A New Comprehensive Model for Integrating Environmental, Economic, and Social Performance of Deep and Large-scale Open-Pit Copper Mines

Abstract

Deep and large-scale (D&LS) open-pit mines pose various environmental, social, and economic impacts on the mining projects’ stakeholders and local, regional, national, and international communities. Identifying these impacts and having a comprehensive model to assess these impacts altogether is critical to achieving sustainable development (SD) goals. This study develops a robust sustainability assessment model for D&LS open-pit mining projects. The model comprehensively considers 99 impact factors across environmental, social, and economic dimensions. The sustainability score is calculated using the Z-FDAHP technique to reduce the bias and uncertainty of experts' judgments. Then, the scenario-based technique is used to apply the stakeholders' perspective to the model. The model is applied to Sungun Copper Mine (SCM) in northwest Iran for verification. Results show SCM's sustainability performance is highly sensitive to index weightings. The highest score was achieved with sole social prioritization (scenario 8 with a sustainability score of 6.364 out of 10), highlighting the critical role of community impacts. Environmental or economic focus alone (scenarios 2 and 5) was not very sustainable, with scores of 3.326 and 5.298 respectively. Scores of 5.543, 5.330, and 5.117 for sustainability can be achieved by optimizing all three SD aspects with a long-term, stakeholder-centered approach (scenarios 9, 4, and 6). The proposed sustainability assessment model exhibits robustness through its comprehensive set of 99 environmental, social, and economic indicators; its ability to customize indicator weights under different stakeholder-perspective scenarios; and validation of the quantitative scoring approach through an empirical case study, while continuous improvement would further reinforce its robustness over time