Earth Resources Exploitation and Sustainable Development: Geological and Engineering Perspectives

Abstract

Earth resources are the essential basis for an economy of a country and well-being of her citizens. Their exploitation is a key factor in economic growth and development of the nation, but one that can have serious negative environmental and socio-economic impacts. Therefore it is important to understand their origin/occurrence and exploitation in terms of environmental sustainability. The human society has profited from exploitation of earth resources, precisely when energy use became much more efficient during the industrial era. Some of these earth resources (renewable and non-renewable) are oil and gas, coal, water, metal ore, wind, air etc. and their methods of exploitation are surface and subsurface mining methods [1]. Thus the geological perspectives of earth resources refer to origin and occurrence of these earth resources while the engineering perspectives refer to the processes involved in the extraction (mining), processing and utilization of the resources. To fulfill the requirement of sustainable development, the efficiency with which resources are utilized has to be improved. The main concerns associated with earth resources, therefore, are generally the costs and environmental impacts of extracting, transporting, and refining them. The economics of earth resources deals with the supply, demand and allocation of the resources.