Topic: The Environmental Impact of Mining
Country: Saudi Arabia
Delegate Name: Kacie Rispler
School: Forest Hills Central High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Saudi Arabia position papers GLIMUN 2017 committees
Almost all of Saudi Arabia’s economy revolves around mining and the extraction of other natural resources including natural gas, iron ore, gold, and copper. We possesses around 22 per cent of the world’s petroleum and first started drilling for oil in March 1938. The General Authority of Meteorology and Environmental Protection, or PME, is our environmental protection agency that handles all environmental policies. Some environmental impacts associated with our oil industry are hydraulic fracturing, oil spills, and air pollution. The PME is taking steps to restore the environment including coastal restoration projects from oil contamination. Our policies on the environment and development are based on principles of Islam which have ordained people to thrive and inhabit the earth as the primary function of humankind. Our Arabia's Ministerial Committee on Environment (MCE) supports the UN on its actions to help the environment like being part of Meteorology and Environmental Protection Administration (MEPA). Currently we have an array of operational requirements, engineering standards, and performance guidelines to implement new policies. Some including sanitary codes, environmental assessments, bioremediation, air quality and emission standards, noise-control regulations, landfill standards, water recycling procedures, hazardous material disposal rules, and oil spill contingency plans. Our goal in committee is to get together with other major oil drilling countries and come up with a common procedure to protect the ocean when shipping oil to different countries and how oil drilling companies can decrease the amount of pollution they caused. Many countries should take advantage of all the new technological development, in an effort decrease pollution. We really care about the environment and want other countries too as well, even though in the past we have caused some pollution we are working on cleaning up our environment to sustain it for later generations.
