Climate change is one of the most important global risks facing our modern society. Climate change is having a permanent and devastating impact on our consumption and production patterns, but in different regions of the world, climate change is significantly different. Although the historical contribution of economically underdeveloped countries to global carbon emissions is negligible, these countries have already borne the high cost of climate change, which is obviously disproportionate. Extreme weather events are having serious impacts, such as severe drought, intense high temperature weather, devastating floods, large numbers of refugees, serious threats to global food security and irreversible impacts on land and water resources. Abnormal weather phenomena like El Nino will continue to occur and become more and more serious.
Similarly, due to climate change, the mining industry is also facing high realistic risk factors. Because the mining and production areas of many mine development projects are facing the risk of climate change, and will become increasingly vulnerable under the continuous impact of adverse weather events. For example, extreme weather conditions may affect the stability of mine tailings dams and aggravate the occurrence of tailings dam break accidents.
In addition, the occurrence of extreme climatic events and changing climatic conditions also lead to the critical problem of global water resources supply. Water resources supply is not only an important means of production in mining operations, but also an indispensable living resource for local residents in mining areas. It is estimated that a significant proportion of copper, gold, iron, and zinc rich areas (30-50%) are water deficient, and a third of the world’s gold and copper mining areas could even see their short-term water risk double by 2030, according to S & P Global Assessment. The water risk is particularly acute in Mexico. In Mexico, where mining projects compete with local communities for water resources and mine operating costs are high, high public relations tensions can have a serious impact on mining activities.
In order to cope with various risk factors, the mining industry needs a more sustainable mining production model. This is not only a risk avoidance strategy beneficial to mining enterprises and investors, but also a socially responsible behavior. This means that mining enterprises should increase their investment in sustainable technological solutions, such as reducing risk factors in water supply, and increasing investment in reducing carbon emissions of the mining industry. The mining industry is expected to significantly increase its investment in technical solutions to reduce carbon emissions, especially in the fields of electric vehicles, solar panel technology and battery energy storage systems.
The mining industry plays a crucial role in producing materials needed to cope with climate change. In fact, the world is in the process of transition to a low-carbon society in the future, which requires a large amount of mineral resources. In order to achieve the carbon emission reduction targets set by the Paris Agreement, the global production capacity of low carbon emission technologies, such as wind turbines, solar photovoltaic power generation equipment, energy storage facilities and electric vehicles, will be significantly improved. According to the estimation of the World Bank, the global production of these low-carbon technologies will require more than 3 billion tons of mineral resources and metal resources in 2020. However, some of the mineral resources known as “key resources”, such as graphite, lithium and cobalt, may even increase the global output by nearly five times by 2050, in order to meet the growing resource demand of clean energy technology. This is good news for the mining industry, because if the mining industry can adopt the above sustainable mining production mode at the same time, then the industry will make a decisive contribution to the realization of the global future development goal of greener environmental protection.
Developing countries have produced a large amount of mineral resources needed for the global low-carbon transformation. Historically, many mineral resource producing countries have been plagued by the resource curse, because these countries rely too much on the royalties of mining rights, mineral resources taxes and the export of raw mineral products, thus affecting the development path of the country. A prosperous and sustainable future required by human society needs to break the curse of mineral resources. Only in this way can developing countries be better prepared to adapt to and respond to global climate change.
A road map for achieving this goal is for developing countries with high mineral resource endowments to accelerate corresponding measures to enhance local and regional value chain capacity. This is important in many ways. First, industrial development creates wealth and thus provides adequate financial support for adaptation to and mitigation of climate change in developing countries. Second, to avoid the impact of a global energy revolution, the world will not solve climate change simply by replacing one set of energy technologies with another. At present, the global supply chain remains a major greenhouse gas emitter, given the high consumption of fossil fuel energy by the international transportation sector. Therefore, localization of green energy technologies extracted and produced by the mining industry will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by bringing the green energy supply base closer to the mine. Third, developing countries will be able to adopt green energy solutions only if the production costs of green energy are reduced so that people can consume such green technologies at an affordable price. For countries and regions where production costs are low, localised production schemes with green energy technologies may be an option worth considering.
As emphasized in this article, in many fields, the mining industry and climate change are inextricably linked. The mining industry plays a vital role. If we want to avoid the worst, we should act as soon as possible. Even if the interests, opportunities and priorities of all parties are not satisfactory, sometimes even completely unfavorable, government policy makers and business leaders have no choice but to coordinate actions and try to find effective solutions acceptable to all parties. But at present, the pace of progress is too slow, and we lack the firm determination to achieve this goal. At present, the strategy formulation of most climate response plans is driven by national governments and has become a geopolitical tool. In terms of achieving the objectives of climate response, there are obvious differences in the interests and needs of various countries. However, the framework mechanism of climate response, especially the rules of trade management and investment, seems to be diametrically opposed to the objectives of climate response.
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