Topic: The Environmental Impact of Mining
Country: Chad
Delegate Name: Maria Pacifico
School: Royal Oak High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Chad position papers GLIMUN 2017 committees
Mining is crucial for economic growth. Unfortunately, the effects of mining causes distress to the planet. Mining waste can lead to damages to land by creating sinkholes and damage ecosystems, especially when mining in economically sensitive areas. Mining can also cause air pollution. Air pollution can also lead to increase of water pollution, as evident in Lake Chad. Mining can also directly have an impact on water sources, due mineral processing or controlling dust. Damaging water sources and air also damages the people and their communities. Industrial accidents that are caused from limited labor laws can also not only damage the environment, but also the economy drastically. Mining though is important for the harvesting of minerals and resources for economy, but still has damaging environmental impacts. Chad has shifted gears and focused more time and money on mining activities, rather than agriculture, due to underdeveloped mining of natural resources such as gold and oil. Chad’s budget has invested 60% into petroleum. In 2018, Chad will have a petroleum, mining, and energy summit to hopefully revive and renew the mining laws of petroleum and make less of an environmental impact, but still boost the overall economy. Currently there are multiple developed nations, including the United States, who are exporting oil out of Chad. Nations who are exporting oil out of other nations must be able to abide to all the changes that this committee commits. About 20% of the Chad’s total labor force, is working into industry areas such as mining for oil. In the future, Chad hopes to expand the labor force and move it towards more industrial areas including mining. Chad has implemented laws in place that try to reduce Chad’s impact on the environment because of irresponsible mining. As stated in Title V, Article 66 of the Chad Mining Laws, “Activities governed by the Mining Code must be conducted so as to minimize their negative impact on the physical environment…in containing pollution in all its forms within acceptable standards under the Code or mining and environmental legislation.” Chad’s main concern is how do we limit the waste to product ratio without being overly expensive and/or difficult? And how will the change(s) affect the planet? Answering these questions in committee could hopefully help not only the environment but the overall damage to land that is used for mining and limit storage for waste. One way could be with the idea of reusing and recycling of materials to a) reduce waste and b) increase resource efficiency. This committee’s purpose is not to end mining, but to limit its environmental effect. Though it would be the quickest solution to just end all mining, the impacts would be drastic and hurt Chad and other nations severely. Chad is excited to work with other nations to hopefully find a solution to lessen the impact of climate change.
