Abstract
The consumption of freshwater in mining accounts for only a small proportion of the total water use at global and even national scales. However, at regional and local scales, mining may result in significant impacts on freshwater resources, particularly when water consumption surpasses the carrying capacities defined by the amount of available water and also considering environmental water requirements. By applying a geographic information system (GIS), a comprehensive water footprint accounting and water scarcity assessment of bauxite, cobalt, copper, iron, lead, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, uranium and zinc as well as gold, palladium, platinum and silver was conducted to quantify the influence of mining and refining of metal production on regional water availability and water stress. The observation includes the water consumption and impacts on water stress of almost 2800 mining operations at different production stages, e.g., preprocessed ore, concentrate and refined metal. Based on a brief study of mining activities in 147 major river basins, it can be indicated that mining’s contribution to regional water stress varies significantly in each basin. While in most regions mining predominantly results in very low water stress, not surpassing 0.1% of the basins’ available water, there are also exceptional cases where the natural water availability is completely exceeded by the freshwater consumption of the mining sector during the entire year. Thus, this GIS-based approach provides precise information to deepen the understanding of the global mining industry’s influence on regional carrying capacities and water stress.
Highlights
Driven by growing demand and technological development, the consumption of natural resources has been increasing significantly within recent decades and is still expected to grow in the future
Due to the fact that production capacities in the case of certain mining commodities of global relevance are highly concentrated in few regions, e.g., cobalt, platinum, palladium, iron ore and uranium, the global water scarcity impact of these commodities is significantly influenced by the water stress conditions of the corresponding mining regions
As the global demand for mining commodities is expected to grow in the future, this may lead to increasing environmental impacts within the regions where mining is predominantly occurring
Summary
Driven by growing demand and technological development, the consumption of natural resources has been increasing significantly within recent decades and is still expected to grow in the future. Primarily during the last two decades, criticality assessment methods have been developed and constantly evolved to screen mineral commodity markets in order to identify raw materials of concern [1,2]. The global expansion of resource extraction, mining and refining of metals, is characterized by environmental concerns as the mining and refining of technology-relevant metals have significant impacts on ecosystems. The latest criticality assessment methods of raw materials have been extended by environmental criteria to determine the ecological impacts of mining activities as well [4]
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