The Impact Of Mining In Australia

Mining is a practice that has been used for almost all of human history to extract minerals and resources from within the earth. This is the same for on the Australian continent. Aboriginals used mining throughout their 40,000 year history to gather different minerals which they used for tools, as well as for art and religious practices [1].

When European settlers arrived in Australia, mining was set up in the early days. With the first coal mine opening in the region now known as Newcastle within 10 years of the first fleet. These mines were originally used to provide fuels for heating and cooking, and then later for trains with the railways being set up around the region [2]. Mining picked up in Australia in the 1850's with the gold rush,

The first is due to the location of the mine, which is located in forested areas, which need to be stripped before the mine can be expanded. The destruction of forests eliminates habitats for the local flora and fauna. There is also a 51 kilometre conveyer set up between the mine and refinery in which the bauxite is turned into aluminium. This passes through 42.5km of forest, 8.5km of private land, and crosses two rivers. This expends the overall impact of the mine. Once a pit is exhausted, there are rehabilitation works to renew the quality of the land, with a native seed mix introduced into the area to try to rejuvenate the forest [13].

Gove, NT

The largest environmental impacts of the Gove mine is due to its geographical location. This requires large infrastructure to get machinery, fuels and energy to these areas. The deposits are quite high in silica in this area requiring larger amounts of caustic soda, which increase processing times and costs to reduce the bauxite to aluminium. The benefits of the location though, is that the deposits are shallow, allowing them to be accessed with ease [10].

Huntly,

Mining in Australia contributes approximately 8% of the national GDP. Bauxite mining within Australia is a large contributor to this. Although recycling of aluminium can be done at only 5% of the energy it takes to create aluminium from bauxite, the demand for aluminium is ongoing and the energy use is needed to meet this demand. This demand is partially due to the push for more and more recyclable products, and as aluminium can be recycled infinitely, there is benefit to have more aluminium available. The costs that come with this, is that we are currently using fossil fuels to power these facilities, and with greenhouse gas emissions on the rise, it is difficult to know whether using more energy now, will be worthwhile in the long run. The costs to the environment is something that needs to be worn by everyone globally, as the jurisdictions that are doing the mining, are doing so to meet a global need. Without this need globally, there would be no mining needed. These conclusions can be loosely transcribed to other jurisdictions as majority of the mining in the world is currently being utilised to meet a demand. Until there is global action to reduce the effects of mining, as well as producing cleaner alternatives, there will be a need to continue mining as we currently