Geoethics, Sustainable Development Goals and the realities of Uranium tailings and other mining legacies – does society suffer from split brain syndrome?

• In Event: Engaging with the SDG's missing historical perspective.

Abstract

An international Association for the promotion of Geoethics (IAPG) was founded in 2012, and as per 2019 counted more than 2200 members. As a scientific, multidisciplinary platform, it was created to widen the discussion on ethical issues related to the Geosciences. Since 2012, the group developed a code of conduct for geoscientists, summarized in the “Cape Town Statement on geoethics” of 2016 . Their “Task Group on Responsible Mining “ produced a White Paper in 2017, which defines responsible mining as demonstrably respecting and protecting the interests of all stakeholders, human health and the environment, and contributing discernibly and fairly to broad economic development of the producing country and to benefitting local communities, while embracing best international practices and upholding the rule of law. The document then spells out 13 elements of best practice. Bringing ethics to mining seems necessary and not achieved. Similarly, but far more encompassing, the Agenda 2030, the UN sustainable development goals prescribe a set of 169 targets and more than 200 indicators. The Agenda 2030 does not even mention the word “mining”. And yet, as geologists like Peter Haff or Bruce Wilkinson have pointed out, humans as a geological force more more matter than geologic forces. How and why did the discursive split happen, leaving mining and sustainability at odds, how is it maintained and perhaps, even widened? An analysis of official documents vis-à-vis the peer-reviewed literature sheds light on these questions. I argue that the split has an important function for continued exploitation of the earth’s resources.

Author

• Verena Winiwarter, Institute of Social Ecology