Respondent 1

First we talking about mineral resources of all kinds and if so, shouldn’t you just say it?

The term sustainable development is thrown into this question and I need to ask why we can’t use this term rather than sustainability. We are really talking about sustaining development of minerals rather than sustaining minerals themselves. As we all know--minerals are a finite resource and we don’t grow them like we do trees. (Although many years ago, a congressman told our organization that God was making coal faster than we were leasing it)

In addressing this issue, I confine my comments to mineral resources and in the context of sustainable development as your question implied. The scope of minerals ranges from consumptive energy resources such as coal and oil and gas to recyclable minerals such as all kind of metals.

In the context of sustainable development, one must remember that sustainability is a relative word; relative to the demands for resource uses and consumption. Minerals form very slowly in geological time. However, if the demands for them are so little, the resource will last for a long long time. When the consumption exceeds the supply or replenishment, it creates shortage and from resource development point of view it is called "mining" of the resources. Use of ground water, a renewable resource, is a good example of such situation. So, how can we not to address the population growth/control question when we are trying to address the issue of "sustainable development"? Thus my question is whether the meaning of sustainability also should be tied to the concept of free of shortage, a world-wide shortage that cannot be solved through distribution.

I realize that the population question is too big and difficult for any country except China to address. Having raised the question, I am burying this question for now for the purpose of the remaining discussions. The concept of sustainable development is overarching in understanding the meaning of sustainability. Where a piece of land is preserved, both the renewable and non-renewable resources on and under the land are both preserved. The distinction between the two categories of the resources does not matter. Nevertheless, the decision to preserve matters in addressing the sustainable development, since the minerals can not be developed.

I believe that the distinction between renewable and non-renewable resources is not as important and useful as that between sustainable and non-sustainable resources in the context of sustainable development. The definition of sustainable resource then should consider a spectrum of meaning ranging from something regenerative (e.g. plants and animals), renewable (e.g. air and water) to anything recyclable, substitutable, to any resource that can be made more abundant (through uses of technology) and to last longer, and finally to the economist’s definition of sustainability which requires investing an appropriate portion of the mineral proceeds in human capital or man-made physical capital.

The meaning of sustainability should take into account this varying degrees of sustaining ability. Mineral resources are not regenerative with respective to the current rate of consumption. Some minerals, mainly metals can be recycled and when recycled, it is close to being renewed. Still other minerals such as coal and oil and gas are not regenerative, renewable or recyclable, yet they are substitutable as energy resources. Of course, all minerals fits into the last definition of transforming the mineral resource proceeds into capital investment.

Of great interest to mineral industry is the concept of sustainability by applying the technology to find more new reserves than reserves used or to change the resources into reserves. This definition of sustainability focuses on concept of making the resources more abundant or last much longer. In other words, borrowing an old cigarette commercial, A it is not how long you make it; it is how you make it (last) long.

I prefer that the definition of sustainability encompasses the whole spectrum of concepts expressed above. I am not in favor of dividing the sustainability paradigm into two camps i.e. fixed stock vs. opportunity cost perspectives. I believe that this whole-spectrum definition of sustainability encourages conservation of resources which is urgently needed in managing finite resources in the ever-increasing demand situation. This definition is particularly proper for the resource management and the society. In that regard, I endorse the five concepts employed (pages 7,8,9 and 10) in the Mineral Resources and Sustainability published by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, in 1996.

In her paper, Dr. Shields introduced economic, social and environmental (E-S-E) sustainability for energy and mineral (E&M) resources and presented three lists of potential indicators relating the E-S-E sustainability to the E&M resources. Most indicators are impact indicators: either E-S-E impacts of E&M resource development, or the E-S-E impacts (or constrains) on E&M resource development. A few of the indicators are truly indicators for sustainability of E&M resources that I have also presented above in the discussion of the meaning of sustainability. The E-S-E constraints on the E&M resource development should not be considered as indicators of sustainability. Rather, they are factors (including technology) that must be considered in determining the mineral reserves from resources. For example, where the negative impacts on the environment (including ecosystem) is great enough to rule out development, the E&M resources become unavailable and therefore, its reserve base is reduced to minable reserve base accordingly. 

Here is my submission to Task Force Question 1: What do you think
sustainability means for nonrenewable resources, given that sustainable
development has environmental, economic, and social dimensions?
Sustainability for nonrenewable resources means producing mineral and energy
resources which meet society economic and social needs without jeopardizing the long-term health of the earth’s ecosystems and the ability of future generations to fulfill their needs. The social, economic and environmental benefits and costs of extracting and using nonrenewable resources should be evaluated at local/regional levels and balanced on a global scale. Sustainability should not mean the maintenance or preservation of environmental conditions or ecosystems at all locations, especially, in the short-term. Some areas because of their rich mineral values may be valued chiefly for their use in providing minerals rather than for agricultural or other amenities. On the other hand, some areas may be valued more for other resources or declared unsuitable to mining because valued ecosystem’s cannot sustain themselves in the face of mining and /or other environmental insults. Technology can help to equalize these tensions by providing for efficient extraction and better mitigation of environmental impacts, as well as, lead to the development of substitutes for scarce minerals or mineral use which jeopardizes the environment and future generations.

Developing an answer to this question raises an important issue of semantics. Should we limit ourselves to the meanings of the term sustainability that have become common in the sustainable development movement? Or should we, like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, proclaim that words mean what we say they mean in order to evolve better concepts and ways of communicating them? For the purposes of this exercise, I will begin with the current usage and suggest why we should proclaim a slightly different meaning for sustainability.

Renewable resource management has for many years been based on the concept of sustained yield. In principle, sustained yield management allows a finite set of renewable resources such as those within the National Forests to yield a nondeclining stream of a renewable commodity like timber.

The concept of sustainable development encompassing economic, environmental and social dimensions appears to have prompted an extension of the concept of sustained yield for renewable resources in which the desired yield was expanded from the physical commodity (e.g., timber) to include a wider variety of economic, environmental and social outputs of renewable resource management institutions. Thus the Montreal Criteria for Sustainable Forestry include:

This was a logical and positive step. It appears to be quite reasonable and useful to shift from management that seeks to sustain timber output (albeit subject to some constraints) to management that sustains other desirable forest outputs or attributes as well. Essentially all of these outputs are renewable or, in the case of the last three, can be restored. It should be possible to manage a finite set of forest resources to yield this broader set of outputs over the long term.

The word "sustainability" generally means "the capacity to be sustainable" or "able to continue indefinitely." In this context it is logical to say that "sustainability for forest resources means the condition in which there is a strong expectation that the total array of outputs could continue to be produced indefinitely." The C&I for sustainable forest management are consistent with this meaning.

Does it make sense and is it useful to use the same approach for nonrenewable resources? Should we develop C&I for sustainable nonrenewable resource management that address just the outputs of nonrenewable resources? Should we say that "sustainability for nonrenewable resources means the condition in which there is a strong expectation that the total array of outputs from those resources would continue to be produced indefinitely?"

If we do, we confront the obvious and inherent contradiction between the "able to continue indefinitely" meaning of sustainability and the perception that nonrenewable resources are exhaustible. It is clearly unreasonable to expect that a finite set of nonrenewable resources can be managed in way that gives a stream of outputs that will continue indefinitely.

One way to solve this problem is to regard sustainability as a characteristic of a larger system such as the combined economic, environmental and social subsystems (the EES System) within which the human population exists. Although many components or aspects of such a system may be relatively short lived, it is reasonable and useful to talk about sustainability of the system as a whole. Even in some resource categories cannot have sustainability, the EES System can.

There are in fact examples of similar usage of the term sustainability in related fields. In ecology, an ecosystem is regarded as having sustainability because it continues to exist and function for an extended period even though the individuals of the various species within the ecosystem do not live very long and even though there is significant change in the mix of species or in their genotypes. By analogy, it is reasonable to talk about the sustainability of the EES System even though the individual components are not long lived and parts of the system change over time. In fact, it seems likely that the capacity to change appropriately is a key to such sustainability.

If we use sustainability in this full-system sense, then although individual nonrenewable resource deposits or even classes of nonrenewable resources may be exhaustible, they can contribute to the sustainability of the larger system if its processes are structured appropriately. In effect, we are forced to consider a larger set of processes, not just those specific to managing the resource category in question. I believe that this is one of the important opportunities provided by the sustainable development concept. It provides a more holistic view to complement the reductionist/specialization view that dominates modern organization and management.

Another key feature of the sustainable development concept is that it focuses our attention on ultimate ends. "Sustainability" has come to mean not only "able to continue indefinitely," but also something more specific about the performance of the EES System and the condition of the human population that we wish to continue. We can take this part of the meaning of sustainability from the most widely used definition of sustainable development, that offered by the Brundtland Commission. The Brundtland definition focuses on the meeting of human needs for both the current and future generations. Thus, it is appropriate to define sustainability as a condition of the EES System in which human needs (and, by extension, wants) are met at a level that is likely to continue for many generations.

Thus, by "sustainability for nonrenewable resources" we mean the contribution of nonrenewable resources to the capacity of the EES System to continue to meet human needs and wants over many generations.

There are many ways in which energy and mineral resources can contribute to the capacity of the EES System to meet human needs and wants over many generations. For example, they can be used to build tangible capital and infrastructure and to develop new technologies that are able to increase the capacity of the EES System to meet human needs and wants in the future. In the case of mineral resources, they can build up the stock of processed materials available in the anthrosphere. Future reuse of these materials can contribute to meeting the needs and wants of future generations. Furthermore, energy resources con contribute more rather than less to recycling and reuse.

The "full system" meaning of sustainability can help us avoid some of the limitations of organizational specialization and linear concepts of resource flows. Our dominant paradigm in resource management is that we have deposits or concentrations of various resources on the land which are managed by specialized organizations such as the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Commodities extracted from these resources provide inputs to the linear economic processes that produce materials, intermediate goods and final goods which are then consumed yielding wastes which are discharged into the environment. the terms "renewable," "nonrenewable," and "exhaustible" are appropriate when we focus on the resources and the processes by which they come into being and when we view them as providing inputs to a linear economic system that ends with discharge of waste.

However, it is becoming more widely accepted that, if our systems are to evolve toward sustainability, we will need to focus not only on the resources on the land, but on the complete set of processes by which they can help to satisfy human needs and wants in both current and future generations. Furthermore, we will need to recognize and develop the potential of economic processes to be looped rather than linear. The "full system" meaning of sustainability will promote both.

It is obvious that a disadvantage of this approach is that a substantial set of the processes involved are outside of the responsibility of our resource management institutions. The Forest Service has responsibility for managing the National Forests, including the energy and mineral resources therein, but not for the processes that determine how the commodities extracted are used and reused. However, an advantage is that it encourages our management institutions to develop collaborations with other management institutions that have such processes within their organization.

In the context of mining, sustainability means recognizing

that mining is a "temporary use of the land." This means

that mining must be organized and conducted to ensure

that long term productivity of the land is restored, and that

permanent degradation of the lands and waters and their

resources is avoided. It further means that mining

activities should not be conducted where these conditions

cannot be met.

Regardless of the resource in question, sustainability must be approached with community values in mind. There is no single answer to the question you seek. Additionally, the positivistic assumption that the public good can be found using a formula is erroneous. To be successful, sustainability requires community buy-in, not more expert opinion. Communities must eventually face the trade-offs associated with changes in lifestyle and consumption. Petroleum consumption is, after all, what drives exploration. Reducing the amount of land available for such exploration (such as the Forest Service has continued to do over the last decade or more) only serves to drive exploration over-seas where less environmentally conscious development occurs. Is that sustainable? Should we take a global view?

The Department of energy project that natural gas consumption will increase to 32 TCF by the year 2015. The factors influencing this increased demand include 1. the electric industry’s deregulation 2. Regulatory pressure to meet new air quality standards, and 3. The Kyoto agreement. The forest service has already restricted oil and gas development on more than 80 percent of the land it manages. The challenge of finding a balance between sustainability and development is erroneous, the current challenge is finding a balance between preservation and sustainability. Many believe our public lands are so heavily restricted that significant shortages of natural gas will occur before 2010 due to lack of available lands for exploration.

Natural gas is a land locked hydro-carbon and a clear bridge to more sustainable sources of energy and transportation. Currently sustainable energy cannot begin to power our society. If the forest service want’s to play a role in moving towards cleaner sources of energy it must go back and look at the lands it has already removed from development and consider which of those lands can be responsibly developed. Currently, the forest service is only a hypothetical player in regards to oil and gas development. For example, the current road building moratorium has but stopped oil and gas exploration on FS lands. Two years ago significant known reserves of natural gas in Montana were entirely locked away from development. Over one million acres of land in the Missouri and Dakota grasslands is about to undergo a planning change that would prevent oil and gas development.

The answer is not clear, but what is evident is a notion best articulated by National Association of Counties that values do not come from the top down, they must be developed from the bottom up. "Built by the community, a sustainable community is founded on the notion that local problems require local solutions. And because each locality has its own individual strengths and challenges, each locality must determine its own future course." (NACO- www.naco.org/ncgw/4htm)

If this group is truly concerned about the macro issues of energy development, we should not take them out of context from the other macro issues and try to deal with them separately. A systems approach is definitely needed and I would be happy to expand upon that idea for anyone who is not familiar with the concept. Likewise the Forest Service would be naïve to think that it can effect sustainable planning without the cooperation of other federal agencies. Sustainable planning cannot be handled in a piece-meal fashion, the results are predictably skewed by a lack of reality and input from stakeholders.

1. Income from sale of non-renewable resources is invested so as to guarantee an income stream at least equivalent to that from the sale of the resources.

2. Use of that income stream and timing for using the resources should also guarantee availability of substitutes for the resource in question when it runs out. That doesn't necessarily mean the country itself must develop the substitutes. For a large country which is a major supplier of the resource it could, but for a small country with only a small part of the market, or for a small country with a large share of the market but not much else (e.g. Kuwait), it could mean making sure the funds are available to obtain substitutes elsewhere.

3. Externalities from accessing/processing the resource are internalized (i.e. costs of preventing environmental harm are initially borne by mining industry) and presumably passed on to the consumers.

I'm not really sure what "social sustainability" means, and the interpretations of it that I've heard, I'm not sure I agree with. It often sounds a lot like "everyone should be able to keep making a living in the same way they do now and living in the same kind of society indefinitely into the future." In the contexts where I hear about this, it seems to relate in particular to so-called "indigenous people" - though I'm not sure how that is defined. I think indigenous people have to be directly resource-dependent, but I'm not sure. When I hear how some of my colleagues talk about preserving indigenous ways of life, it sounds a bit like educated urban Americans romanticizing life in the forest or in the African bush, and perhaps not realizing that some of those indigenous people might prefer to have a few more educated urban American amenities like transportation and communications and electricity and a physically easy way of life.

[Of course, when we're talking about things like the Ok Tedi

situation in PNG, that would clearly qualify as disturbing an indigenous way

of life, and it's clearly bad. But that would fall under the "internalizing

externalities" theme of what I said above, it doesn't have to raise the

issue of social sustainability.]

I still believe the Brundtland definition -- development that meets the needs of

the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their

own needs -- applies to the development of non-renewable resources very well.

The controversy lies in what we mean by the word 'nonrenewable'. It is true

that when we take a chunk of coal out of the ground, that that chunk of coal can

never be removed again. It is also true that there is a finite amount of coal

in the Earth, and that the possibility exists that at some point in the future,

every bit of coal may be removed from it.

However! Geology has demonstrated that the Earth has an extensive and well

dispersed supply of just about everything we've ever mined. Some of it is easy

to extract, much is not. If we could magically transport material from

underground to where it is needed, the supply of minerals approaches a

practically infinite supply.

That said, here is my personal strategy for sustainability:

- take and use what we reasonably need today

- reuse and recycle where we can, and continually develop new technologies

for these

- continually develop new technologies to extract minerals from 'difficult'

sources (low-grade ores, thin seams, extreme environments, highly populated

areas, etc.)

- do all of these with current economics, energy efficiency, social impacts,

and environmental concerns at the forefront

In my opinion, if we do these things, nonrenewable resources can (and will) be

developed sustainably. But we must make an adequate investment in the

technologies that will allow us to accomplish goals more efficiently as the

tasks become more difficult.

First, mining is a renewable resource industry. Though individual mines/mineral deposits have a finite life, the existing supply of natural mineral wealth is virtually limitless in human terms. The supply of identified economic reserves is constantly being renewed and the natural processes that create new resources are still at work.

Second, in practical terms, the only physical constraints to sustainability are technological. Constant improvements have and must continue to occur in the areas of extraction, recovery, and environmental controls. As long as the normal evolution of industrial practices and processes continue in these three areas, there is no need for mineral shortages to ever occur. Thus, mineral renewability is readily sustainable, though it takes a form much different than practiced with biological resources.

Third, mineral sustainability does have a critical organic component that is the ultimate limiting factor. It is comprised of the people in the industry itself and the larger society being served. This component is the only barrier to sustainability of energy and mineral resources. There is a push-pull relationship that must be mutually satisfactory for mineral sustainability to continue anywhere. One side is a commitment by miners to supply materials in a manner that is acceptable to the human community it serves. The other side is societal acceptance of their role of creating a demand for the raw materials supplied by all methods of mineral extraction, coupled with an understanding that mineral extraction is not always a pretty business.

The dynamic created has the potential to create a negative feedback loop; the same society that requires increasingly a large amounts of raw materials to sustain its economy, also becomes so sensitive to the environmental impacts that result from supplying that need it discourages the mineral extraction. While reducing demand for new mineral resources will probably play a role in achieving sustainability, every effort must be made to achieve such goals in a manner that does not create new, and potentially disruptive, problems for our society.

Therefore-

Finally, it is obvious that the culture and economy of the United States will remain dependent on a steady supply of raw materials from mines for the foreseeable future. This suggests that some of the most immediate mineral sustainability questions for the Task Force to consider are:

A. Will the U.S. "sustainable" mineral supply come primarily from domestic or foreign sources?

* Make sure all tangible life cycle costs are internalized.

There does appear to be a general concept that could act as an aid to guide the overall effort. That concept is the avoidance of wasting mineral resources. The more literal, somewhat archaic use of the term could serve the task force well.

Mined materials that have been introduced to commerce, especially metallic minerals, can be repeatedly utilized. For example, it is not unusual for relatively expensive manufactured components to be refurbished. Since this is often not economically feasible, significant quantities of materials are recycled as raw feedstock. This has the practical effect of reducing the demand for newly extracted minerals. This conservation of already available mineral wealth is a key factor in sustainability. If loss from the system can not be controlled, the chances increase of demand outstripping available supply. The possibility of such events is especially plausible in light of the expected increase in the standard of living among citizens of LDCs. Fortunately, there is no reason to assume the residents of these nations will embrace the highly material, consumption oriented culture of the United States. Nonetheless, the sheer number of people involved strongly suggests that even modest gains in the global standard of living will translate into sizable increases in demand for minerals.

It appears reasonable to anticipate a growing demand for newly extracted minerals over the long term. The mining industry should find solace in this expectation. Increased reuse and recycling are not strategies to end mining, but to better ensure that supply will not outstrip demand. History has shown that price spikes tend to be very short lived boons for industry. Arguably, they tend to be disruptive of the orderly utilization of mineral resources and can actually reduce the viability of domestic mineral industries . Two prime examples of this phenomena are uranium companies and the oil and gas producers. Both flew high in the 1970’s and now struggle to maintain a viable presence domestically.

There are significant economic challenges to be overcome in order to reduce mineral waste in the United States. The most widely employed remedies are direct subsidies, other incentives, and mandatory regulations. These work adequately in areas covered by above items 1 and 3. Though the market dynamics are artificially induced, the resulting systems can function quite well. A good example is the mandatory recycling of non-metallic automobile components in Europe. While forcing certain technologies and imposing some limits on material choices, conforming vehicles being manufactured are competitive in their respective markets.

Resolving item 2 above is an extremely complex proposition in market driven, consumer based economy. There is ample anecdotal evidence that many products are considered a completely frivolous "waste of resources" by some members of American society and others have a disdain for what is often referred to as conspicuous consumption. Even in instances where "personal freedom" is not an issue, normal market competition and concerns about inflation tend to dampen rapid movement toward more costly design solutions in mass market products.

In regard to item 1 above, LDCs and the former Soviet Union traditionally led in this area. Direct subsidies helped ensure that mineral recovery was maximized. Such policies are certainly based on a big picture view of the given national economy, its place in the world economic scene, and perceived social needs. Though these polices have nothing to with sustainability (except maybe political for a given regime), there may be lessons to be learned from examining case studies. However, it is critical to note that policies which are workable in the political atmosphere that allows for a centrally managed economy, may be politically unacceptable or even illegal in a country like the United States.

Nonetheless, United States domestic policy since the 1850’s is to provide financial incentives to encourage hard-rock mineral development by private interests. The U.S. incentive system is not a direct subsidy as used by some LDCs, but works to reduce or eliminate certain transaction costs. For example, obtaining the right to hard rock mineral deposits on public lands requires only the payment of a relatively modest annual fee of $100.00 for each mining claim of up to 20 acres (8 hectares). There are no other payments due the federal government. In contrast, to acquire private minerals it is common for lessees to make a substantial payment upon signing of the lease, annual advance royalty payments until production begins, and then pay a royalty typically ranging from 1.5% to 15% of the gross value of the mineral produced. The range is dependent on a long list of factors, but suffice to say it is rarely based on the on the market price of the final commodity. Several examples will illustrate this point. Royalty is paid on the value of a barrel of crude oil at the well-head, not the price of gasoline in a filling station. Another applicable to hard rock mining is royalty can be paid on the value of the mineral at the mine mouth prior to any value added steps or later after smelting, with certain cost deduction being allowed.

The incentives also have a de facto function of allowing more mineral to be recovered at a given mine site than might otherwise be the case. The relationship is very straight forward; overall production costs are reduced by lowering initial acquisition costs as well as increasing rate of return by not imposing a royalty. As a result, cut-off grades that would be uneconomic under a leasing program remain low enough to justify continued mine operations. Thus, a legitimate issue of the debate concerning the federal Mining Law is how the desire for increased revenue will affect other national goals and interests. This is strictly a policy decision, though many aspects are well supported by facts and can be objectively analyzed.

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Experience indicates that social aspects not easily measurable in quantifiable economic terms are normally debated in the political arena. Such societal judgement calls are frequently institutionalized as public policy through statute, regulations, and official administrative procedures. The creation of the National Task Force on Energy and Mineral Sustainability appears to exemplify such an institutional response. In this example, the central government perceives a public policy need to reduce risk and increase predictability in regard to natural resource development and utilization.

The mission of the Task Force is to develop "sustainability" policy for implementation in the United States. However, project has linkage to international protocols and treaties that enjoy strong support within the administrative branch of the central government. The legislative branch of the central government, especially the United States Senate, has shown a notable reluctance to formally endorse the sustainability concept and several key international treaties developed by the United Nations. Nonetheless, it is evident that many legislators support expanding the U.S. role, and commitment, in such internationalized environmental initiatives. Thus, it seems inevitable that the Task Force will eventually need to consider the ramifications of proposed domestic policies on other nations, particularly LDCs.

Projects normally produce tangible socio-economic benefits that outweigh any disruption to local communities or ecological functions.

* Any potentially adverse social affects will be mitigated by project proponents.

* "Special areas" where commercial or industrial activities are not allowed will be clearly identified.

- Cultural considerations (i.e. Historic Places).

- Ecologically critical (i.e. Wilderness Areas).

- Unique aesthetic qualities or geological assemblages (i.e. National Parks).

* Avoid need for long-term (> 20 years) active maintenance of site following closure.

Other issues in the sustainability debate do not appear to be driven nor dependent on mining activities per se. Therefore, they should be dealt with separately in a specialized forum. One example is transferring wealth to LDCs.

There are issues that are crosscutting, such as mine siting. This is both an environmental issue (relative reclamation risk, unavoidable impacts to unique biological resources or habitats) and social issues (esthetic considerations). The latter is a social issue since it is completely subjective and independent of quantifiable traditional environmental parameters such as air and water quality. That is, a mine may operate to avoid air and water pollution, but still be considered by some people to be an unacceptable visual intrusion on a landscape.

Generally speaking, the public is reasonable in its overall expectations and tends to focus on results. A critical variable is the perceived commitment of the mining industry to work with local communities and protect the environment. Our society has rising expectations in regard to how the mining industry should perform its work. As long as people have confidence that miners are committed to operating in a responsible manner, then continued support for mining will manifest itself via the political process. The current era gas offered ample proof that societal approval is not a given. If citizens do not trust the industry, their tolerance for risk plummets. A good example is the recent a passage of an initiative in Montana banning the use of cyanide as a reagent at new mine operations. This occurred in state with a strong mining heritage. The people of Montana are not unfamiliar with mining issues; the know the good and the bad. For years they had been tolerant of the foibles of the industry, so why the change of heart? Some would like to blame the liberal politics emanating from Missoula or newcomers from "Hollywood." Though these are certainly aggravating factors, the simple truth is more likely that a voting majority of Montana’s citizens no longer trusted the mining community to do the right thing. So, they reduced their collective exposure to a risky industry.

If viewed in the conventional sense, sustainable minerals development is almost an oxymoron. At least when speaking about discrete assemblages of non-renewable resources, the idea of sustaining them, in the sense of making them last forever, is not workable. Ore bodies are depleted, petroleum reserves exhausted and quarries are mined out. Almost every country has landscapes of bleak slag piles, abandoned towns and gaping quarries as testimony to this fact.

A more fruitful way of looking at sustainability and minerals development may be to move along the lines of how minerals development contributes to or detracts from the more general objective of sustainable or environmentally sustainable development.

If we avoid the question of what is sustainable minerals development and focus instead on how minerals development affects the environmental, social and economic dimensions of a society, we may develop some useful indicators of the impacts of minerals development. At a general level of analysis, the environmental and social accounting is likely to be somewhat crude, but may provide a sense of what impact minerals development has on sustainable development overall. When assessments are made of site specific minerals development activities, environmental, social and economic conditions can be measured with some precision. These assessments can provide very useful information on impacts to sustainable development at the local level.

Most of the work on sustainable development has focused on the developing world, where mineral development is very often crucial to economic and social progress. Minerals development in these countries is seen as a source of cash for imports, revenue for governments, and a provider of upward mobility for whole communities. Minerals development thus becomes part of a strategy for sustaining development contributing to the human and material capitol necessary for modernization. In the context of the Third World, and equally in much of the rural West in the United States, the question of whether minerals development is to proceed has largely been answered in the affirmative. The issue becomes how it will take place and what steps will be taken to mitigate its impacts.

Can mineral resources be exploited in a way that allows development to be sustained? A threshold question is the impact of minerals development on other resources and uses. Does development of a mineral resource permanently eliminate other resources or is mining regarded as a temporary land use which is followed by restoration to its earlier productive capacity. Under this scheme, how, and how well, minerals development is managed becomes important in promoting sustainability..

Sustainability of nonrenewable resources sounds like an oxymoron, and is,

if the words are used in their strictest sense. Nonrenewable resources

have a finite availability, and their use cannot be sustained indefinitely.

However, their use can be extended under certain circumstances, if we

understand the environmental (and economic) consequences of their

extraction and use and implement mitigation efforts. Sustainability

requires not only innovative and creative exploration for yet undiscovered

nonrenewable resources, but also implementation of technologies that

increase efficiency of their use, conservation, resource substitution, and

recycling.

To answer this question let’s first establish an understanding of the

term sustainable development. The World Commission on Environment and

Development (The Brundtland Commission) defined sustainable development

as

"Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising

the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Now in applying this definition to non-renewable resources we are faced with a paradox since utilization of finite resources at some point in the future such resources will be depleted and hence not available to future generations.

Therefore to apply sustainability development to nonrenewable mineral and energy resources one must either find ways to extend the usability of such resources or find substitutes for such nonrenewable resources.

Further, the importance of such resources to the national economic engine must also be considered. Not only does the production of raw materials and energy fuels provide a significant contribution to the national economy, but without the production of both raw materials and fuel to support the manufacturing and production sectors then their end products are not longer available to contribute to the national economy.

In order to extend the life of the nations mineral and energy resource base it will be necessary to ensure that the technology used to extract these resources are the most efficient, competitive and environmental responsible.

Further since the recovery of these mineral and energy resources can have negative impacts upon other important national resources such as our forest and parks, the methods for such recovery operations must be conducted in a manner to minimize any potential negative impacts or in a manner that has only temporary impacts on these other resources.

Another means to address the sustainability of mineral and energy resources is the development of new or improved technologies for the extraction, production, and utilization of these raw materials and their final products. In addition, the development of new improved materials with longer service life or improved recyclability will allow the extension of these nonrenewable resources for future generations.

Finally, while it is not always the most desirable means, improved regulatory control of the extraction and utilization of nonrenewable resource may be necessary to ensure efficient and improve recovery with minimal environmental impacts.

Nonrenewable resources are taken to mean resources created in geologic time. The time frame for sustainable development is understood to be an indefinite period of time, shorter than geologic time. Resources are understood to include minerals and energy resources but exclude fossil water and air

Since the earth is a closed system, to be sustainable the use of these resources must satisfy the criteria of no infinite sources or sinks. Continuous extraction, and disposal of nonrenewable resources in the environment violates the necessary criteria for sustainability. In our current industrial system, depending on the particular resource in question, either the source or sink requirement is the most immediately critical. For some resources criticality is not an immediate issue. For example, based on current extraction, use, and disposal patterns the source and sink issues for the following resources are considered critical:

Petroleum - sink and source

Coal- sink

Heavy metals- sink

Sand and gravel- neither for a very long time

Most metals- sink

Fertilizers sink and possibly source

Use of nonrenewable resources is not necessarily synonymous with extraction and disposal. Sustainable use of nonrenewable resources, at whatever level society requires to satisfy its economic and social needs, is theoretically possible as long as there are no unsustainable losses to environmental sinks. Of course enough energy (which also must be sustainable) to drive the system is necessary. Currently we are a very long way from this situation. However, lead and iron material flows, with recycling rates on the order of 50% or better, are moving in the right direction.

The use of fossil resources for energy is not sustainable. Additionally, non-energy resources which are used in an inherently dissipative fashion, such as fertilizers, also violate the criteria for sustainability. For agriculture and forestry to be sustainable, absent the use of fertilizer, the end products of these activities must report to the originating site.

To reach a sustainable situation requires that, on a resource specific basis, we gradually, or rapidly in some cases, stop extracting and disposing of nonrenewable resources. Unless material well being is to suffer, a growing population exacerbates the difficulty in reaching this goal.

Sustainability for non-renewable resources such as oil and gas has two aspects: 1) as it applies to recovery of resources, such as oil and gas, and 2) as it applies to the impacts of recovery.

First, sustainability means wise practices in recovery of the resource, taking a life-cycle view of recovery. This includes getting the maximum amount of economically recoverable resource out of the ground, leaving as little as possible behind, and minimizing waste. Policies should be geared toward this end, encouraging proper reservoir management and the application of improved recovery technologies. Premature abandonment should be avoided because that wastes resource. This approach contributes to economic sustainability.

Secondly, sustainability means there should be no significant long-term adverse environmental, economic, or social impacts of development. While some impacts are unavoidable, they should be temporary and reversible. Development activities should be planned in the context of multiple use so as not to preclude other valued uses of the same area, and indeed, may contribute to the long term sustainability of other uses, e.g., through the sharing of facilities, such as roads, through wise use of mineral revenues, or through mitigation activities. At the same time, other uses should not preclude managed resource recovery.

I still believe the Brundtland definition -- development that meets the needs of

the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their

own needs -- applies to the development of non-renewable resources very well.

The controversy lies in what we mean by the word 'nonrenewable'. It is true that when we take a chunk of coal out of the ground, that that chunk of coal can never be removed again. It is also true that there is a finite amount of coal in the Earth, and that the possibility exists that at some point in the future, every bit of coal may be removed from it.

However! Geology has demonstrated that the Earth has an extensive and well dispersed supply of just about everything we've ever mined. Some of it is easy to extract, much is not. If we could magically transport material from underground to where it is needed, the supply of minerals approaches a practically infinite supply.

That said, here is my personal strategy for sustainability:

- take and use what we reasonably need today

- reuse and recycle where we can, and continually develop new technologies

for these

- continually develop new technologies to extract minerals from 'difficult'

sources (low-grade ores, thin seams, extreme environments, highly populated

areas, etc.)

- do all of these with current economics, energy efficiency, social impacts,

and environmental concerns at the forefront

In my opinion, if we do these things, nonrenewable resources can (and will) be developed sustainably. But we must make an adequate investment in the technologies that will allow us to accomplish goals more efficiently as the tasks become more difficult.

I'm not sure I qualify as a member of the task force but this Delphi process looks like fun. So here is a one sentence answer to Question 1.

The concept of "sustainability" applied to nonrenewable resources means minimizing the damage to the environment in the area where nonrenewable resources are being extracted so that those areas can be used for other productive or recreational activities by future generations.

Sustainability for nonrenewable resources means:

On Government Lands: An operational environment where economic development is facilitated; where access is assured to help meet the complex demands and needs of the nation; where public participation in decision making is encouraged and responded to; and where public trust is kept by concurrently mitigating negative impacts associated with development and use.

On Private Lands: An operational environment where economic development is facilitated; where access is assured to meet the complex demands of the nation; where public input into decision making is considered, and responded to; and where public trust is kept by concurrently mitigating negative impacts associated with development and use.

Our Sustainability Policy states that to us "sustainability means the exploration, design, construction, operation, and closure of mines in a manner that respects and responds to the social, environmental and economic needs of present generations and anticipates those of future generations in the communities and countries where we work." Mines are temporary and ore bodies are eventually depleted. We can progressively reduce, though never eliminate, our footprint on the earth. Mining can however make contributions to sustainable economic and social development, while returning sites to a state compatible with a healthy environment. We need to demonstrate ever more convincingly that mining converts a mineral resource in the ground into sustainable improvements in peoples lives. Our vision of sustainability allows mining to be responsive to society’s environmental, social and economic needs. Our vision f mining and sustainability will require change and will be a work in progress. The pace and consistency in ho we progress towards sustainability will be how we will be judged.

There are environmental and socio-economic costs to making a living on this planet. Every human activity including the extraction and use of non-renewables has effects in both the short and long term. We must decide just what short and long term environmental, economic, and social effects are acceptable and which are not. This is a political discussion about just what, exactly, we wish to sustain. It means creating policies, laws, taxes, and regulations that help shape human behavior to keep those effects within the bounds we consider sustainable. Sustainable development requires that we act so as to meet the needs of today while ensuring that those efforts do not diminish the opportunities of future generations. In the context of sustainable development, value gained from mineral and energy extraction must include re-investment in the productive resources of a country – infrastructure, education, and productive economic activities. Mere depletion of high-grade resources will do little to ensure opportunities for future generations. Sustainability must also mean that the activities associated with the extraction, processing, transport, use, and emissions (waste) of minerals and energy do not overwhelm natural systems abilities to assimilate waste, emissions, extractions, and landscape modifications.

Can biotic systems bear up under wastes and emissions generated by resource extraction and use. All resource extraction has the potential to disrupt habitat. The movement of earth to access resources and to create structures can massively affect local plant and animal communities, change hydrology, and affect the normal movement of animals. Even the existence of plant, tailing piles, settling ponds, dams, roads and rail, housing, and other infrastructure associated with mining and energy production will disrupt local ecosystems. We must use the potential effects on biotic systems as one characterization of the sustainability of mineral extraction and use.

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