Current language: 4. Operate within the framework of Montreal-like Criteria* as appropriate (other frameworks may be utilized if necessary).

Suggested: 4. Operate within the framework of Montreal-like Criteria* (the Criteria will amended as appropriate to enable encapsulating indicators developed for Minerals and Geology).

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Guiding Principle 1, Encompass all Lands and Resources.  It is still unclear to me by what authority we address "all lands" beyond the National Forest System.  It is my understanding that the USFS has convened the Sustainable Minerals Roundtable to ensure mineral and energy resources are considered as part of the sustainable forest management criteria and indicators (C&I) being developed by the Roundtable on Sustainable Forests. The overarching law directing the sustainable forest management C&I development is the Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974, as amended (a.k.a., the Resources Planning Act).  If this is correct, then the scope of our efforts should reflect the scope of the law -- "the regulations in this subpart apply to the National Forest System, which includes special areas, such as wilderness, with and [sic] rivers, national recreation areas, and national trails."  Also, because state land agencies have not participated in the Sustainable Minerals Roundtable, I don't think we can justifiably speak for them on their land management issues.  I realize that mineral and energy resources physically exist regardless of the artificial boundaries imposed by humans, but I believe we should focus our efforts on those things we can pragmatically manage.

Goal Statement.  If we use the term "material" instead of "mineral" we need a good definition of what is meant by "material."  I think we will also have to define what is meant by "system".

Issue 6, Air and Water Quality.  I would like to see page 19 in Ted's book.  I'm not sure whether he considers the use of 1) minerals in air and water pollution control equipment (e.g., carbon for use in air
scrubbing systems used to treat water); 2) technologies employed to reduce environmental impacts of mining and energy processes; and 3) how much water is recycled throughout mining and energy processes.  I don't know how readily quantifiable this information is, but it's something we can acknowledge.

Issue 9, Social Justice.  I'm not sure how we are going to measure any indicators developed under this category with respect to mining and energy systems.

Issue 11, Other Technological R&D.  I advocate adding a category for federal government policies that affect mining and energy-related technology R&D investments (e.g., amount of money the federal government invests, and tax incentives for company R&D investments).  I also recommend adding abandoned mines to "reclamation of closed mines" as an indicator of federal investment in the mining and energy sectors.

Issue 13, Wilderness and Roadless Areas.  We need to include an indicator that looks at the impacts of wilderness and roadless areas on mining and energy systems (e.g., % mineral and energy reserves unavailable for use due to wilderness/roadless designations).

Issue 15, Recycling/Reuse/Remanufacturing.  I recommend adding a category regarding the amount of material recycled, reused, remanufactured throughout the entire mineral and energy systems (beyond closed circuits on the mine site).

Indicator Area 2A, Capacity.  We should recognize that some lands mined now will become forests or rangeland later.  In other words, they will be available to support surrounding ecosystems.  See comment to Extraction Indicator 1.

Capacity Indicator 2.  To neutralize this indicator, I would suggest replacing "vs." with "and" when looking at the percentage of annual consumption supplied from forestry and mineral materials.  Aren't we
trying to get at sustainable development for all our natural resources?

Extraction Environmental Indicator 1.  Acres planned for reclamation should also be included in this category.

Processing Environmental Indicators 1.a & 1.b.  What is meant by the term "impacted"?  Not all streams running through a mining or energy operation are adversely impacted (e.g., surface water quality standards are exceeded).  We need to think of a way to neutralize this (or add indicators for the miles of streams that have not been impacted and those that have been remediated).  Also, air emissions, in of themselves, are not necessarily "bad."  There are permit limits and conditions that operators must meet.  We need indicators that take this into consideration.

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Montreal-Like Criteria

Criterion B.2.   To promote the Plain English aspects of this criterion, and to avoid interpretations of the phrase "life cycle" that would connote externalities, I would recommend that this criterion be revised to:  Mineral material and energy systems (including recycling and reuse).

Issues and Issue Categories

Issue 7. This is currently represented only as the phrase "healthy landscapes."  This phrase can have a myriad of interpretations, and it is critical that a practical and detailed delineation of it be developed for its use in the context of sustainable mineral development.

Issue 13. The descriptors for wilderness and roadless areas specify the effects of energy and mineral activities on the extent of roadless and wilderness areas. However, this does not include equally important
considerations of impacts upon mineral resource development.  Another entry should be added to address: the effects of establishment of new roadless and wilderness areas upon existing or future minerals development, and the essential sustainability of that development.

Similarly, the current descriptors for wilderness and roadless areas specify that we don't want to see the amount of these areas decline, but the consequential impacts are not listed.  Another entry should be added to investigate the economic costs and sustainability limitations of establishing new roadless and wilderness areas.

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I believe one issue the SMR needs to address in regard to developing indicators is whether or not to focus its work on only those groups of indicators directly relevant to minerals/materials and energy systems or to address all groups of indicators within the Montreal criteria framework. My recommendation would be that the SMR not duplicate the work of the Forest and Rangelands Sustainability Roundtables, but instead concentrate on where it can add value to the work already done and underway by these other roundtables.

Goal Statement Goal

By 2001, the Roundtable will develop indicators for assessing the degree to which mineral/material and energy systems are contributing to or detracting from sustainable development. In this context, the indicators should measure the status and trend of mineral/material and energy systems in finding, extracting, producing, adding value to, using, re-using and recycling minerals/materials and energy. In addition, the indicators should measure the effects on the economic, environmental, and social systems.

D. Conservation and maintenance of air, land and water (quality and quantity).

F. Maintenance and enhancement of long-term social, economic, and cultural benefits to meet the needs of societies

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In line with the need to focus on Criteria and Indicators, the following is a start to organize some Indicators. If we understand the pivotal role of minerals and energy resources in sustaining forests (by substituting and replacing use of vegetative resources), then it is time for a Criterion that talks about sustaining the use of mineral and energy resources. So, we need Indicators to deal not only with the impact of mineral/energy on other resources, but also with the impacts of other resource management (denying access, prohibitive land designation, etc.) on sustaining the use of mineral/energy resources.

The following seven criteria and associated indicators characterize the conservation and sustainable management of mineral and energy resources. They relate specifically to abiotic conditions, attributes or functions, and to the values or benefits associated with the environmental and socio-economic goods and services that mineral and energy resources provide.

Criterion A: Sustaining mineral and energy diversity

Mineral and energy diversity includes various abiotic components of ecosystems, and the range of different geologic environments hosting diverse mineral and energy resources.

Indicators:

a. Extent of favorable geologic environment by mineral type relative to total area.

b. Extent of a favorable geologic environment by energy type relative to total area.

c. Estimate of known reserves and potential resources by mineral type.

d. Estimate of known reserves and potential resources by energy type.

Criterion B: Maintenance of capacity to produce commodities

Indicators:

available for mineral production;

available for energy production;

Criterion C: Maintenance of forest ecosystem health and vitality

Indicators:

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Criterion D: Conservation and maintenance of air, land and water

Indicators:

e. Acres reclaimed

f. Acres not reclaimed.

Indicators: [not addressed here]

Indicators:

Criterion G: Legal, institutional, and economic framework to support sustainable development.

Indicators:

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Perhaps the first sentence should be changed from "The goal of the Roundtable is to develop indicators that show progress toward sustainable mineral/material and energy systems". to read "The goal of the Roundtable is to IDENTIFY AND develop indicators that EXAMINE THE progress OF THE UNITED STATES IN MOVING toward sustainable mineral/material and energy systems". Otherwise the language tends to give the impression that we are going only to look at the indicators that show we are moving in a positive direction and that is not what is meant. This point is explained in the last paragraph of the goals statement, but I think we should be very clear in our first sentence as to what we mean.

First sentence of last paragraph change from "By 2001, the Roundtable will develop indicators …" to read "By 2001, the Roundtable will IDENTIFY AND develop…." – same argument as for the mission statement change.

Last sentence of last paragraph states, "In addition, the indicators should measure the effects on the economic, environmental and social systems." Do we even want to say this as part of our goals? This task would be huge – it is an unobtainable goal, so why even list it, it is more on the wish list level. Everything is so inter-related we will not be able to separate out the influences sustainable development has had on the economy from how the economy would have operated without sustainable development influences, etc.

15. recycling/reuse/remanufacturing – degree of closed circuits on the mine site

2. Measure of historical, e.g., abandoned mine sites

3. Operators in compliance with environmental portion of approved operational plan (can we get this data?)

1. Oil refineries…..

b. land contamination (?)

What’s considered contamination?

1. Identified resources (metal and nonmetal minerals, including sand and gravel)

4. Probability of Resource Depletion (how about substitution?)

I prefer looking at the substitutability of a commodity – relates back to mineral endowment concept of bullet 1.

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The initial list of indicators was produced by the brainstorming efforts of small work groups at the last Roundtable meeting. Some of these groups did not have among their members expertise related to the indicator categories they worked on. The following suggestions are based on concepts of natural and environmental resource economics and experience in the development of national indicators of sustainable development. It is particularly important that the set of economic indicators have a consistent relationship to the basic concepts used in the measurement of economic performance.

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Production capacity is measured in physical terms. We should measure current domestic production, not consumption which includes imports.

The capacity to produce commodities in the future is the combined result of developed resources with capital facilities for extraction and the capacity to find and develop resources in the future. We should develop indicators of the extent to which new capacity is offsetting depletion. Estimates of undiscovered resources are also relevant, but their high uncertainty should be noted.

For at least a portion of the energy and materials that become embedded in infrastructure and artifacts, there is the opportunity to achieve future commodity supply from recycling, reuse, and remanufacturing. The stock of such materials would be one indicator of this potential. Current recovery rates indicate only current recycling capacity.

Criterion F: Maintenance of Long Term Social, Economic and Cultural Benefits.

Economics provides well developed principles and methods for the measurement of economic benefits that the Roundtable could draw upon. They are systematic and avoid double counting and other errors. The outline below incorporates these methods into the list of indicators.

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The mission of the Sustainable Minerals Roundtable is to develop indicators of sustainability that reflect social, economic and environmental factors in order to assess the status and trends of minerals/materials and energy systems. Its work was viewed as an extension of the indicators for sustainable management of temperate and boreal forests developed through the Montreal Process by participants from a number of countries. The U.S. Forest Service represented the U.S. in the Montreal Process.

The Montreal Process produced a set of 7 criteria and 67 indicators for sustainable forest management, often referred to as the Montreal C&I. In general, the Montreal Criteria call for maintenance of the capacities of forest ecosystems to produce economic, environmental and social benefits. The U.S. Forest Service has adopted the Montreal C&I for assessing the National Forests and other forest lands in the U.S.

The Forest Service responsibility for assessing the resources on lands in the U.S. extends beyond forest resources and the National Forest System. The Sustainable Minerals Roundtable was convened by the Forest Service to produce a set of indicators that would enable the Forest Service to include energy and mineral resources in the assessment of U.S. land.

The Roundtable members recognized that there are fundamental differences between forest resource systems and energy and mineral resource systems. These differences lead the Roundtable to take a somewhat different approach in developing indicators of sustainable development for energy and minerals than the approach evident in the Montreal C&I. This approach makes general use of the Montreal C&I while customizing and extending them to provide a basis for assessing the extent to which energy and minerals contribute to progress toward sustainability in the U.S.

As the discussion below will show, the differences between forest resource systems and energy and mineral (E&M) resource systems require that a somewhat different concept of sustainability be used. Implicit in the Montreal C&I is the view that forests themselves as places, as ecosystems, as sources of outputs that benefit humans, are what need to be sustained. Hence "sustainable forests" are the management objective. For E&M resource systems, a broader vision of sustainability, one that applies to all of the economic, environmental and social components that are affected by energy and mineral resource systems, is more appropriate. It is not the E&M resource deposits or even their extraction that is to be sustained, but the contribution that they make to the overall sustainability of society.

In developing this approach, the Roundtable drew upon several very general concepts of sustainable development and sustainability that have emerged since the pioneering work of the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission) in 1987.

Sustainability can be viewed as the peak of the mountain we seek to climb by one or another path of sustainable development. It is a dynamic condition in which a society is using its economic, environmental and social capacities in a way that sustains their contribution to meeting human needs and wants over the long run.

Development is the process by which societies transform these capacities in order to increase their ability to meet human needs and wants. Sustainable development is thus development that transforms capacities in a manner that yields constant or increasing opportunities for satisfying human need and wants generation after generation.

The insights gained and approaches developed by Roundtable participants may also be applicable to forest and range resource systems.

There are substantial differences between forest resource systems and energy and mineral resource systems. The following types of differences will be discussed below:

• Spatial Extent and Diversity

• System Boundaries

• Renewability

• Heterogeneity

• Effects of Technological Development

• Substitutability

• Durability

• Recyclability

Spatial Extent and Diversity: Forests are occupy large areas of the landscape within which there are a variety of biota and a variety of human activities.

Energy and mineral resource deposits underlie relatively small portions of the landscape, some within forested areas and some in other types of ecosystems They have essentially no biotic variety of their own and no human activity within them although there is, of course, both biota and human activity on the surface above deposits.

Thus, while forest management addresses an extensive land area with great diversity, the management of energy and mineral deposits themselves is very site specific.

System Boundaries: System boundaries can be delineated by ownership or jurisdiction, by ecological criteria, physical criteria or socio-economic criteria. The forest resource system boundaries implied by the Montreal C&I appear to be based on ecological criteria. The socio-economic effects of forest resource systems are addressed by one of the Montreal Criteria, but the socio-economic components are not treated as part of the system. For example, there is no discussion of, and the C&I do not address, the characteristics of the processes in which forest commodities are used and the ways in which those processes affect the economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainability. In effect, the system boundaries implied by the Montreal C&I coincide with the spatial boundaries of forests.

As will be discussed, the Roundtable concluded that limiting the system boundaries to energy and mineral resource deposits and extraction processes would not be the best approach to use in developing sustainability indicators for E&M resources.

Renewability: Forests contain a variety of renewable resources, including timber and other commodities as well as the wide range of biota that comprise forest ecosystems. Because all of the living things in forest ecosystems are continually growing and reproducing, forests have the capacity to produce new resources, a capacity that is affected by management of the forests. The renewability of the resources in forest ecosystems makes it logical to apply the principles of sustainability to their management. In principle, a forest can be managed with the objective of continuing indefinitely a flow of commodities and environmentally produced services and the resulting social and economic benefits. This is a logical extension of the sustained yield concept that has been used in renewable resource management for decades.

In contrast, fossil energy and mineral resource deposits are non-renewable, at least on time scales of interest for human management and use. Energy and mineral deposits are generally regarded as exhaustible or depletable. At some time in the process of extraction of commodities from a deposit, costs will increase and/or yield will decline to the point at which it is no longer economical to continue extraction.

The Roundtable recognized at the outset that the non-renewability of energy and mineral resource deposits makes it illogical to seek to manage the deposits within a given management unit or area such as a National Forest in a manner that would yield a flow of energy and mineral commodities that would continue indefinitely. It is not appropriate or useful to adopt an objective of sustainable energy and mineral resource management that is analogous to the objective of sustainable forest management as envisioned by the Montreal C&I.

A different approach is clearly needed for E&M resources. Various participants in the Roundtable were experts in the processes through which energy and mineral commodities are used. They recognized that these processes and many of the forms of energy and materials they produce have characteristics that offer possibilities for contributing to sustainability in the U.S. as a whole. Development of indicators for assessing the extent to which such possibilities are being achieved requires an extension of the system boundaries to include these "downstream" processes.

The characteristics that make it possible for energy and mineral resource systems to contribute to sustainability include:

• the heterogeneity of resource deposits;

• the effects of technological advancement;

• the substitutability of various types of energy and materials;

• the durability of material goods and materials; and

• the recyclability of materials.

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Heterogeneity: Although no new fossil energy or mineral resources are being created in the physical sense, there are economic processes by which the flow of commodities and the benefits from their use can be sustained, if not indefinitely, at least for a long time. One such process results from the fact that resource deposits differ substantially in their characteristics. Some are easier to find than others. Some are larger. Some have higher quality resources. Some are much less costly to extract. And some are much closer to market. As a result, the economic process of finding and developing energy and mineral resources follows a general sequence in which deposits earlier in the sequence tend to be the ones that are easier to find, larger, higher quality and lower cost. As these deposits are "exhausted," the market orchestrates their replacement with deposits that tend to be somewhat harder to find, smaller, lower quality and higher cost.

This discussion is not intended to suggest that the sequence can continue indefinitely for a given commodity. There is clearly a finite limit to the extent of deposits in the earth’s crust containing a given mineral. It is merely intended to illustrate one aspect of the process through which the flow of benefits from the extraction of energy and mineral commodities can be maintained for a long period of time.

In the development of indicators and the assessment of the contribution of energy and mineral resource systems to sustainability, it is important to recognize the limitations of the information we have about the extent of currently producing deposits. While they are clearly finite and exhaustible, they are not the entire inventory of deposits in the earth’s crust. To assess the contribution of E&M systems to sustainability, we need indicators on the likely extent and characteristics of the population of deposits that remains to be developed, incomplete and uncertain though that information may be. We also need to include the exploration and development processes in the system to be assessed.

Effects of Technological Development: An aspect of energy and resource systems closely related to heterogeneity is the relationship between technology and the flow of commodities over the long run. Many resource deposits, including many that are currently known, have characteristics that make them uneconomical to develop under given economic conditions. That is to say, commodity prices are set by production from better deposits, leaving less favorable deposits unprofitable. They remain undeveloped, conserved in a sense, because their development in current economic conditions would reduce rather than improve the overall productivity of the economy.

Without technological development, the exploration and development sequence described above would lead to gradually increasing commodity and product prices, driven upward by increasing costs. Increasing commodity prices would tend to gradually reduce rather than sustain the benefits of using energy and minerals.

An offsetting trend results from technological development. Economic incentives to reduce costs drive the development of technologies that reduce the costs of finding and extracting energy and mineral resources. The result has been long periods of time during which energy and mineral commodity prices have been generally level or declining in real terms, despite the fact that during such periods, some deposits were exhausted while less favorable ones were brought into production.

Substitutability: Another feature of energy and mineral resource systems through which they can contribute to sustainability is the extensive possibility for substitution among them in economic production activities. The manufacturers of goods are constantly examining these opportunities, monitoring energy and material prices, and changing the design of their products and production processes to maintain or increase their profits. They respond to increasing prices of one material by reducing the amount of material used or shifting to a cheaper material. The prices of goods produced are thus buffered from individual commodity prices. Consumers benefit from the availability of goods at lower prices than would occur without such substitution. Thus, substitution is another economic process that can substantially extend the length of time during which energy and mineral resource systems can yield benefits.

Durability: Many of the materials produced from minerals are very durable. The extraction, refining and manufacturing processes used are often energy intensive. The energy used in this fashion remains embodied in the characteristics of the material for many years. Such materials are used in structures or capital goods which are themselves very durable, in some cases lasting hundreds of years with adequate maintenance. These materials have not been "consumed" but have been transformed from a stock of resource in the earth’s crust into a stock of resource in structures and goods. The flow of benefits from materials in structures and long-lived goods continues long after the physical flows through which the energy and minerals were transformed into those structures and goods. Thus, durability makes it possible for energy and materials to yield a long term flow of benefits.

Recyclability: Even after structures and goods have been removed from service or discarded, the materials themselves endure and can be reused if procedures are available to keep them from being dispersed or degraded. In subsequent uses, they can continue to yield benefits. The capacity to endure through many cycles of use means that materials can yield benefits over very long time periods.

Conclusions: It is useful to compare forest resource systems to energy and mineral/material resource systems in light of these characteristics. Sustainable forest management focuses on maintenance of the renewal capacities within forest ecosystems. The flow of outputs from a forest can be maintained over the long run by maintaining the capacities of the forest ecosystem to replace resources that are removed from the forest and by conserving the ecological capacities that support other desirable attributes of forests. The objective of sustainable forest management is to maintain the flow of renewable commodities and services, and their benefits, from forests.

Such an approach is not sufficient for fossil energy and mineral systems because of the differences noted above. Nevertheless, it is clearly possible for these resource systems to contribute to the overall sustainability of the U.S. if the opportunities that arise from both upstream and downstream processes are realized.

The Roundtable recognized that the opportunities that could be passed along to future generations through the operation of E&M resource systems depend not only on the outputs and effects of upstream processes, but also on the effects of downstream processes. To be able to assess the extent to which they are being realized, indicators are needed that address the effects on sustainability arising from downstream processes as well as from upstream processes.

The Roundtable’s insight into the opportunities for downstream processes to contribute to sustainability could be applied to renewable commodities extracted from forest and, to a lesser extent, from range ecosystems. Forests produce a variety of commodities and services. Of the commodities produced, wood is the greatest in volume. Wood is used to produce products a varying durability and recyclability. Some, like paper, are fairly short-lived while the maximum lifetime of some lumber and wood products is of the order of several hundred years. All can be recycled and reused, though not through as many cycles as materials produced from minerals.

The Roundtable’s approach would also focus indicator development for energy and mineral resource systems on the effects of the E&M resource systems on forest ecosystems and the environment in general. Many E&M processes have undesirable environmental effects. Some reduce short run environmental quality and thus detract from the other short run benefits of E&M use. Other environmental effects cause long run damages to productive capacities of environmental systems, reducing their capacity to meet the needs of future generations. Such long run effects of E&M resource systems should be included in assessing the contribution of those systems to sustainability in the U.S.

A major advantage of including downstream processes in the criteria and indicators is the resulting identification of opportunities for reducing undesirable effects of E&M resource systems on the environment through changes in downstream processes.