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Geopolitical Risk Assessment of Countries with Rare Earth Element Deposits

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Abstract

Rare earth elements (REEs) are considered critical minerals for industrial and defense sectors. REEs are not as rare as the word “rare” portrays; yet, the exploitable and/or profitable deposits of REEs may be found only in certain geographical areas. The political and social conditions characterizing these areas may not always be in favor of mining operations. These conditions are imposing the need for extra consideration on the geopolitical constraints prior to any decision-making and before any mining project begins. This study assesses the risk related to mining projects for areas that feature REE deposits based on a geopolitical viewpoint. Probable ranking differences between the current assessment and a 2015 assessment are discussed. The comparative indicators used and the appraisal procedure applied in this comparison are based on a number of different geopolitical indicators. Several ranking changes occurred between 2015 and 2019.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Associate Professor P. Partsinevelos at the Technical University of Crete for his help with creating the annotated world map included in this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chania, Greece

    Sotiris N. Kamenopoulos

  2. Department of Mining Engineering, University of Kentucky, Kentucky, USA

    Zach Agioutantis

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  1. Sotiris N. Kamenopoulos
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  2. Zach Agioutantis
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Correspondence to Zach Agioutantis.

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Appendix

Appendix

The Likert scale is a ranking method which helps to quantify features, characteristics, attitudes, opinions, or perceptions, [26]. Typically, the ranking categories are coded numerically in an ascending or descending order.

The conversion of indicators were completed using the formulas shown in Table 5

Table 5 Conversion of indicators to a Likert scale
Full size table

The initial ranking of countries is calculated after the Total Country Risk Evaluation (TCRE) is summed up for each country. Then, the TCREs are converted to scale from 0 to 1. The value of “0” corresponds to the lowest risk while the value of “1”corresponds to the highest risk. The following equation was utilized to calculate the final ranking score for each country “i” in a scale between 0 and 1:

$$ \mathrm{Ranking}\ \mathrm{Score}\left[\mathrm{i}\right]=1-\left(\mathrm{TCRE}\left[\mathrm{Worst}\right]-\mathrm{TCRE}\left[\mathrm{i}\right]\right)/\left(\mathrm{TCRE}\left[\mathrm{Worst}\right]-\mathrm{TCRE}\left[\mathrm{Best}\right]\right) $$

where TCRE[Best] is the best Total Country Risk Evaluation score for the evaluated countries (i.e., Greenland = 0.3058), TCRE[Worst] is the worst Total Country Risk Evaluation score for the evaluated countries (i.e., Somalia = 3.8913), and TCRE[i] is the Total Country Risk Evaluation score for country “i.”

Table 6 shows the raw data for country ranking in 2019, and Table 7 shows the raw data for country ranking in 2015.

Table 6 Raw data for country ranking (year 2019)
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Table 7 Raw data for country ranking (year 2015)
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Kamenopoulos, S.N., Agioutantis, Z. Geopolitical Risk Assessment of Countries with Rare Earth Element Deposits. Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration 37, 51–63 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42461-019-00158-9

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