Australia`s mining industry urged to defend its role

By now a fair number of mining people have thumbed through the federal government’s booklet The Green Plan: A Framework for Discussion. Those whose literary appetite has been jaded by that document’s fuzzy generalities can find a refreshing piquancy in the text of several speeches given at the annual seminar of the Australian Mining Industry Council (AMIC, the Australian version of The Mining Association of Canada), held recently in Canberra. The seminar itself was subtitled “Greening and Growing,” a typically breezy equivalent of “sustainable development.” One speaker was Sir Ninian Stephen, Australian ambassador for the environment. He provided a quotable quote:

“Were there no economic consequences involved — if we all lived in a world where manna dropped regularly from the skies and supplied all our needs, the sort of cargo cult world dear to the hearts of odd groups of island peoples after World War II — it would all be easy. We could devote ourselves exclusively to preservation and improvement of our environment without regard to the impact of anything we did upon the earning of our bread and butter and the nation’s bread and butter too.”

The Minister for Primary Industries and Energy, the Hon. John Kerin, also avoided the kind of ministerial platitudes that we are accustomed to. The minister rejected outright the notion of “negative economic growth as the only path to ecological survival.” Rather, he insisted on attaining “the benefits of economic development and ecological sustainability.” This goal “implies making decisions on the basis of hard evidence, hard facts.” In the absence of perfect information, “the incorporation of some `risk’ factor is entirely proper.”

“Sustainable development does not mean achieving a balance between our environmental heritage and economic development. It means making the right decisions for the right reasons at the right time.

“Given the right reasons, then I have no problem in getting into my orange and purple kaftan, putting on my love-beads, and stopping, completely, the exploitation of a particular area.

“Given the right reasons, then I have no problems with taking out my trusty chain saw and putting it to a couple of sensitive eucalyptus trees.”

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if Canadian politicians would occasionally speak in these forthright terms?

The Commonwealth government is seeking to develop a national strategy on sustainable development. In the process, a discussion paper is being prepared and working groups will address issues arising in each of the main industry sectors, including mining. This process is somewhat parallel to the Canadian Green Plan consultations.

In participating in such consultations, the minister advised the Australian mining industry to advance its “case: by demonstrating that in most cases the environmental impact of exploration and mining is indeed transient; by explaining the record of the industry in environmental protection and rehabilitation; and by showing the industry’s ongoing commitment to further improving its performance, for example, through the industry’s significant R&D effort in these fields.”

Good advice indeed, and just as applicable to the Canadian mining industry as to the Australian.006 George Miller is the president of The Mining Association of Canada.