Breaking up interest groups in mining activities: Suggestions for Nghe An

Nghe An is the largest province in the country, with rich and diverse natural resources, including the western mountains, rivers, lakes and seas. This article is intended to be published first in Nghe An Newspaper as a management suggestion, from which it will spread throughout the country.

From the perspective of "Economics", there are many contents, but in the end it is just a science that studies how society manages to exploit the earth's scarce natural resources to serve human life.

Since 1992, the international community has established the principle that the exploitation of natural resources must ensure social and environmental sustainability. Since then, technology has been a powerful tool to find optimal solutions for economics.

Minerals are often found deep underground, in riverbeds, and in seabeds, and are rarely exposed. The ambiguity caused by hidden minerals always creates opportunities for uncontrolled exploitation, exploitation outside the permitted area, and failure to protect the environment and social justice. Enterprises that are allowed to exploit always find ways to get the most resources and spend the least on environmental and social protection to maximize profits. Resources extracted in excess of the permitted volume cause damage to the State's revenue, and the least environmental protection costs affect the lives of communities in the mineral-rich area, and all the benefits flow into the pockets of enterprises with the right to exploit. Current mineral exploitation management in our country is very backward, not meeting the requirements.

Technology monitoring to eliminate "sand bandits"

I will take the river sand exploitation as a typical example. The press is still used to using the term “sand bandits” to refer to “river sand theft”. In fact, this way of constructing the term is not correct because the word “sand” is a Nom word, and “bandits” is a Sino-Vietnamese word. If using Nom, the term should be “sand bandits”, but if using Sino-Vietnamese, it should be “sa bandits”. I want to explain clearly so that no one will criticize me for writing without understanding, but “sand bandits” is easy to understand and is used often.

Currently, the supply of river sand construction materials cannot meet the increasing demand, both for landfill and construction. The price of river sand is getting higher and higher, and “sand bandits” are rampant everywhere. Previously, there were many cases of illegal mining without a license, but now it has decreased a lot due to increased management responsibility, associated with the participation of people in detecting.

“Sand bandits” are disguised as having a license but exploiting outside the permitted area and exploiting more than the permitted volume. The management system cannot monitor the actual exploitation, causing negative consequences for the river ecosystem, possibly causing riverbank erosion, changing the river, affecting the habitat and negatively impacting the lives of communities living on the river. Mining enterprises only want to extract the most sand, and do not think about any consequences! River sand mines are often located deep under the water surface, difficult to manage, control and monitor with the naked eye. Sand exploitation in the form of theft has spread from there, as long as a mining license is obtained from a competent state agency.

In other countries, people have solved all three problems quite well: One is to accurately delineate the area that is allowed to be exploited, two is to determine the daily exploitation volume, and three is to predict the impact of exploitation on the river ecosystem. Determining the sand exploitation area is handled by a system of buoys floating on the water surface, each buoy has a GPS chip (like in today's smartphones).

From here, the coordinates of each buoy are determined and connected to the monitoring center. The barge carrying the exploited sand is attached to a black box that monitors the journey, also connected to the monitoring center. Thus, all parameters of the mining process are recorded transparently at the monitoring center.

In the sand mining area, a camera monitoring system is installed to record all activities. All monitoring equipment is part of the investment portfolio of the mining enterprise, with the source of the benefits obtained. Moreover, such a monitoring system can reconstruct the model of the sand mining area to assess the impacts of mining on the river ecosystem, and predict the possible consequences.

Applicable to all mining processes

As introduced in the introduction, the general characteristic of mining is that most of the minerals are hidden underground or in the water of rivers, lakes, and seas. Management of any mineral exploitation must solve the three problems raised in sand mining:

(1) delineate on the ground or water surface the permitted area of ​​exploitation; (2) monitor and record the volume of minerals exploited; (3) protect and assess the impact on the ecosystem during the exploitation process, and restore the ecosystem after the exploitation is completed.

The difference in exploitation between types of minerals is only the method of mining and ore processing, leading to different solutions in impact assessment and restoration for natural ecosystems.

Thus, the main issue in applying information technology in monitoring the exploitation of different types of minerals is very similar. First is the application of global positioning technology with small sensors to determine the coordinates of the mining area, on land with markers and on the water surface with buoys pinned to markers at the bottom of the water. Second is the process of transporting the volume of mined ore is monitored by black boxes monitoring the journey attached to the means of transport. Third is the camera system monitoring the mining area to assess the impact and set requirements for post-mining restoration on the natural ecosystem. All systems are connected online in real-time with the monitoring center.

Such mining monitoring technology must be invested by the enterprises that are entitled to exploit, not by public investment from the state budget. Establishing such a monitoring system is to create a solid technical basis to ensure a sustainable mining system and to be qualified to solve the problem of fair benefit sharing from natural resource exploitation between the State, mining enterprises and residents of mineral-rich areas. Everyone is happy!

The above mentioned process of monitoring the exploitation of natural resources using information technology is completely feasible in the current technological situation of our country. From there, businesses rely on market demand to consider which resources can be exploited immediately and which resources need to wait for cheaper processing solutions to exploit.

When technology serves management, it will contribute to breaking down interest groups between management agencies and mining enterprises. However, it is clear that the solution to this problem is not only in the scope of technology, but also in the scope of human choices.