of a specific ecosystem. Companies
should work with non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), local communities, government
authorities and other interested parties
to design the most appropriate activities. The
most straightforward type of contribution might
be the creation of a long-term trust fund for conservation
in an area, or to make a deposit to an
already existing fund. Investments could also
include financial or in-kind support for the management
of a national park system, participation
in the creation and management of a new protected
area, government training and capacitybuilding,
contributions to national biodiversity
strategies, educational programs, support for scientific
research or contributions to existing conservation
efforts.
Any positive contribution should be one half of
a two-part integrated environmental management
strategy, with negative impact minimization being
the other half. A positive contribution should
never be seen as “permission” to damage the environment
or develop in any available location. Nor
should it be considered an excuse to degrade pristine
land while restoring or conserving environmentally
marginal land. At the same time,
advanced impact mitigation or minimization
practices are not a substitute for positive contributions.
No matter how carefully a project is
designed and implemented, it will always have
some level of negative impact, and achieving a net
benefit will require additional offsetting activities.
Impact measurement
A strategy for minimizing negative impacts and
promoting positive impacts involves a key
assumption: that the company will be able to reliably
measure the level of positive and negative
impacts in order to calculate the cumulative effect.
To do so requires a standard set of biodiversity
metrics to measure both the extent and character
of a project’s impact, an index that can be applied
to any project anywhere. Such a “footprint metric”
would allow companies to more credibly
demonstrate their performance to regulators,
communities and activists, while NGOs and governments
would be better able to evaluate the
UNEP Industry and Environment – Special issue 2000 ◆ 93