Minerals are an essential part of the foundation of the modern industrial society. But there is more – minerals are the building blocks of that complex human-engineered environment we call civilization. With the implantation of technology even in less developed countries and remote areas, possibly 90% of the human population depends upon minerals not simply for industrial life-styles but just for survival.

But given the random nature of mineral deposits throughout the world and its high cost of exploration, compounded by social, economic and political problems, the market availability or scarcity of these materials is a Democles Sword above all nations. The conventional way out from this geo-political impasse is the practical designation of some minerals as strategic minerals and the stockpiling of them against politically-induced shortage on world markets (After Simmons, I.G. Earth, Air and Water [1991])

ajor deposits remaining in the world today are found mostly in the southern hemisphere but the mineral-hungry industrialized nations are in the northern hemisphere. This has created a massive international traffic in raw materials, primarily from Africa, Asia, Australia and South America to the United States, Japan and Western Europe. But there seems to be a countervailing factor — the developing nations want desperately to become industrialized and as they do, the strain on the earth’s mineral resources becomes even greater.

Rapid industrialization, mass production and creative merchandizing have brought about an increasingly affluent, consumer-oriented society that has placed ever-increasing demands on available resources and that has tended to encourage patterns of waste. These economic achievements finally come with a price – a total dependence on an ever-increasing flow of raw materials, minerals and the dangerous illusion that there are no limits to expansion. But unlike biologi- cally reproducible resources, minerals formed on geological time scales of totally different order from that of the human scales of their use are finite: there is only one crop and one harvest. And because of human consumption — the real engine that drives the huge machines deep into storehouse earth — mining can never end.

This hoard of mineral plenty begins with a hole in the ground. And because that means the massive break- age of the earth’s rocks to extract mineral ore deposits, mining is not a gentle process. It can change the face of the land; it can cause pollution of air and water; it can produce toxic and unsightly waste, all problems of great concern. But these are not without solutions and these are being solved. Changes in the land can be controlled, the healing process man- aged, the environment protected.

thin the context of the foregoing, modern large-scale mining involves the mobiliza tion of substantial capital, heavy equipment, high technology and a big workforce. In terms of out- put, big mining produces sufficient commercial quan- tities to satisfy the requirements of the export market and large industries on a regular basis.

Current industry standards define a large-scale un- derground mine as one that has a run-of-mine (ROM) output above 500,000 metric tons per year. On the other hand, a large-scale surface or open-pit mine is one that has a ROM output above 1,000,000 met- ric tons per year. (After Ghose, A.K. Small-Scale Min- ing: A Global Overview [1994])