Attempts to close material cycles in industrialised countries: threat, challenge or opportunity for minerals exporting countries?

摘要

This paper explores issues associated with thecontinued practice of mining, minerals beneficiation andextractive metallurgy in the context of the goal of sustainabledevelopment. We note the trend in industrialised countriestowards metal winning via closed loop recycling, and comparethis with current and anticipated practices in developingcountries, asking whether these practices are consistent with ourunderstanding of a global post-industrial economy which isbased on the provision of services in support of human welfare.We argue that, despite encouraging trends in dematerialisationtaking place in the manufacturing sphere, metal winning fromprimary resources will remain an important activity in themedium term - particularly in developing countries - and weadvocate the need for responsible environmental managementprogrammes to oversee this activity. In this context, werecognise the need for objective and defensible measures ofenvironmental impact - and particularly the ability to reconciletrade-offs between different social costs and benefits. To thisend, we introduce Life Cycle Assessment as a means ofobtaining an environmental profile of minerals-related activity,and suggest how this information can be used to informenvironmental management programmes. By way of example,we offer some discussion of recently commissioned, large scaleminerals projects in South Africa, and highlight lessons whichcan be learned from the environmental impact assessmentprocess associated with these.