Page 654 - Environment: The Science Behind the Stories

Sony, Nokia, Ericsson, and other corporations rushed financial reform bill an amendment requiring all electronics com-
to assure consumers that they were not using tantalum from panies to report the origin of the tantalum in the products they
eastern Congo—and the region was in fact producing less sell. Additionally, the Public-Private Alliance for Responsible
than 10% of the world’s supply. Meanwhile, some observers Minerals Trade was formed in 2011 to help private companies,
felt an embargo could hurt the long-suffering Congolese peo- national governments, and nongovernmental organizations
ple, rather than help them. The mining life may be miserable, create a system to trace and certify minerals such as tanta-
they said, but it pays better than most alternatives in a land lum, gold, and tin as “conflict-free.” Participating companies
where the average income is 20 cents a day. include Nokia, Sprint, Intel, Motorola, and Verizon. This alliance
Soon, however, the high-tech boom went bust, and global provides an opportunity to significantly reduce trade in conflict
demand for tantalum diminished. This occurred just as Australia minerals while promoting trade of minerals sourced from legiti-
and other countries were ramping up industrial-scale tantalite mate mines in poor nations such as Congo.
mining. As supply outpaced demand, the market price of tanta- Unfortunately, Congo is not the only source of conflict
lum fell, and several major producers quit mining tantalum. But minerals in the world today. A thriving black market in col-
nations began to work through their stockpiles, and by 2010 tan is emerging in remote portions of Brazil, Colombia, and
demand had grown, driving prices up once again. The demand Venezuela in the northern Amazon jungle. Armed gangs
for tantalum is predicted to grow by 6–7% annually, ensuring a and narcotics smugglers in the region are accused of using
thriving market for the mineral for the foreseeable future. women, children, and indigenous people to mine and smug-
Today, the war is declared over, and foreign troops are gle coltan ore. The recent discovery of vast mineral reserves
out of Congo. Even so, internal factions continue to fight, and in Afghanistan (pp. 665), coupled with that nation’s political
thousands of people continue to die or to flee their homes. unrest, suggests that it too could become a significant source
Western electronics companies avoid knowingly purchasing of conflict minerals in the near future. So while the trade in
tantalum from Congo, but trade in minerals has many middle- conflict minerals from these and other nations continues, it is
men, so it is sometimes difficult for companies to be certain of hoped that ongoing regulatory efforts to certify minerals will
the origin of the tantalum they use. provide a framework that satisfies our intense demand for min-
Progress is being made on addressing these issues, how- eral resources while ensuring those resources were mined in a
ever. In 2010 the U.S. Congress included in the Dodd-Frank responsible manner.

Earth’s Mineral Resources Rocks provide the minerals we use

A rock is a solid aggregation of minerals, and a mineral is a
Coltan provides just one example of how we extract raw naturally occurring solid chemical element or inorganic com-
materials from beneath our planet’s surface and turn them pound with a crystal structure, a specific chemical composi-
into products we use in our everyday lives. In the lithosphere tion, and distinct physical properties (p. 54). (See the periodic
(p. 52), the region that includes the uppermost layers of rock table in Appendix d for chemical elements.) For instance, the
near Earth’s surface, the rock cycle (p. 54) creates new rock mineral tantalite consists of the elements tantalum, oxygen,
and alters existing rock. Plate tectonics (pp. 52–54) builds iron, and manganese. Tantalite occurs most commonly in peg-
mountains; shapes the geography of oceans, islands, and matite, a type of igneous rock (p. 55) similar to granite. In
continents; and gives rise to earthquakes and volcanoes. The addition to tantalite, pegmatite generally contains the minerals
coltan mining areas of eastern Congo are situated along the feldspar, quartz, and mica, and occasionally it even includes
western edge of Africa’s Great Rift Valley system, a region gemstones and other rare minerals. Geologic processes influ-
where the African tectonic plate is slowly pulling itself apart. ence the distribution of rocks and minerals in the lithosphere
Some of the world’s largest lakes have formed in the immense and their availability to us.
valley floors, far below towering volcanoes such as Mount We depend on a wide array of mineral resources as raw
Kilimanjaro. Here and throughout the world, geological pro- materials for our products, so we mine and process these
cesses are fundamental to shaping the world around us. resources. Just consider a typical scene from a student lounge
We will now take a closer look at how rock and the at a college or university (Figure 23.1) and note how many
resources of the lithosphere contribute directly to our econo- items are made with elements from the minerals we take from CHAPTER 23 • Min ERA ls A nd Mining
mies and our lives. We will first examine the mineral resources the earth. Without the resources from beneath the ground that
we mine and the products they provide us. Next we will study we use to make building materials, wiring, clothing, appli-
the various ways we extract minerals from the earth. We will ances, fertilizers for crops, and so much more, civilization as
then examine the many social and environmental impacts that we know it could not exist.
our mining efforts exert and consider steps we can take to
mitigate these impacts. Finally, because mineral resources are
nonrenewable on human timescales, we need to be attentive We obtain minerals by mining
to finite and decreasing supplies of economically important
minerals. Thus we will examine solutions we can pursue to We obtain the minerals we use in all these ways through
make our mineral use more sustainable. the process of mining. The term mining in the broad sense 653

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