摘要：Assessments of the economic, environmental and social consequences of mininghave usually produced an estimate of the commercial bene￠ts that mining in thearea would generate, with environmental costs being examined in physical termsonly. A theoretical framework for calculating the threshold environmental value ofan area (the minimum size of the environmental cost of mining required to makeconservation the socially optimal choice) is developed, where both the potentialmining bene￠ts and the rate of biological regrowth following mine rehabilitationare known. Including the rate of biological regrowth allows for the calculation of amore meaningful ￠gure, as the bene￠ts generated by rehabilitation are explicitlyconsidered.
