The set-up of an international agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of geologically scarce mineral resources

How deep are the oceans?

Introduction: nowadays, there is a transition from the traditional methods of use and protection of natural resources to technologies driven by Russia’s movement towards sustainable development. One of the means to achieve the goals of sustainable development is the greening of all types of economic activities (the transition to a green economy), including the emergence of new challenges in the field of the use and protection of mineral resources. A legal framework has already been established to ensure the rational use and protection of mineral resources, but a number of gaps in the federal and regional legislation still remain. The purpose of the study is to reveal the features and possible directions of ecologization of the subsurface use within the territory of the three Pre-Caspian regions. Methods: the following methods were used when writing the paper. The analysis method made it possible to identify the main features of the category “protection of mineral resources” and the effectiveness of its protection in the Pre-Caspian regions; the synthesis was used to generalize the typological features of the ecological and legal categories used in the paper; the analogy method made it possible to identify the practical features of the use and protection of mineral resources in three Pre-Caspian regions. The comparative law method made it possible to study the foreign experience of digitalization of management, which can also be used in regulating the subsurface use in Russia. The formal and legal method made it possible to identify the features and specifics of the statutory regulation of the use and protection of mineral resources during the transition of the Russian Federation to a green economy. Results: active mining (including oil and gas) is taking place in the three Pre-Caspian regions, and the regional mineral resources laws have been adopted. In these laws, the main attention is paid to the provision of local mineral resources for use, while the regional features of protection of mineral resources are very poorly represented. Three Pre-Caspian regions are characterized by federal problems in the field of subsurface use, including the absence of specially protected areas with mineral resources, the inability to involve the mineral resources in civil circulation, the insufficient digitalization of management processes in the provision of the mineral resources for use, the problems of economic stimulation of rational use and protection of mineral resources, as well as the compensation for damage caused during the use of the mineral resources. Conclusions: the Astrakhan region, the Republics of Dagestan and Kalmykia, as the regions with access to the Caspian Sea, have similar problems in the field of the use and protection of mineral resources, which require reflection in their regional legislation. When working it out, it is necessary to take into account the international regime of the Caspian Sea waters, the unique environmental and economic conditions for the use and protection of land and mineral resources in the coastal zones.

Mineral resource extraction and resource sustainability: Policy initiatives for agriculture, economy, energy, and the environment

The article considers recent problems of developing a national program on the use of raw mineral resources and environmental protection in the Republic of Armenia. These issues have many perspectives and are discussed in various aspects. The need for these studies is obvious in connection with the restoration of promising branches of the mining industry in the RA and development of the national and scientifically sound market programs for the Safety of Global environmental protection management. The raised matters related to the use of mineral resources and measures undertaken in the nature of our country must be under State Governmental control and should be studied thoroughly at a scientific and professional level, otherwise, the unnecessary interference of any individual or any foreign investor could cause ecological disbalance in the environment. For the prospective development of the economy, it is necessary to ensure that the Government should take all possible measures to ensure harmless use of mineral resources and other related actions that are undertaken not only by local but foreign investors as well. Amendments in the law of the Republic of Armenia on the protection of the environment and their appeals must strictly be solicited for the high-efficiency production of multipurpose units, anti-seismic monolithic constructions in the purpose to maintain mining and environmentally-friendly geological and ecological balance. Due to these measures, the present and future generations will also take the advantage of uncovering and using natural resources.

PurposeImpacts of mineral resource use on the availability of resources can be assessed using a broad range of methods. Until recently, life cycle inventory (LCI) and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) models have been based on resource extraction. As extracted resources are not necessarily “lost” for future use, recent methodological developments have shifted the focus from resource extraction to resource dissipation. This paper aims at reviewing dissipation-based LCIA methods, testing them in a case study, analyzing potential implications for the product environmental footprint (PEF), and providing recommendations for future method development.MethodFive recently developed LCIA methods have been reviewed and compared based on 22 criteria, such as the forms and time horizons of dissipation considered, scientific publication, and number of characterization factors (CFs). Additionally, the abiotic depletion potential (ADP) method has been included to serve as a non-dissipation-based reference. All methods are tested in a case study on a theoretical product, designed solely for demonstration purposes, and consisting of 1 kg of the metals aluminum, cobalt, copper, molybdenum, nickel, and zinc. In addition to the absolute LCIA results, the contributions of metal production stages and individual resource extractions/emissions have been investigated. Finally, normalization and weighting have been carried out to analyze consequences of replacing ADP with the new dissipation-based methods in the context of PEF.Results and discussionMost recently developed LCIA methods take a long-term perspective, cover emissions of resources to the environment (and partly technosphere), and vary in the number of CFs and resources covered. The case study results obtained by ADP are dominated by the molybdenum dataset; the results of the dissipation-based LCIA methods are strongly influenced by the cobalt dataset. All results are strongly sensitive to the LCI database used (ecoinvent or GaBi). Normalization and weighting revealed that the mineral resource use impact result dominates the aggregated PEF score (57%), when using the currently recommended ADP model. Shifting from the resource extraction-based ADP to dissipation-based models can reduce the contribution to 23% or < 1% depending on the method.ConclusionThe development of methods addressing mineral resource use in LCIA has shifted from resource extraction to dissipation. The analyzed methods are applicable and lead to different findings than the extraction-based ADP. Using the newly developed methods in the context of PEF would significantly change the relevance of the mineral resource use impact category in comparison to other environmental impacts.

Chapter 9 - Setting up an international agreement

Antarctica is the continent around the south pole. Antarctica plays an important role in the conservation of the climatic balance of the Earth. The Antarctic system – land, ocean, atmosphere is the natural refrigerant of the Earth’s temperature system. Antarctica is the unique laboratory for studying global processes. It provides information about greenhouse gas concentration and atmospheric temperatures of hundreds and thousands of years ago. The human activity in Antarctica is currently limited for scientific research, fishing, tourism and sea and air traffic. The development of all human activity in the Antarctica increases local pollution, causes the degradation of habitats, and disruptions for the animal populations. The protection of the Antarctic environment is necessary. The effective protection of environment requires some legal framework. The international legal system of Antarctica is based on the Antarctic treaty of 1959. However, this Treaty does not include explicit provisions concerning the Antarctica’s environment. But the Antarctic treaty creates the base for another development through the Antarctic consultative meetings. These meetings have accepted more than one hundred recommendations concerning the protection of Antarctica’s environment. Very important recommendation is the Agreed measures for the conservation of Antarctic fauna and flora of 1964. The Antarctic legal regime currently includes besides the Antarctic treaty and recommendations based on it several other treaties. There is Antarctic treaty system according to article 1 e of the protocol on environmental protection to the Antarctic treaty of 1991. This system means, the Antarctic treaty, the measures in effect under that treaty and its associated separate international instruments in force and the measures in effect under those instruments. These instruments are four international treaties concerning Antarctica. These treaties are The Convention for the conservation of Antarctica seals of 1972, the Convention for the conservations of Antarctic marine living resources of 1980, the Convention for the regulation of Antarctic mineral resource activities of 1988 and the Protocol on environmental protection to the Antarctic treaty of 1991. The most important treaty is the latter one. The Protocol of 1991 represents the comprehensive protection of the Antarctic environment and dependent and associated ecosystems and hereby designate Antarctica as a natural reserve. The integral part of the Protocol form Annexes I–IV and another Annex V was accepted by the Consultative meeting later. These annexes provide detailed provisions concerning the protection of environment. These annexes amends and develop the Protocol. From the point of view of the protection of environment, article 7 is very important. According to this article any activity relating to mineral resources, other than scientific research, shall be prohibited. This provision excludes the entry into force of the 1988’s Convention on mineral resources. The Protocol’s state parties prefer the protection of environment over the use of mineral resources. The Protocol of 1991 creates the comprehensive protection of Antarctica’s environment. But the number of questions relating to the environment, have been regulated in separate recommendations accepted by the consultative meetings. These recommendations have not been cancelled by the Protocol. Some questions such as tourism and other non-governmental activities are explicitly regulated by recommendations of the Consultative meetings. The Protocol itself provides provision on the adoption of measures under article IX of the Antarctic treaty for the implementation of this Protocol. There are other international treaties concerning the environment of Antarctica besides the Antarctic treaty system. These treaties concern the sea, e.g. the UN Convention on the law of the sea of 1982, is also relevant to Antarctica. Another treaty is the Convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal of 1989. According to this Treaty the parties agree not to allow the export of hazardous wastes or other wastes for disposal within the area south of 60 degree of the south latitude i.e. in the area of the Antarctic treaty. The legal protection of Antarctica has the living importance for the whole mankind. Apart from the long distance from the other continents Antarctica has influence on the global environment.

Purpose is to substantiate foundations of sustainable management of mineral resources while implementing a circular economy model. Methods. The study has applied following research approaches: synthetic method (unification of the singled out aspects); induction method (analysis of a circular economy features); life cycle assessment (evaluation of the product influence on the environment from the viewpoint of each stage of its life cycle); circular economy toolkit (determination and evaluation of the periodicity of circular economy products and indicators); and circular economy indicator prototype (evaluation of the cyclic product efficiency). Findings. Circular economy is one of the key directions of a sustainable development policy as for conservation and protection of mineral resources; it is aimed at more efficient use and improvement of raw material extraction from industrial waste. Formation of a market infrastructure of the circular economy has been proposed based upon mining sector waste use to process it and reduce as well as to repurpose wasteless production and secondary processing of raw materials. The need has been substantiated to contribute to conservation of mineral resources for their sustainable use on the basis of the development of market infrastructure of a stable economy and mining sector waste use to process it and reduce as well as to repurpose wasteless production and secondary processing of raw materials. Originality. A concept for further development of the circular economy market infrastructure has been specified as a platform of production waste supply/demand to optimize the use and conservation of mineral resources on the principles of sustainable growth. It has been proposed to analyze assessment of business development along the lines of a circular economy while calculating parameters when manufacturing is applying primary mineral resources and industrial waste as a raw material for its further processing. Practical implications. The proposed approach of interaction between economic entities on the basis of a circular economy will provide rational use of mineral resources and contribute to the development of a sector of industrial waste processing. The abovementioned will help terminate decrease in the availability of mineral resources and form new milestones of social development on the principles of environmental friendliness and rationalism in the process of interaction with nature.

Illuminating the contributions of fintech, mineral resources, and foreign direct investment in alleviating environmental issues: An empirical analysis

Education in mineral economics is important to the practicing geologist in his professional career. Individuals who deal with the discovery, extraction, and use of mineral resources recognize that much of what they are able to accomplish relies on Because the economic factor has such tremendous leverage, there is always a compulsion to seek more education and understanding of economics. People who deal with mineral economics fall into 2 categories: (1) practitioners who are engaged in some economic activity and use economic data and analysis in making decisions related to their jobs, and (2) social scientists who are concerned only with economic concepts and tools. The practicing geologist, the exploration planners, and mineral company executives fall in the former category. Their need is for economic data and economic evaluation. There are 3 stages in the exploration and development process, each with its own peculiar needs for economic information and valuation. These are: (1) establishing an exploration plan with appropriate guidelines; (2) conducting the field investigation and appraising the data obtained; and (3) making a decision on how to proceed in light of the economic and geologic information on hand. The undergraduate in geology preparing for a career in mineral exploration has little time or need for much emphasis on traditional economics in his program. However, some university course work introducing him to the economics of nonrenewable resources, evaluation concepts and methodology, and commodity analysis is of value. Much of the geologist's economics education must be derived from experience, company training, post-graduate college courses, and the technical programs of his professional societies. The geologic societies should make their contribution through fostering the development of improved evaluation methodology, maintaining and advancing the analytic competence of their members, and keeping members informed of national goals and priorities in mineral resource development. End_of_Article - Last_Page 868------------

The extraction of mineral resources has been occurring for millennia in both the Old and New Worlds. Lake sediments can archive the environmental legacy of these preindustrial activities, offering an independent method for understanding the magnitude and spatial extent of metal pollution through time. A number of geochemical records of past metal pollution within lake sediments have now been completed across especially Europe and the South American Andes, revealing histories of metal pollution that extend back over millennia. The use of paleolimnological techniques is refining our understanding of spatial and temporal differences in mineral resource extractions and use, and offers the opportunity to understand the degree to which human activities have mobilized metals from geologic stores into the biosphere.

PurposeAssessing the potential impacts (characterization) of mineral resource use in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) has long been debated. One of the most crucial challenges in the characterization models for mineral resource use is the consideration of the changing demand and availability of in-use stocks in the future, which is relevant to the global population and economy growth as well as the increasing low-carbon technologies. We propose an extended characterization model to assess the potential impacts for arbitrary time horizons, considering future demand changes and the availability of in-use stock: temporally explicit abiotic depletion potential (TADP).MethodsThe TADP was developed based on abiotic depletion potential (ADP), which is a widely used characterization model for mineral resource use. While the ADP assesses the potential impacts of mineral resource use based on a natural stock estimate and the current extraction rate, the TADP adopts an average extraction rate for arbitrary time horizons. The average extraction rate was estimated using material flow analysis considering future demand changes and recycling under the five shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). TADPs were calculated for six common metals: aluminum, copper, iron, lead, nickel, and zinc.Results and discussionAs a result of calculating TADPs for the term by 2050 (TADP2050), compared to iron, all other metals showed larger values of characterization factors for all SSPs than the original ADPs. The TADP2050 of copper exhibited the largest difference with ADP among the six metals (approximately 1.9 times), which is mainly attributed to future demand growth. On the other hand, for the longer time perspective, the TADP2100 of lead and zinc exhibited larger differences with ADP than copper (approximately 2.8 times for zinc), which is mainly due to a relatively shorter lifetime for lead and a lower recycling rate for zinc. This suggests that the relative significance of the characterization factors of metals varies depending on the temporal perspective.ConclusionsWith the proposed characterization model, the potential impacts of mineral resource use can be assessed reflecting future situations for the selected time horizons. The results demonstrate that the consideration of future situations greatly influences the relative significance of the potential impacts of using different mineral resources in the results of LCIA studies. By expanding the coverage of mineral resources and future scenario analysis to other relevant factors, the TADP model can improve the robustness of the assessment and further support decision-making towards sustainable resource management.

SummaryIntegrated assessment models are in general not constrained by mineral resource supply. In this paper, we introduce a material accounting method as a first step toward addressing the raw materials gap in the TIMES integrated assessment model (TIAM‐FR version). The method consists of attributing process‐based life cycle inventories (LCIs) taken from the ecoinvent 3.3 database to the TIAM‐FR technology processes constituting the global energy system. We demonstrate the method performing a prospective exercise on the electricity‐generating sector in a second shared socioeconomic pathway (SSP2) baseline scenario on the 2010–2100 time horizon. We start by disaggregating the LCIs into three separate life phases (construction, operation, and decommissioning) and coupling them to their respective TIAM‐FR electric outputs (new capacities, electricity production, and end‐of‐life capacities) in order to estimate the annual mineral resource requirements. Prospective uses of fossil fuels and metallic and nonmetallic mineral resources are quantified dynamically at the life phase and regional levels (15 world regions). The construction of hydropower, solar power, and wind power plants generate increasing use of metallic and nonmetallic mineral resources in successive peak and valley periods. However, the use of fossil fuels is much higher than the use of mineral resources all along the horizon. Finally, we evaluate how sensitive the global material use is to the allocation of a share of infrastructure activities to the decommissioning phase. This approach could be extended to other integrated assessment models and possibly other energy sectors.

The ecological functions and features of the geologic environment are investigated in terms of environmental geology. The current status of the geologic medium is characterized as a crisis, and the issues of its protection and rehabilitation are not appropriately addressed in environmental protection activity of the state and businesses. The most critical ecological-geologic risks include destruction and deformation of geologic strata, huge amounts of industrial waste, oil spills, landscape and soil degradation, air and surface water pollution, seismic and mudflow phenomena, etc. Mining operations have the greatest negative influence on the environmental parameters of the geologic medium. Inadequate attention to issues related to the present state and protection of the geologic medium leads to accidents and crises in industrial installations. Ecological-geologic hazard hotspots have emerged in areas of intense extraction and processing of mineral raw materials. On the other hand, the environmental component of active mineral resource use is neglected when formulating the prospects for a further development of resource regions. The country’s major mining companies, active participants of the world market of mineral resources, are the most proficient in sustainable mineral resource use. In recent years, Russia saw a large-scale improvement of environmental legislation. Many legal innovations focusing on the preservation of the geologic medium are scattered among different laws. The legal and financial preconditions for the ecologization of mineral resource use are examined. The state plays a key role to stimulate the sustainable mining, processing and transportation of useful minerals. It has to change significantly the system to support the geologic medium protection.

PurposeThe assessment of potential environmental impacts associated to mineral resource use in LCA is a highly debated topic. Most current impact assessment methods consider the extraction of resources as the issue of concern, while their dissipation is an emerging concept. This article proposes an approach to account for mineral resource dissipation in life cycle inventories (LCIs), with application to a case study.MethodsThe definition of mineral resources is first discussed considering both current main LCA practice and the context of resource dissipation. Secondly, the approach is described: considering a short-term perspective (25 years), any flow of resources to (i) environment, (ii) final waste disposal facilities, and (iii) products-in-use in the technosphere, with the resources not providing any significant function anymore (including due to non-functional recycling), is suggested to be reported as dissipative at the level of unit processes. This approach first requires to map the flows of mineral resources into and out of the unit processes under study (“resource flow analysis”), before identifying the dissipative flows and reporting them in LCI datasets.Results and discussionThe approach is applied to analyze the direct dissipation of mineral resources along the primary production of copper, using Ecoinvent (v3.5) datasets. The production of 1 kg of copper cathode generates 0.88 kg of direct dissipative flows of resources (primarily calcium carbonate, copper, and to a lower extent iron), with important contributions of “tailings disposal,” “pyrometallurgy,” and “mining and concentration.” Moreover, this article discusses (i) how the developed approach would change the interpretation of results regarding mineral resources in LCA, (ii) how far some key methodological aspects of this approach (e.g., the temporal perspective) can affect the inventory results (e.g., in the case of the primary production of copper, considering a long-term perspective implies a significant shift in main contributions regarding both unit processes and resource flows), and finally (iii) the issue of new data requirements, in terms of availability and adequacy.ConclusionsAs demonstrated in the case study, existing LCI datasets and supporting documentation contain at least part of the data and information required to consistently compile the dissipative flows of resources at the unit process level, yet with the need for some complementary data and assessments. This approach may be particularly relevant to better support the development of more resource-efficient techniques or product designs. It is still open how to adapt characterization approaches to account for the impact induced by these resource dissipative flows.