Skillings Mining Review August 2024: our cover feature, Environmental Impacts of Iron Ore Mining, looks beyond emissions to water, tailings, biodiversity, and haulage—plus the technologies and mine-planning choices that actually move the needle. We pair it with productivity strategies in iron ore, because lower impact must still meet throughput.
Policy and community threads run through the issue: ISA debates on deep-sea mining, growing resistance to lithium projects in Portugal, and how building on Chile’s sand dunes threatens coastal communities. Market dynamics shape the backdrop—Western miners pushing for higher critical-metal prices to compete with China, South Africa’s export-tax risk, and Anglo American’s coal divestment process.
On the transition front, Xcel’s Sherco solar permit signals grid-scale change, while IT in mining and the eight phases of exploration map where value is captured. Rounding it out: China’s new strategic-mineral find at the world’s largest REE mine, Kasiya’s dry-mining trial, and a curious “dark oxygen” discovery on the seafloor—with World Steel in Figures 2024 anchoring the data.
