Topic: The Environmental Impact of Mining
Country: Algeria
Delegate Name: Gabriella Hernandez
School: Forest Hills Central High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Algeria position papers GLIMUN 2017 committees
Mining has changed drastically in the last century. From underground to open-pit techniques in the more developed countries, more and more countries are reliant on mining in their economies. Algeria has the 10th largest natural gas reserve, and is the 6th largest gas exporter. Algeria also is the 16th in proven oil reserves, and thanks to that has a cushion of over 160 billion dollars in foreign currency reserves. Over 40 countries all over the world have been involved in mining in the past 100 years. Such successes have made more countries involved in mining, and more mining has more environmental impact.
The practice of mining has effects on human health, human living and the natural environment. Mining activities constitute a major source of toxic metals in the environment. There are many laws in place in multiple countries that regulate pollution from mining. In Canada, there is regulation on the water discharged from the mines must meet federal water quality standards. This may be different in developing countries where environmental protection is of the least concern. Algeria, being as high a producer of minerals and metals, does not constitute any regulations on the mining. There was a study in Azzaba, located in the Northeastern district of Algeria, which is a mercury mining town. The blood of over 200 workers was collected, and the Hg concentration of up to 53.9 Hg/L (in which the safest is 15 mg Hg/L). Most of the mercury had been from air ingestion, from the pollution leaking of the abandoned mines which had not been regulated.
Algeria has strong islamic values. In the Qur’an it is mentioned that Allah (God) shows signs of – linking creation with divine revelation and seeing the environment as testimony to Allah's all-encompassing presence [24,25]. It teaches that we are not more than Janitor’s for the earth and we shall clean it and care for it as well as Allah has. This leads room to believe that Algeria has room for improvement on the development of regulating laws for the environmental impacts of mining, as it already does on over-grazing land and water purity.
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