Resources Policy最新文献

Natural gas rents, mineral rents, mineral depletion, and natural resources depletion are new determinants that need to be considered in the context of sustainable development. These determinants affect economic growth, resource availability, and environmental sustainability. We can endeavor towards a more equitable and sustainable future for all by incorporating these factors into sustainable development policies. This paper examines the impact of natural resources depletion, electricity production from natural gas sources, natural gas rents, mineral rents, and mineral depletion on the sustainable development index in China from 1975 to 2021. Results explain that natural resource rents, mineral rents, and mineral depletion are 10% significant. Natural resource depletion and electricity production from natural gas resources are 1% and 5% significant. Mineral depletion is negatively associated with the sustainable development index. Natural resource depletion, electricity production from natural gas resources, natural resource rents, and mineral rents are negatively associated with the sustainable development index in China. Promoting energy efficiency and conservation measures can help reduce the demand for natural resources. China can incentivize industries and individuals to adopt energy-efficient technologies, invest in renewable energy sources, and promote sustainable practices. Establishing transparent pricing mechanisms ensures fair competition among natural gas producers and consumers. China should adopt competitive bidding processes, allow market-based pricing, and provide clear information on gas tariffs to consumers.

Mining company commitments to ‘water stewardship’ are a relatively recent development to address corporate water issues. The peak mining industry body, the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), has incorporated commitments to water stewardship in its established framework for members. The ICMM requires members to ‘implement water stewardship practices that provide for strong and transparent water governance’ (ICMM, 2023c, principle 6.2). The purpose of this paper is to explore the scope of corporate water stewardship activities that mining companies report and reflect on the role of mining companies in this context. This research has implications for mining companies in respect of appropriate corporate water stewardship activities. Broad findings of this study are that while ICMM members appear to embrace details around operational water management, reporting of off-tenure activity relating to collaboration and ‘providing water governance’ is more complex. This study finds that requiring companies to ‘provide water governance’ beyond the mine would seem to be problematic, in that not all companies actively demonstrate this, and it is somewhat at odds with the generally accepted role of government agencies in water governance. We recommend that the ICMM commitment to ‘provide strong and transparent water governance’ could be improved by rewording the commitment to be instead to ‘contribute to strong and transparent water governance’, or alternatively, for ICMM members to provide ‘strong and transparent internal water governance’.

ICMM. 2023c. 6 – Environmental Performance. https://www.icmm.com/en-gb/our-principles/mining-principles/principle-6.

This paper aims to accurately predict China's rare earth export prices and reveal the impact of variables such as seasonality, significant events, finance, and supply and demand on rare earth price volatility. Daily datasets of light and heavy rare earths from 2011 to 2023 were used, and the Tree-structured Parzen Estimator-Temporal Fusion Transformer model was employed to predict rare earth prices. Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise and partial dependence plots were used to reveal the factors affecting price volatility. The following conclusions were drawn: (1) The Tree-structured Parzen Estimator-Temporal Fusion Transformer deep learning model can provide more accurate rare earth price prediction information; (2) Light rare earth prices are more susceptible to cyclical influences, while heavy rare earth prices are more affected by significant events. The outbreak of COVID-19 has had a long-term impact on both light and heavy rare earth prices; (3) The fluctuations in heavy rare earth prices are mainly influenced by financial factors, while the fluctuations in light rare earth prices are influenced by multiple factors such as finance, supply and demand, and macroeconomics; (4) An increase in resource tax rates may lead to a decrease in rare earth prices, while an increase in restrictions on rare earth mining may lead to an increase in rare earth prices.

The increasing environmental degradation is a major obstacle, despite the fact that the world has done a good job of dealing with sustainable development recently. This research sets out to fill that gap by examining 38 Asian economies from 2000 to 2021 in an effort to identify the novel factors that will determine sustainable growth. Progress in technology, availability of raw materials, technological advancement, and entrepreneurship are some of the factors that determine this. Similar to previous empirical research, this study's aims are investigated using the following tests: system GMM, quantile GMM, GMM, two-stage system, and one-step system GMM. Nonetheless, the results of the study show that technological innovation, gross capital creation, and the domestic labor force all contribute positively to economic development. In a similar vein, the endogenous growth hypothesis predicts that when economies develop rapidly, their use of natural resources would decrease. Additionally, some economies see a rise in growth when they engage in entrepreneurial activity and use renewable energy sources. This report also recommends some viable approaches for Asian countries to achieve fast development through the management of natural resources.

The current study focuses on describing global environmental issues and the initiatives of higher authorities to resolve them. Therefore, the current research considers emerging economies to demonstrate the vital environmental factors from 2005 to 2022. However, the second-generation estimation strategy was utilized to investigate the long-run impact of natural resources, information & communication technology (ICT), research & development expenditures (R&D), human capital, openness, and financial development on carbon emissions. This empirical research utilizes a series of novel estimators to investigate the study objectives. In light of the study's findings, ICT, R&D, and human capital are all important factors contributing to environmental quality. However, natural resources, openness, and financial development increase emissions. Under the investigated outcomes, this study proposes some green policies to attain a sustainable environment shortly.

Mining areas can provide important information for interpreting the geodiversity and geological heritage of an area, which also results in the need for special attention to conservation in terms of inventory, impact studies, and recovery plans for degraded areas. The territory of the Seridó UNESCO Global Geopark, northeastern Brazil, has several mining districts linked to the production of scheelite, gold, gemstones, dimensional rocks, and kaolin. Thus, we aimed to assess the impact of mining on the geopark's geodiversity and geoheritage. Through cartographic analysis, mineral resources and mining areas were observed, overlapping with geodiversity mapping, geosites' proximity to exploration areas, and abiotic ecosystem services generated or interrupted by mining. The results showed a wide diversity of resources and different relationships between geodiversity hotspots, geosites, and mining areas. The mineral exploitation could be fundamental for sustainable development in the geopark, considering proper conditions of ecosystem services balancing, and adequate use of international geoheritage and geoconservation policies in active mining. Furthermore, the paper presented that abiotic nature should be considered in environmental impact assessments and mining restoration plans. The geopark management should continue to develop initiatives to take advantage of mineral resources to promote sustainability.

The literature on driving indicators of economic growth shows diverse findings and commonly derives symmetric relationships. The current research aims to observe the linear and non-linear influence of primary indicators of interest. The results reveal that industrial value-added positively, while urbanization negatively influences China's short and long-term economic growth. Conversely, natural resource rents exhibit no immediate positive effect but contribute to long-term economic growth. A positive change in industrial value and financial development enhances economic growth with a more profound positive shock in the short and long run. Simultaneously, their negative change reduces the economic growth in China. Whether positive or negative, fluctuations in natural resource rents contribute to economic growth, waving the asymmetric dynamic in the short and long run. Further, urbanization boosts economic expansion during negative shocks but lacks significance during positive shocks in both short and long runs. Moreover, the frequency domain causation approves the structural transformation. In the same scenario, notable discrepancies in wavelet decomposition show significant fluctuations across all series, contributing to economic growth. To boost both immediate and sustained economic growth, investing in industries focused on value addition and refining urban planning to balance growth between megacities and smaller emerging urban areas is essential.

The paper models and discusses important dimensions when choosing development concept for petroleum projects, and the consequences it has for recovery rate and project economics. By means of case analysis, optimal concept selection is analysed from the perspective of oil companies and government, accounting for the difference in evaluation metrics. While government has emphasis on net present value, a key decision criterion for oil companies is breakeven price. There are two reasons why oil companies select development concepts that are suboptimal from a government perspective: 1) to attain a low breakeven price (capital rationing), a cheaper development concept is often chosen; and 2) conservative resource estimation is often applied. Underinvestment leads to low recovery rate. When oil companies are inclined to select suboptimal development concepts, it is optimal for government to combine cash flow tax and uplift. An uplift enhances marginal investment incentives and could also remedy the incentive for postponement inherent in the breakeven price decision criteria. Our topic, the effect of tax design on development concept and thus extraction ratio is generic, it applies also to the mining sector.

Based on the perspective of terrorism, this study uses a bootstrap full-sample causality test and sub-sample rolling window estimations to explore the risk aversion capability and terrorist financing capability of gold's time-varying dimension. The results suggest that terrorist incidents (defined by the number of terrorist attacks) and terrorist brutality (measured by the number of fatalities produced by terrorist attacks) are important factors in explaining changes in gold prices, but their effects differ. With extensive media coverage, the cause of investors' panic has changed from terrorist incidents to terrorist brutality. The results from some sub-sample periods support the capital asset pricing model by showing that terrorist attacks push up gold prices through a “terror premium.” Considering reverse causality, gold price can be used as an early warning of terrorist attacks, but its terrorist financing function is not yet proven. In the context of increasingly serious terrorism, studying the interaction mechanism between terrorist attacks and gold prices can help investors reasonably plan investments and provide insights for the government on combatting terrorism and maintaining world peace.

As the manifestations of spatial connection and the key units for implementing green development strategies, the 8 typical urban agglomerations of China cover 68.9% and 60.1% of the nationwide GDP and energy consumption respectively, and the carbon and pollution emissions exceed half of the national level, showcasing the significant potential in achieving synergy of pollution reduction and carbon abatement. Based on the idea of “source prevention, process control, and endpoint governance” given by the Chinese government, the study analyzes synergy accordingly from the perspectives of measures synergy, path synergy, and effects synergy, employs the composite system synergy model to evaluate the synergy of the 8 urban agglomerations in China at the prefecture-level during 2010–2020, and analyzes their dynamic evolution and spatio-temporal characteristics. The findings indicate that: (1) Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta urban agglomerations have achieved synergy, while the synergy degree of the two systems in Central Plain, Fenwei Plain and Cheng-Yu urban agglomeration is negative in 2020; (2) Moran's I indicates the urban agglomerations lack awareness of joint prevention and control between cities within the urban agglomerations. The kernel density estimation reveals that the overall path and effects synergy system has made significant progress in the last decade, while the measures synergy shows a downward trend; (3) Within each urban agglomeration, the main strengths of high-order cities lie in their transportation structure and resources utilization subsystems, while the main weaknesses of low-order cities can be attributed to their carbon abatement and energy structure subsystems. This study further provides policy implications for the urban agglomerations and cities inside to facilitate the synergy of pollution reduction and carbon abatement.