Sustainability in the exploration phase of mining: a Data Envelopment Analysis approach

Abstract

Sustainability is a popular topic in many research fields, but sustainability of mining in Finland is even more so after the economic, environmental and social damage caused by case Talvivaara. Here a measure for sustainability of exploration phase of mining is introduced alongside with the mathematics of the method. The method described is called Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), which is a versatile tool used in many instances to measure eco-efficiency. Here the main emphasis is on combining economic, ecological and social variables with DEA to produce one index for every exploration site studied. This index, between zero (0) and one (1) is called sustainability score of the given exploration site. The paper uses artificial data to introduce the idea of sustainability measurement. However, as shown in the paper, the artificial data is close to the data already collected on the exploration sites. The study at hand is able to discern a useful index called sustainability score, taking into account six variables affecting the sustainability of exploration phase of mining. It should be noted that if more explorations sites are included into evaluation, the utility is two-fold: first, the sustainability scores become more versatile, and second, there can be more variables to be included into the analysis, adding to the detail at which different factors of sustainability can be taken into account.