Sustainable development indicators for mining sites in protected areas: tool development, ranking and scoring of potential environmental impacts and assessment of management scenarios

• 36 indicators for sustainable mining operation in protected areas were developed.
• A decision support tool with scoring of indicator's importance values was set up.
• Alternative mining/mineral processing scenarios in protected areas were assessed.
• Underground mining with waste backfilling was the best option.

A major challenge faced by the mining and mineral processing industry is to ensure operation with minimal environmental impact in sensitive and especially in protected areas. There are several studies on the development of indicators for the mining/mineral processing industry; however, these are not tackling issues associated with protected areas including NATURA 2000 sites. In the present study, 36 indicators were formulated and proposed, categorized in seven groups, based on parameters related to the mining and mineral processing activities as well as the characteristics of the protected areas. For each indicator, its importance value was determined on the scale of 0–5. Furthermore, based on these indicators, a decision support tool for the evaluation of alternative mining and mineral processing scenarios in protected areas, taking into account mainly environmental criteria, was formulated. With this tool, the scores of importance values of all individual indicators were weighted and summed, resulting in a final total score calculated for each alternative scenario. A total of twelve (12) different mining scenarios were assessed and ranked according to their total score. The tool applied in the present study provides an integrated approach to take efficient decisions on mining activities in protected areas, with the optimal balance between the important ecosystems and the social – economic development, by the relevant stakeholders.