Topic: The Environmental Impact of Mining
Country: Portugal
Delegate Name: Emma Williams
School: Williamston High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Portugal position papers GLIMUN 2017 committees
The most pressing issue relating to this topic is that mines, whether active or not can cause a lot of danger to the environment around them. Mining has been around for at least 40,000 years and is considered to be an essential part of the world. However, active mines can cause chemical contamination, landscape alteration, and bring with them many dangers. Even with non-active mines there are problems with restoring the land and cleaning up runoff. The impacts differ based on what was being extracted, the size of the operation, and how far away from other places the activity was. The United Nations must decide what actions can or cannot be taken to make mining safer but also stay efficient, and what to do to help non-active sites.
When it comes to resolving the matter especially when speaking of cleaning up and restoring non-active mining sites Portugal would be very interested. They do not have very many active mining sites but they do have many non-active sites that need contained or cleaned. The country would be interested in finding an efficient but not too expensive way to do so because they do not have much money but need help. Many old mining sites have a lot of soil contamination which could affect any water or anyone who wants to build in those areas.
Portugal would propose to resolve this issue by setting some standards of clean up and safe ways to go about the mining of all sites whether active or non-active. Any plan that is inexpensive and will be easily implemented because of their low GDP and the fact that they already depend on other countries for help would be accepted by Portugal. They would not accept any plan that would be too expensive or that only cater to the active mining sites. Portugal would expect help from other countries that also deal with problems from non-active sites as well as other countries within NATO.
