PrintModule 9 Overview
The first lessons of this course focused on the importance of minerals and the role of mining in modern society. The remainder of the lessons in the next seven modules concentrated on the “nuts and bolts” of mining – the five stages that make up the life cycle of a mine and the details of each stage. It only seems fitting then to conclude this course with a module that is concerned with ensuring that mining not only continues to exist in the U.S. but that it co-exists harmoniously with communities and society in general.
It’s an odd situation, isn’t it?
On the one hand, mined products are essential to virtually everything that makes up our standard of living; and as we saw in the first lessons, mining is a major contributor to the economy. While the mining industry employs only a few hundred thousand workers directly, it creates millions of down-stream jobs and contributes billions to the federal, state, and local tax base. So, mining not only provides the minerals essential to every nook and cranny of our lives, but it provides many jobs and societal benefits.
On the other hand, society is largely ignorant of the need for mining and its value, and that which people “know” about mining is generally negative. The commonly held views of mining as an environmentally damaging industry or mining as a dangerous occupation, for example, harken back to an industry of the early 20th century, not the 21st century. Nonetheless, mining activities often bring out vocal critics, and generally, the underlying sentiment is that mining is going to threaten something we care about – peace and quiet, traffic, water quality, the landscape, and so on. And furthermore, these critics would say that we don’t really need mining anyway!!!
These uninformed, but passionately held viewpoints often cause government agencies at all levels to adopt restrictive, and some would say draconian, practices and policies to limit mining activities. Just as a quick example, out of 80 mining countries, the U.S. ranks #78 in the time that it takes to obtain a mining permit! This creates a huge financial burden on companies and drives much investment out of the U.S. to other countries. This extraordinary delay, often exceeding a decade, is a direct result of public resistance to mining and regulatory processes that are easily abused to delay mining projects.
So, why should we care? There are many reasons, but perhaps near the top of the list is our desire to conduct mining operations with societal support over the long term. We, as mining professionals have a significant amount of control over whether or not the industry moves forward in conflict with society or in concert with it. Some would say that we need to take steps to make our industry more sustainable; and as mining engineers, we need to take more responsibility for the current mess and take proactive actions to change the future of the industry. This concept of making the industry more sustainable through our actions is the subject of this module.
In the first lesson, we’ll look at the definition of sustainability and the three dimensions of sustainable development. In the second lesson, we’ll identify the areas in which we need to take action to achieve sustainability. For now, let’s simply state that the three major action areas are: mining practices; community relations; and safety, health, and environment. We’ll look at these in more detail in the coming lessons, and with this as background, we can identify the learning outcomes for this module.
Learning Outcomes
At the successful completion of this module you should be able to:- Define what we mean by sustainable and explain it in terms of the Venn diagram for sustainable development;
- describe the three dimensions of sustainability for the mining industry, and cite examples of issues or questions considered with each dimension;
- identify specific mining practices that impact sustainability, and cite a few examples of how these practices could affect the equitable or bearable regions;
- describe an action plan to manage and improve community relations and public perception of mining;
- explain the effect of safety, health, and environmental performance on the “social license to mine,” and the relationship between this and the equitable and bearable regions;
- explain what is meant by statutory compliance and zero harm.
- explain why leadership, culture, and systems constitute a framework for achieving zero incidents and explain what is meant by each of these terms;
- explain the difference between a hazard and a risk;
- explain the plan-do-check-act actions of a health and safety management system;
- construct a risk assessment matrix;
- conduct a bow tie analysis for a given event, such as a mine explosion;
- describe how the HSMS approach directly applies to environmental performance and use surface water runoff as the example to illustrate the application of the approach.