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Incorporating biological regeneration into economic assessments of mining in forest regions
Author(s) -
Allen Christopher,
Gooday Peter
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
australian journal of agricultural and resource economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.683
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-8489
pISSN - 1364-985X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8489.00036
Subject(s) - cost–benefit analysis , value (mathematics) , environmental resource management , social benefits , environmental impact assessment , environmental science , environmental economics , natural resource economics , business , computer science , economics , ecology , biology , quality (philosophy) , philosophy , epistemology , machine learning
Assessments of the economic, environmental and social consequences of mining have usually produced an estimate of the commercial benefits that mining in the area would generate, with environmental costs being examined in physical terms only. A theoretical framework for calculating the threshold environmental value of an area (the minimum size of the environmental cost of mining required to make conservation the socially optimal choice) is developed, where both the potential mining benefits and the rate of biological regrowth following mine rehabilitation are known. Including the rate of biological regrowth allows for the calculation of a more meaningful figure, as the benefits generated by rehabilitation are explicitly considered.