Mineral resources‘ extraction, environmental protection and land-use planning in the industrial and developing countries

In the last few decades access to the natural resources has taken on alarming proportions due to the increase in the world population and the consumption of natural resources. Although many who made prognoses and spoke about the exhaustibility of these natural resources were fortunately wrong, a number of shortages do show that we have to handle these natural goods carefully. The concern about the future of mankind has brought together scientists involved with investigating, increasing and releasing the natural environment’s potential and representatives of environmental protection who often complain about the ruthless impact on natural landscapes, biological communities and the space available for human beings. The dialogue with those responsible for land-use planning has begun. Every level of continuing and intensifying this must be taken advantage of. Since nations characterized by their industrialization and those still developing have moved closer together economically and ethnologically, it is evident that it is necessary in all parts of this world to search for ways of eliminating conflicts between resource extraction and the utilization of soil, water and the biosphere on one hand and environmental protection on the other. In solving conflicts, the maps that translate geoscientific and other findings into recommendations regional planners can understand have proven useful. In this volume the problems to be discussed are presented; the contributions introduce general and then specific problems before the representatives of the industrial nations and then those of the developing countries express themselves. At the end, an attempt is made to arrive at conclusions for the three professional fields represented.