Sustainability in the Minerals Industry: Seeking a Consensus on Its Meaning

Juliana Segura-Salazar and Luís Marcelo Tavares
Additional contact information
Juliana Segura-Salazar: Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro—COPPE/UFRJ, Cx. Postal 68505, CEP 21941-972, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
Luís Marcelo Tavares: Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro—COPPE/UFRJ, Cx. Postal 68505, CEP 21941-972, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 5, 1-38

Abstract: Sustainability science has received progressively greater attention worldwide, given the growing environmental concerns and socioeconomic inequity, both largely resulting from a prevailing global economic model that has prioritized profits. It is now widely recognized that mankind needs to adopt measures to change the currently unsustainable production and consumption patterns. The minerals industry plays a fundamental role in this context, having received attention through various initiatives over the last decades. Several of these have been, however, questioned in practice. Indeed, a consensus on the implications of sustainability in the minerals industry has not yet been reached. The present work aims to deepen the discussion on how the mineral sector can improve its sustainability. An exhaustive literature review of peer-reviewed academic articles published on the topic in English over the last 25 years, as well as complementary references, has been carried out. From this, it became clear that there is a need to build a better definition of sustainability for the mineral sector, which has been proposed here from a more holistic viewpoint. Finally, and in light of this new perspective, several of the trade-offs and synergies related to sustainability of the minerals industry are discussed in a cross-sectional manner.

Keywords: sustainability; sustainable development; minerals industry; mining; mineral processing; life cycle thinking; mineral resources; globalization; technological innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/5/1429/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/5/1429/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:5:p:1429-:d:144584

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().