Name: Olayiwola Barakat Olawumi
Genre: Mineral Exploration
MINING AND MINERAL EXPLOITATION: PROS AND CONS
Mining or mineral exploitation is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef or placer deposit. These deposits form a mineralized package that is of economic interest to the miner.
Mining can impact lives both positively and negatively, while positive impact such as: employment and community development projects are important, they do not offset the potential negatives by: forcing people from their homes and lands, preventing people from accessing clean land and water, impacting on people's health and livelihoods, causing division in communities as to who benefits from the mine and who doesn't, changing the social dynamics of a community, exposing people to harassment by mine or government security.
These impacts are exacerbated when local people aren't consulted and are given no information about a plan mine, even worse is when people are not given a say on whether or not a mine should be developed. Mining is quite important to extract large amount of precious metals and other natural resources out of the ground, however, it also implies many serious problem. The pros and cons of mining are examined below:
The Pros
- To assure the supply of important resources: One of the important benefit of mining is that it helps to supply humanity with important natural resources of various sort for example, numerous industries rely on fossil fuels or on metals in their production processes. Without mining, the production of many important goods and also our mobility will greatly suffer, hence, mining can be crucial in the supply of important resources that are needed to ensure a high overall quality of life.
- Employment opportunities: Another importance of mining is the provision of high number of jobs for the local population especially in many poor localities where unemployment rates are quite high therefore, jobs in mining are crucial for the local population in order to make enough money to survive.
- Development and progression of poor regions: When big mining companies settle in poor regions, the government will have higher overall tax revenue, in turn more money can be spent on important infrastructure projects which are crucial to improving the overall quality of life of people which may include construction of roads, hospital etc
- Major source of income: Mining serve as the major source of income of some countries as they don't have many other industries, they are still able to make a fortune from extracting precious natural resources.
- Increase in economic growth: Mining also helps to increase the overall GDP and the economic growth of a country where more people get employed by mining corporations, they will be able to consume more products. In turn, tax revenues as well as the profit of other companies may increase as well.
The Cons
- Land pollution: One big problem of mining is that can lead to serious land pollution. Quite often, large amount of soils are moved and processed, many harmful chemicals are used in mining on a regular basis in order to extract precious minerals from the dirt. These chemicals can end up in the soil and contaminate it, many bugs and other microorganisms which are beneficial to the soil may also die off.
- Water pollution: When the soil gets contaminated in mining processes, the quality of groundwater will also be at risk. During rainfalls, the contaminants in the soil will be washed through the soil and contaminate the groundwater leading to a big problem and the scarcity of clean water in the society.
- Deforestation: Mining can also contribute to serious level of deforestation since large areas of land have to be used for mining processes, high number of trees have to be cut down. Trees are natural storage spaces for huge amount of greenhouse gases, through deforestation, those greenhouse gases may also be emitted into the atmosphere which also contributes to global warming in the long run. Mining is not only detrimental to the local floral and fauna but can also be the cause of the speed up in climate change.
- Depletion of natural resources: Many resources extracted through mining are non-renewable and sooner or later a proper alternative to conventional mining will be needed since there will simply not be enough natural resources left to be mined.
- Destruction of natural habitat: Since mining makes use of large areas of land, significant deforestation, habitat of many animals and plants will be destroyed. Many animals will have to relocate in order to survive, however, since plants cannot relocate, they may greatly drop in population. Through habitat destruction, many species may also become endangered or even extinct as many animals and plants are quite used to their natural habitat since they evolved in them for thousands or even millions of years. Therefore, many of those organisms may not be able to adjust to the new living conditions properly, especially species that are already low in population.
- Occurrence of landslides: Through mining activities, large amounts of soil have to be moved in order to extract precious resources out of the ground. The soil in turn loses plenty of stability over time thereby increasing the risk of landslides substantially. Through deforestation, the soil can also become more unstable which can lead to increased chances for landslides which can be quite harmful since landslides destroy homes and livelihoods of people.
