Mining's seven questions to sustainability: from mitigating impacts to encouraging contribution

A recent initiative emerging from the mining industry has led to development of a practical, robust, and quite widely applicable way of assessing contribution to sustainability that has come to be known as the Seven Questions to Sustainability (7QS). It is applicable at both the project level and for assessments covering the full mix of human activities within broad regions. It is sensitive to local values and site-specific conditions. In short, it amounts to providing a pragmatic and broadly applicable definition of “sustainability”. This paper describes the foundation and nature of the 7QS approach, describes four applications, and draws out a set of observations relevant to the geoscientist.