Rare Earth Development should hold Ecological Bottom Line

Rare earth is absolute scarce resources

Rare earth is absolute scarce resources, but the economic benefits can not compensate for ecological losses in the mining process in China, the immediate benefits are far less than the long-term losses. One important reason is that the rare earth manufactures don't hold the bottom line of the development of rare earth industry.

There are weaknesses in rare earth smelting, separation and deep-processing aspects

Once the ecological bottom line is breakthrough, the industrial development will be unsustainable. In recent years, many resource-based cities encounter resource depletion because of over-exploitation, which finally had to choose transformation. It now appears that the rare earth rich regions will also face the same problem if don't properly handle the ecological protection. Guangdong planed the scale of rare earth application industry to be over 1 trillion RMB in 2020, but this goal has been achieved eight years ahead of schedule. The rare earth industry is becoming a new economic growth point in Guangdong. Mining targets and smelting separation index don't match the rare earth mining and there are weaknesses in rare earth smelting, separation and deep-processing aspects. The rare earth industry is difficult to be strong support for economic development if these problems are not resolved.

Disorderly exploitation of rare earth resources is a short-sighted behavior

Once the ecological bottom line is a breakthrough, the living conditions of the masses cannot be guaranteed. Publicly available data shows that the pool leaching process will destroy 200 square meters of surface vegetation mining every 1 ton of rare earth and causes 12 million cubic meters of soil erosion each year, which undoubtedly causes a great impact to the normal production and life of local people. At the same time, due to complex process and specialty, the leaching, acid precipitation and other processes in rare earth mining, smelting process will produce a large number of wastewater, which is rich in ammonia, heavy metals and other pollutants, seriously polluting water bodies and is a direct threat to the lives and safety of the masses. It is visible, compared with the long-term development of the industry, breaking the ecological bottom line and excessive disorderly exploitation of rare earth resources is a short-sighted behavior.

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