Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for December 3, 2006

In Defence of Industrialisation and Mining: A Note from Jack Sturgess

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During a career in the mining industry, I lived and worked in Australia, PNG, Canada and the US; I also worked for months at a time in New Zealand and South Africa and for weeks at a time in Alaska, Mexico and Indonesia. I only had to move around with my eyes open to see that people living in industrialised and mineral-intensive communities enjoyed better health and welfare, more individual freedom and greater opportunity for personal development than those in non-industrialised, less mineral intensive communities.

However the debate on the value of mineral-intensive industrialisation seems to have remained at a tactical level, conducted in terms of flora and fauna versus jobs and tax revenue. Flora and fauna have won. The two vital strategic drivers of human behaviour are not flora and fauna; they are survival and caring for the young. These drivers are conveniently quantified as life expectancy and infant mortality rate (IMR). The intrinsic civilising value of industrialisation and mineral use is found not in tactical economic factors but rather in the beneficial strategic contribution they make to reducing the rate of infant mortality and increasing life expectancy.

My reference is “The State Of The World’s Children”, an annual publication of the United Nations Children’s Fund. The table below is an extract from Table 1 in the 2005 issue.

mining Jack Sturgess.JPG

I have concentrated on IMR because it is quantifiable and “bulletproof”; every rational person agrees that a high IMR is bad and a low one is good.

A low infant mortality rate does not happen without industrialisation.

Industrialisation does not happen without a reliable supply of metals and energy minerals.

The connection is also transparently causal. Industrialisation has been driven by electricity for the last 100 years. The generation, transmission and distribution of electrical power are essential to industrialisation and social development. Copper, aluminium, steel, energy minerals and concrete are required in large amounts to provide these services. It is also self-evident that the life-sustaining benefits of industrialisation require intensive mineral use, such benefits as a reliable supply of food and water, hot water, refrigeration, hygienic waste disposal and modern medical facilities. Widespread access to such facilities, a privilege available only to industrialised communities, requires large amounts of metals and other minerals.

A lower IMR has not been restricted to the industrialised (wealthy) countries. Since 1960 the infant mortality rate has fallen by 84% in the industrialised countries, 42% in the least developed countries and 55% in the whole world. During this interval the population of the least developed countries has increased almost 200%, that of the industrialised countries 25%. Less developed countries derive “slipstream” benefits from the more industrialised countries in the form of trade, technology transfer, foreign investment and aid in various forms including family planning and education assistance, especially the education of girls and women.

An encouraging aspect of the slipstream effect is that countries today are achieving a reduction in the rate of infant mortality with a lower degree of mineral intensity than was required in previous decades. For example, Argentina in 2003 had an IMR of 19 and a copper use of 1.2 kg per head. The Netherlands in 1960 had a similar IMR but with a copper use per head of 2.8 kg. This phenomenon is widespread and persistent.

The potential sources of extra minerals are numerous. The crust of the Earth is 30km to 45 km thick under the continents. Almost all metal production to date has been extracted from the top one kilometre. Much remains to be found and extracted below this. Extensive resources also will be recovered from more accessible deposits in South America, Central Asia, Africa and elsewhere. Mineralised nodules on the sea floor might also be recovered. Extensive coal and gas reserves exist currently; exploration in deeper water will discover more oil and gas and increasing prices will increase oil reserves.

Jack Sturgess is a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

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Thanks Jack for sharing your thoughts and analysis with us.

Stranded Pilot Whales Moved on Donated Mattresses

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Almost thirty long-finned pilot whales were stranded on Strahan’s Ocean Beach, Tasmania, on Friday. Five animals were saved.

According to the Sunday Tasmanian:

“Rough surf made it impossible to return the whales to the water in the same place they were stranded, so a massive rescue mission was launched early yesterday morning to transport them by trailer to Macquarie Harbour.

The whales — the biggest weighing about two tonnes — were each lifted by an army of 10 people on to the back of a trailer, which was lined with mattresses donated by a local hotel.

The whales were then driven 11km away from Ocean Beach — a well-known spot for whale strandings — and returned to the water in Macquarie Harbour in an operation that took almost six hours.”

Bravo to the volunteers.

See some pictures of the whales here: http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,20862210-3462,00.html

National Park Declaration Didn’t Save Tinkrameanah Forest in the Pilliga

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As part of the campaign to have State Forest converted to National Park in the Pilliga-Goonoo region of central western New South Wales, the Western Conservation Alliance held a forest protest in the Tinkrameanah State Forest in August 2002. The main thrust of their media release* announcing the sit-in was that : logging was a threat to the beautiful and high conservation value Tinkrameanah forest because contractors were not supervised.

Tinkrameanah State Forest became national park just over a year ago and timber harvesting is now banned.

This last week there have been bushfires in the Pilliga-Goonoo region with over 100,000 hectares burnt.

Volunteer fire fighters have been working around the clock, but in the Tinrameanah nature reserve they couldn’t put in a fire break because national parks officers were concerned about the potential environmental impact.

Yesterday I received an email from a woman who lives in the Pillaga near Tinrameanah, Juleen Young wrote:

“Tinkrameana was under State Forestry control but went under National Park’s control with the Brigalow decision. They have not had it 12 months and it has been incinerated, gone.”

Perhaps it was inevitable that the Tinkrameana forest would one day burn?**

The Pilliga forests are only new. Early explorers described the country as open grassland and woodland. Early European settlers followed with sheep but they didn’t survive the drought. Then there were flood in the 1880s triggering massive germination of native cypress and Eucalyptus. A timber industry established and flourished until about 1967 when the state government started converting the working forests to National Park beginning with the 80,000 hectare Pilliga Nature Reserve.

In May last year then NSW Premier Bob Carr announced a ban on logging over a further 350,000 hectares describing the decision as achieving ‘permanent conservation’ of the iconic forests. As the timber workers were chased out of their forests, they explained that without active management there can be no conservation. They said that the Pilliga forests need to be tended – including thinned and protected from wildfires.

Indeed foresters have a vested interest in not letting their forests incinerate, and that vested interest has benefited barking owls and koalas.

I’m sure that the Western Conservation Alliance, not to mention the Wilderness Society, are disappointed that the Tinkrameanah is gone. But the bottom-line is that while campaigning so hard to have State Forest converted to National Park, they didn’t budget for fire prevention.

In fact environmental activists in NSW have lobbied hard for restrictive fire intervals for prescribed burning and heavily conditional licensing and on top of this the National Parks and Wildlife Service is chronically under funded with inadequate reources for effective hazard-reduction (see ‘When Will We Ever Learn?’ by Jim and Aled Hoggett).

The Tinkrameanah forest may start to grow back one day, but with timber workers excluded will it ever be as biologically diverse? Indeed if the cypress is not thinned it may just develop into thicket void of koalas and barking owls?

The Western Forest Alliance was wrong to suggest the greatest threat to the Tinkrameana was logging, indeed the long term survival of biologically diverse healthy forests in the Pilliga region may depend on sustainable use conservation, in particular getting timber workers back into the forests.

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* Media Release
Embargoed until 12 noon, 9 August 2002

Western Forest Protest: First ever in region

Today the Western Conservation Alliance is holding the first-ever forest protest in the region against destructive logging, including the destroying of hundred-year-old grass trees in Tinkrameanah State Forest, near Coonabarabran.

“Management of this beautiful forest by State Forests is seriously lacking. Logging contractors are either failing to follow new licence conditions negotiated last year, or they are working under old, inadequate licences with no supervision”, said Friend of the Pilliga representative, David Paull.

“Either way it’s obvious that when land is designated state forest, it is in harms way. National park protection would ensure such damage would not occur.”

The WCA is calling for an immediate investigation into the logging and a moratorium on all logging of high conservation areas in the Brigalow Belt South Bioregion, such as Tinkrameanah State Forest, until the Western Regional Assessment is finalised.

‘Conservationists from all over the Western Region and NSW are concerned about the ongoing destruction of western woodland remnants and other poorly conserved forest communities’ said Bev Smiles from National Parks Association of NSW.

‘The protest highlights the need to stop logging key western forests and start planting hardwood timber lots on degraded agricultural land’, she said.

The Western Conservation Alliance wants Tinkrameanah State Forest to be protected in the Western Regional Assessment, to be finalised this year.

The peaceful protest in Tinkrameana State Forest, 40 km east of Coonabarabran and just to the west of Tambar Springs is being held on Friday 9th August. Further protests are planned.

** See comment from Luke (December 2, 3.21pm) following my recent blog post ‘Pilliga Forest Burns’ for a history of fires in the Pilliga.