Sustainable development goals in mining

Abstract

In 2015, the United Nation (UN) launched 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) as part of an Agenda to be achieved by 2030. The target is having a global plan of action, aiming at universal peace and social and environmental justice. For this, 169 goals were drawn. The objective of this research is to discuss the congruence between mining activity and the SDG, starting from experiences of the scientific literature and the observation of one mining activity. For this purpose, the Web of Science and Scopus databases were used, with the keywords "sustainable development goals" and "mining". The Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) Portal was used to search papers that relate each one of the SDG to mining. Visits were made to three crushed stone mining industries, located in Monsenhor Gil, Piauí, Brazil, in order to follow the production process of the diabase mineral. From the research in the literature, it was possible to verify that there are several possibilities of reaching the 17 SDG in the mining sector, such as in the promotion of jobs (SDG 8), contributing to the reduction of poverty (SDG 1) and hunger (SDG 2), among others. From the visits, it was observed that the compliance with SDG related to the promotion of jobs, the improvement of income for community's residents, and the infrastructure of the environment are common to all mining or business activities that reach remote and poor areas. This is clear when identifying mining regions that have lost their economic importance once the local development ceases. If the visited industries left the place, it would cause great loss to the residents that depend on them for their jobs. There is a small number of women on the staff, setting up disrespect for SDG 5 regarding the achievement of gender equality. The nature of the activity itself does not justify the asymmetry that possibly happened under the influence of a sexist culture that imposes what is a man's job or a woman's job. Another point is the lack of investment in inclusive education for employees and for residents of the region. In addition, these industries do not recover the degraded areas, compromising the achievement of SDG 13, in regard to combat climate change and its impacts.