Environmental Impact Assessment - Mining and the Environment: From Ore to Metal - page 84

In practice, environmentally driven improvements to project design follow discus-
sions between environmental practitioners and key members of the project design team.
To encourage and facilitate these interactions, it is valuable to schedule 'environmental
workshops' involving 'brainstorming' among these key personnel, at key intervals in the
project planning process (see also Chapter Nine). For a large project, appropriate occasions
for such workshops would include:
●

At the start of the Pre-feasibility Study;

●

Shortly prior to completion of the Pre-feasibility Study; and

●

Shortly prior to completion of the EIA and/or the Feasibility Study, depending on
whether or not these studies are synchronized.

Present Clear Options for Mitigation Measures

The main outcome of an EIA is a set of clear choices on the planning and implementation
of environmental mitigation measures. For instance the EIA can propose: (1) pollution
control technologies or design features; (2) reduction, treatment, and/or criteria for dis-
posal of wastes; (3) water recycling schemes; (4) recommendations for tailings storage site
selection; (5) compensation or concessions to affected people; (6) community development
initiatives; (7) limitations to the initial size and/or growth of the mine (albeit imposing a
challenge in convincing the mine developer); (8) separate programmes to contribute in a
positive way to protecting local resources or to enhancing quality of life; and (9) involve-
ment of the local community in later decisions about the mining project.

CASE 2.3
Internalizing Externalities

Until recently, mining companies would not dream
of calculating how much greenhouse gases (GHG)
they would emit, not even from integrated coal-fi red
power plants, although this has been best practice
at least in the USA since 1991 (US EPA 1992). Now,
since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the publication
of the World Bank's OD 10.04 in 1994 and the
recent 2006 IFC PS, an increasing number of mining
projects calculate GHG emissions. Such calculations
are the fi rst step towards internalizing externalities.
The valuation of environmental costs and benefi ts
has progressed greatly in recent years, and should
become standard methodology where practicable.
Environmental costs and benefi ts, including aspects
of scarcity and externalities, should be included in
the overall fi nancial and economic evaluation of any
new mining project as a matter of routine.