Environmental Aspects of Phosphate and Potash Mining

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Introduction2During recent decades, attention and concern hasbeen focused increasingly on the environmentalimpacts of human activities, especially industrialactivities such as mining. The public perception of themining industry has been tainted by a legacy of environmentaldamage from past practices combined witha number of highly publicized failures of metal miningtailings dams. As the scale of operations and thearea disturbed by the mining industry continue togrow, so too has the public's concern over the industry'scapacity to manage and mitigate environmentalimpacts. In response, most governments haveimposed stricter legislative and regulatory requirementson the mining industry in order to protect theecosystem, to maintain a safe and secure environmentand to protect people living in the vicinity of themine-site.Leading mining companies have taken up the challengeand are pushing beyond minimum legalrequirements through voluntary initiatives, to ensuretheir continued “license-to-operate” from the communityas well as increasing their competitiveadvantage through continuous, voluntary improvementsin environmental performance.As with all mining activities, the extraction and beneficiationof phosphate rock and potash to producemineral fertilizer raw material has the potential tocause environmental impacts. These impacts can takethe form of changes to the landscape, water contamination,excessive water consumption and airpollution.The landscape may be disturbed through the removalof topsoil and vegetation, excavation and depositionof overburden, disposal of processing wastes andunderground mining induced surface subsidence.The quality of surface and groundwater may beadversely affected by the release of processing waterand the erosion of sediments and leaching of toxicminerals from overburden and processing wastes.Water resources may be affected by dewatering operationsor beneficiation processes.The quality of the air can be affected by the release ofemissions such as dust and exhaust gases.The fertilizer raw material mining industry, as a subsectorof the larger global mining industry, is notexempt from the prevailing social and political climate.This publication demonstrates how thephosphate rock and potash mining industry hasresponded to the challenges presented by the changingenvironmental, political and cultural values of society,through an overview of the industry's environmentalperformance worldwide. Information on companyenvironmental practices has been gathered from anextensive series of site visits to fertilizer raw materialmining, beneficiation, and processing operations, inaddition to a review of available literature. The companiesand organizations involved in the project arelisted in Appendix B. While this does not provide acomplete picture of the current state of the industry, itdoes demonstrate the direction of development, andthe range of systems, practices and technologiesemployed.The publication focuses on the environmental aspectsassociated with the mining of raw materials for themanufacture of phosphorous and potassium mineralfertilizers. Earlier joint publications by UNEP, UNIDOand IFA have covered the environmental issues associatedwith the downstream processing, distributionand use of mineral fertilizers (3).1.2 The Global Environment Agendaand the Mining IndustryEnvironmental impact is an increasingly importantissue against which human activities must be weighed.A key factor is the scale of natural resource consumption,such as that of minerals, agricultural land, woodand fisheries.The issue of resource consumption requires that thecausal factors be addressed, such as: The continued world population growth; The material consumption patterns of the developedworld, which are increasingly being adoptedby the developing world; The imbalance in development, opportunities andresource allocation between the developed anddeveloping world; The correct pricing of the resource to account forscarcity and the environmental and social costs ofproduction; and The efficiency of resource use by industry throughthe implementation of best available techniques.(3) The earlier UNEP, UNIDO and IFA publications are listedin Appendix A. These can be obtained from either IFA orUNEP.
Environmental Aspects of Phosphate and Potash MiningThese are complex, interlinked issues. “Sustainabledevelopment” has been proposed as a holisticapproach for dealing with these complexities.Sustainable development integrates economic, environmentaland social considerations in order toimprove the lives of the current generation and ensurethat future generations will have adequate resourcesand opportunities.Over recent decades, public awareness and concernhas grown, as has knowledge of the effects of ouractivities on the environment. The 1992 UnitedNations Conference on Environment andDevelopment (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilresulted in Agenda 21, an action plan for the implementationof sustainable development throughout alllevels of society. Agenda 21 identified the global economic,environmental, and social issues to beaddressed and provided a detailed framework formoving society towards sustainable development.In the case of phosphorus and potassium, althoughthe best quality and most easily accessible deposits aremined first, the total available resources are sufficientfor hundreds or thousands of years. But no mineralresource is infinite and the efficient extraction and useof phosphate and potash are an important contributionto a certain degree of sustainability.The mining industry has an important role to play inthis respect: Rehabilitation allows the land disturbed by theextraction of the mineral resource to be returnedto the pool of land available for other uses; Optimization of the recovery of the resource maybe encouraged through the use of the most efficienttechniques and technologies available; Any unrecovered resources can be left in a conditionsuch that possible future improvements intechnological capability and economics will beable to access and recover the resource; and The development of more efficient mining andprocessing methods and techniques can extendcurrent resource life, and help to recover, recycleand reuse minerals.These principles have application across all sections ofthe mining industry, including that of the phosphaterock and potash mining industry. The mining industryhas responded to the sustainability issues that arechallenging it on a number of fronts. Several of themare discussed in this report.Mining Members of the World Business Council onSustainable Development (WBCSD) established theGlobal Mining Initiative (GMI) in 1998. The GMI,representing some of the worlds leading mineral andmining companies, was established to provide leadershipand direction for the future development of themining industry in a sustainable manner. To this end,the GMI approached the International Institute ofEnvironment and Development to commission theMining, Minerals and Sustainable Development(MMSD) project, to determine how mining can mosteffectively contribute to sustainable development.Regional groups have been established, stakeholdersengaged and consulted, issues identified, and researchcommissioned to determine how the services of themining industry can be orientated to sustainabledevelopment and develop an action plan to guide theindustry in coming decades. This action plan is to beimplemented by the new International Council onMining and Metals (formally The InternationalCouncil on Metals and the Environment).National mining associations have developed and disseminatingcharters or voluntary codes of practice toimprove the level of environmental management. Anexample of this is the Australian Mining IndustryCode for Environmental Management developed bythe Minerals Council of Australia (see Appendix C).This voluntary code has been widely adopted by miningcompanies within Australia. These are required topublish public environmental reports to demonstrateprogress on the implementation of the code's principles.The World Bank has been actively developing miningsector capacity in developing countries. Programshave focused on drafting mining legislation, buildingup environmental management capabilities and creatingincentives for private investment.NGO co-operation with the mining industry hasincreased at local and global levels in recent years. TheWorld Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has been activein developing relationships with the mining industryto foster improved performance. The WWF has beenleading the development of an independent miningcertification system in partnership with Placer Dome(Australia). This system is based on the ForestStewardship Council (FSC) model that has beeneffective in fostering improvement of the environmentalperformance of the forestry industry.
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