Sustainability across the Mine Life Cycle in Pakistan: Current Knowledge and Research Priorities

Abstract

Mineral development can support sustainable development only when environmental protection, economic value, social well-being, and sound governance are managed together across the whole life of a mine. Pakistan illustrates the challenge since it produces a range of industrial minerals and fuels and is developing a world-scale copper-gold deposit yet mining remains a small part of the national economy. This purposive integrative review examines how far recent literature supports a sustainable mining transition in Pakistan and where the evidence is missing. Pakistan-specific studies were coded by sustainability dimension and mine life-cycle stage. Most concern the extraction stage and none in the corpus addresses pre-mining baselines or mine closure the stages that determine long-term environmental and social liability. Existing studies document water and soil contamination forest loss and occupational fatalities at individual sites while value addition community outcomes digital technology and recent legal reforms remain little examined. The paper proposes a way of tracing how sustainability commitments are lost between law and practice, and a life-cycle governance framework with a small set of lease-level indicators aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. Research priorities are set out for each gap.

Keywords:

Sustainability; Sustainable Mining; Pakistan; Mine Life-Cycle; Occupational Safety; Mineral Governance; Mine Closure;  Sustainable Development Goals

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23233143