Abstract During recent decades, public concern about the protection, preservation and restoration of the environment has increased。 Towards this direction, legislative action on environmental issues that affect the mining industry has been taken worldwide。 Within this new framework, two issues are of critical importance to the sector e namely, project appraisal by means of social costebenefit analysis (SCBA), and natural resource damage assessments。 In a vast majority of cases, both issues require analysis to be carried out in a way that the loss of natural resources and the effects of environmental degradation on human health and well-being are assessed in monetary terms。 This paper focuses on the application of environmental valuation methods in mining。 Principal legislative requirements are briefly described, some critical points of the most important valuation methods are outlined, and demonstrative examples are presented。85081

Keywords: Mining; Environmental valuation; Costebenefit appraisal; Natural resource damage

1。Introduction

This paper examines the application of environmental valuation methods in the mining industry。 The analysis does not intend to provide a comprehensive pre- sentation of environmental valuation techniques。 Rather, it presents an idea of how various valuation methods can be applied to issues of major importance to  mining。

The paper is organized as follows。 In Section 2, the main points of environmental legislation with respect to the use of environmental valuation in Europe and North America are discussed。 Section 3 summarizes the essen- tials of environmental  economics  theory,  and presents in a coherent fashion the most important valuation techniques that can be applied in project appraisal and

assessment of resource damages。 In Section 4, some illustrative examples from the mining sector are pro- vided with regard to the valuation techniques used, the environmental goods evaluated, and the results derived。 Section 5 provides some concluding  remarks。

2。Applications  of  environmental valuation

Internationally, the valuation of environmental im- pacts in monetary terms has become an important field。 In the case of the mining industry, there are two legislative issues where environmental valuation methods should be applied: project appraisal and environmental liabilities。 Although there are some difficulties attached to environ- mental valuation procedures, the use of monetary valuation techniques in project appraisal has significantly increased internationally since it offers certain advantages and facilitates better decision making [1e9]。

2。1。Costebenefit analysis

On   the   basis   of   modern   environmental   policy, a mining project should be evaluated not only according to its financial profitability but also on its performance towards sustainable development。 Bearing in mind that ‘‘sustainable development requires that human beings act in ways that simultaneously sustain or enhance economic well-being, quality of the natural environment and social justice’’ [10], the contribution of a mining project to the local and national economy, as well as its external societal impacts, should be estimated on an equal basis。 The latter is possible with costebenefit analysis。

The term ‘‘CosteBenefit Analysis’’ usually refers to the social appraisal of investment projects, where ‘‘social’’ signifies that the appraisal is conducted according to criteria derived from welfare economics, rather than private (or commercial) interests [11]。 Hence, this kind of analysis, also known as economic analysis, looks at a project from a societal perspective, and measures the impacts of a project on the economy as a whole, contrary to financial analysis, which focuses on the project from the perspective of the implementing entity [12]。 An important difference between financial and economic analysis is that the former is based upon the actual prices that a project entity pays for inputs and receives for outputs, whereas the latter is based on the opportunity costs to the society  [12]。