Positive and negative effects of Mining in Mongolia?
I have an assignment for science
and one of the questions is positive and negative effects of mining in Mongolia.
Positive effects
1) Provides employment, both directly in the Mining Industry & also elsewhere as the mine employees spent their income on other things.
2) Provides minerals / metals that can be either exported or, avoids the import of these minerals / metals from other countries. In either way, it helps maintain good foreign currency reserves.
3) Provides infrastructure (roads, electricity, telephone etc) to remote areas of the country where mines are located which are needed by the mines. But when the mines are exhausted, the infrastructure remains that can be used by others.
Negative effects
1) Provides employment, both directly in the Mining Industry & also elsewhere as the mine employees spent their income on other things.
2) Provides minerals / metals that can be either exported or, avoids the import of these minerals / metals from other countries. In either way, it helps maintain good foreign currency reserves.
3) Provides infrastructure (roads, electricity, telephone etc) to remote areas of the country where mines are located which are needed by the mines. But when the mines are exhausted, the infrastructure remains that can be used by others.
Negative effects
(it's difficult to know any negative effects of mining
but if your teacher is a tree hugging Green, then they MAY consider
these issues to be negative as, among some people, the Mining Industry
has a bad name)
1) Fatalities & injuries to mine workers. (Whilst these unquestionably exist, they occur far less than many realise & death / bad injury occur in other industries too. The Mining Industry is VERY safety conscious.)
2) Pollution from the chemical reagents which are used in the recovery of metals / minerals e.g. cyanide used in the recovery of gold on gold mines. (What the Greens don't tell you is that even if the cyanide gets outside the area where it is meant to be used, it quickly breaks down to harmless chemicals so that any environmental damage is minimal. The Mining Industry generally takes a very responsible attitude to the environment.)
3) The destruction of indigenous flora. Within the area of the mine itself, trees & other plants will have to be ripped up in order to mine out the mineral. If the mine is an open-pit operation, this may be substantial. (However, no mining company wants to destroy indigenous flora for the sake of it, & they are generally involved with specific RE-INTRODUCTION of these same species as new plants once the mining has ceased.)
4) The emergence of rock dumps, tailings dams that some people consider unsightly. (When the mining has ceased, these artificial hills are often seeded & landscaped. After a number of years, it wouldn't be known that the hills were artificial! In underground mining, some of the rock dump material is reintroduced to the mine as backfill to allow mining to occur at elevations immediately above mined out ground.)
1) Fatalities & injuries to mine workers. (Whilst these unquestionably exist, they occur far less than many realise & death / bad injury occur in other industries too. The Mining Industry is VERY safety conscious.)
2) Pollution from the chemical reagents which are used in the recovery of metals / minerals e.g. cyanide used in the recovery of gold on gold mines. (What the Greens don't tell you is that even if the cyanide gets outside the area where it is meant to be used, it quickly breaks down to harmless chemicals so that any environmental damage is minimal. The Mining Industry generally takes a very responsible attitude to the environment.)
3) The destruction of indigenous flora. Within the area of the mine itself, trees & other plants will have to be ripped up in order to mine out the mineral. If the mine is an open-pit operation, this may be substantial. (However, no mining company wants to destroy indigenous flora for the sake of it, & they are generally involved with specific RE-INTRODUCTION of these same species as new plants once the mining has ceased.)
4) The emergence of rock dumps, tailings dams that some people consider unsightly. (When the mining has ceased, these artificial hills are often seeded & landscaped. After a number of years, it wouldn't be known that the hills were artificial! In underground mining, some of the rock dump material is reintroduced to the mine as backfill to allow mining to occur at elevations immediately above mined out ground.)
