China's 10 National Standards for Green Mines Take Effect on October 1

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On September 11, at the Green Development Achievements Release Conference of the China Mining Conference and Exhibition, a batch of national-level and international-level standards and specifications in the geological and mining field were officially released. Among them, the series of national standards including the "Specification for Green Mine Construction" and the "Specification for Green Exploration of Solid Minerals," grounded in the realities of China's mining development, constitute the core institutional and technical support for promoting the green transformation of mining, providing unified specifications for the entire chain of green mineral resource development; the English-language standard "Code of Practice for Digitalization of Drill Core" and the international standard ISO 8616 "Technical Specification for Monitoring of Karst Critical Zones" are openly shared globally, continuously sharing China's geological technical experience and governance solutions, and providing diversified safeguards for the high-quality development of geology and mining at home and abroad.

The series of national standards "Specification for Green Mine Construction," jointly issued by the Ministry of Natural Resources and the State Administration for Market Regulation, comprises 10 parts in total, achieving full coverage of China's major mineral types including coal, onshore oil and gas fields, ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals, chemical minerals, non-metallic minerals, gold, sand and gravel, limestone for cement, and geothermal mineral water, marking that China's green mine construction has entered a new stage of systematization, standardization, and normalization. This set of standards closely revolves around six major dimensions: resource extraction, comprehensive resource utilization, green and low-carbon development, ecological restoration, scientific and technological innovation and standardized management, and mining area environment. It sets differentiated construction requirements based on different mineral development methods and process characteristics, balancing bottom-line constraints with development orientation, and runs through the entire life cycle of mine development. The standards establish core principles such as ecological priority, conservation and intensification, and source prevention; establish a binding indicator system centered on mining recovery rate, ore dressing recovery rate, and comprehensive utilization rate of associated and co-associated minerals; promote the "four modernizations" upgrading of mines; implement the reduction, reuse, and resource utilization of solid waste, wastewater, and waste gas; build a green and low-carbon management system covering conservation and intensive land use, energy conservation and consumption reduction, and carbon accounting; promote ecological restoration from post-event treatment to full-cycle management; and at the same time encourage enterprise scientific and technological innovation, consolidate corporate social responsibility, and facilitate coordinated win-win outcomes between mines and local communities and serve rural revitalization.

The "Specification for Green Exploration of Solid Minerals" is China's first specialized national standard for green exploration in the field of solid mineral exploration, and is also a landmark achievement in the improvement of the green mining institutional chain within the natural resources standardization system. This standard systematically distills the results of more than ten years of green exploration pilot practices across the country, integrates mature experience from various regions and industries, and covers core links in the entire process including green exploration design, camp construction, road construction, exploration engineering construction, "three wastes" disposal, site ecological restoration, supervision and inspection, and project acceptance. It specifies differentiated construction control requirements for different geomorphic regions. This specification puts forward quantitative technical indicators such as land occupation constraints, low-disturbance exploration techniques, pollution prevention and control, and zoned revegetation for engineering works including shallow shafts, trenching, adits, and drilling, establishing a full-chain closed-loop technical system from project initiation assessment, exploration implementation, and site restoration to completion archiving. It effectively resolves practical difficulties such as inconsistent environmental protection control standards in previous exploration, vague restoration standards, and the lack of a unified basis for acceptance, providing unified technical support for the implementation of the new round of strategic actions for prospecting breakthroughs and the strict protection of ecological red lines.

While solidly promoting the green transformation of domestic mining, China's standardization work in the geological field continues to expand internationally, accelerating the standardized export of mature technological achievements and governance experience. The English-language standard "Code of Practice for Digitalization of Drill Core" issued by the China Geological Survey is compiled based on mature domestic industry standards. It clarifies the definitions and selection schemes of six mainstream drill core digitalization technologies, and can strongly support cross-border geological research cooperation, overseas geological project implementation, and international technical exchange.

ISO 8616 "Technical Specification for Monitoring of Karst Critical Zones" is the world's first international standard in the karst field jointly developed by multiple countries under China's leadership, and is also the first standard issued since the establishment of the ISO Technical Committee on Karst. This international standard is based on China's domestic standards, standardizes the type classification of karst critical zones, station network construction, indicator screening, data processing, and information sharing, addresses the pain point of inconsistent global karst monitoring data calibers, and provides data support for studying the karst carbon cycle and responding to climate change.

The concentrated release of multiple national-level and international-level geological and mining standards this time fully demonstrates the achievements of China's geological and mining standardization construction and is an important practice of empowering high-quality industry development through standards. Internally, standards related to green exploration and green mines have built a green institutional system across the entire chain of mineral development, safeguarding the green and low-carbon transformation of mining; externally, through the export of technical standards and participation in the formulation of international standards, China contributes Chinese wisdom to global geological governance.

Next, the Ministry of Natural Resources will ensure the implementation and international promotion of the standards, continuously improve the geological and mining standards system, and use high standards to boost domestic ecological civilization construction and global sustainable development.