Environmental issues in Mineral Exploitation & Processing

Mineral and quarrying exploitation are fundamental tools to provide construction materials for local, national and international markets, and to contribute to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth as well as to per-capital income growth. Nevertheless, environmental costs of this kind of industrial activities may be very high. Hence these costs have to be evaluated in order to ensure long-term sustainability and to avoid that mining/quarrying represent a benefit for few individuals, but also a negative impact for the community as a whole. The kind and intensity of quarrying/mining impact may be extremely different and is related, among others, to landscape effects, slope stability, surface, ground water and air pollution, etc. Quarrying needs large investments so, in order to get back adequate income and to minimize capital risks, both social and environmental related impacts should be minimized. This is the main objective of the so called "mining cycle plan". No quarrying or mining activities should start up without a previous specific mining cycle plan, or when the mining cycle plan results suggest that the planned activity is not affordable. We show and discuss a "standard" procedure that should be currently applied in order to assess the feasibility of new quarrying activities as well as to check if active quarries can be regarded as sustainable at medium to long-term. In order to ensure long-term sustainability, acceptable environmental/social impact, private investor benefit, and social community benefit, we propose that mining cycle planning should be systematically applied to the Vietnamese quarrying system, where large growth is expected in the next years, also thanks to the support by the Vietnamese Government.