Abstract
Ph.D.
Definitions of sustainable development can be grouped according to their ideological orientation
and economic paradigm in which they are placed: neoclassical; social and ecological modernisation
of neoclassical; and radical. The view of sustainable development predominant in the mining
sector aligns with the dominant neoclassical economic paradigm. It is revealed specifically
through the system of metrics used, the most obvious of which is profit, shareholder value, and
growth. The idea of sustainability is understood in mining as the need to respond to increasing
regulation by adding two extra dimensions to the economic one – social and environmental. This is
abbreviated as the triple bottom line, or weak sustainability. In the exercise of process
stewardship, mines tend to follow global responsibility guidelines formulated for the sector, but
product stewardship is of secondary importance.
Narrow definitions of sustainability fail to take into account the biosphere as a complex adaptive
system. In this study there is a discussion about an innovative collaborative sustainability model
to be developed in a new industrial sector. That sector would operate beyond mining, while at the
same time using mining waste residues feedstock as its inputs. The landscape in which the new
sector would be located would be the current neoclassical one, but the model has been formulated as
a tool to move towards a broader conception of sustainability. As a means of clarifying the fuzzy
boundaries between the various entities and components of the complex adaptive system of the
biosphere, for the purposes of discussion, the biosphere has been divided into seven separate
schematic dimensions (after Gell-Mann, 1994: 345-366). These are ideological, institutional,
economic, social, demographic, informational and technological.
Six research and development projects, carried out over seven years (2002 to 2009) in a research
and development group of a trans-national mining corporation, were directed by the author. These
projects, in the fields of improved air quality and of minimisation of mining waste residues,
formed the basis for conceptualising a new collaborative sustainability model. The projects, when
placed in the context of seven dimensions of the biosphere and as examples of sustainable
development, reveal themselves as falling far short of attaining sustainability goals.
What a reductionist definition of sustainability used in the mining industry means is that the
industry is slow at anticipating needs of communities after a mine closes, or after organisational
restructuring and downsizing in the trans-national corporation has happened, or in dealing with the
influx of people into the area who come to improve their economic/political opportunities. The
implementation of sustainability principles in mines is directed by global protocols,
directives and regulatory
obligations, and is driven by the market economy.