Is Mineral Depletion a Threat to Sustainable Mining ?

For many people the term sustainable mining is an oxymoron. After all, mining entails the exploitation of non-renewable resources. Eventually these resources will be gone and mining will have to cease. As a result, many concerned individuals urge society to conserve non-renewable resources and where possible to use renewable resources instead. Drawing on what we have learned from the debate over the long-run availability of mineral commodities over the past several decades, this paper describes two, very different mental models of mineral depletion. The first, known as the fixed stock paradigm, relies on physical measures of availability, and does indeed suggest that mining in the long run is inherently non-sustainable. Fortunately, for the mining industry and even more importantly for humanity as a whole, the fixed stock paradigm suffers from several serious shortcomings. As a result, the second way of viewing depletion, known as the opportunity cost paradigm, is more useful and appropriate. It assesses resource availability by what society has to give up to produce another unit of a mineral commodity, for example, another a barrel of oil or ton of copper. While over time depletion tends to drive the opportunity cost of mineral production up, new technology and other forces can offset this upward pressure. Indeed, for many mineral commodities this has actually been the case over the past century, indicating that sustainable mining is possible. 1 John E. Tilton ([email protected]) divides his time between Colorado, where he is a University Professor Emeritus and a Research Professor in the Division of Economics and Business at the Colorado School of Mines, and Chile, where he is the Profesor de la Cátedra de Economía de Minerales in the Mining Centre at the School of Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. This paper was presented at the International Conference on Sustainable Mining on April 17, 2009 in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. It draws heavily from Tilton (2003, 2006, and 2009).