The Austrian Minerals Plan

Abstract

In the past decade, remarkable distortions occurred in supplying economy with internationally tradeable minerals (ores, industrial minerals, energy resources). Yet, the restricted availability connected with temporarily high prices of minerals is not due to an exhaustion of the resources but due to the enormous demand of China for minerals. Yet, also as to construction resources (sand and gravel, crushed rock) which are only regionally tradeable supply, bottlenecks have been already discovered because it is becoming more and more difficult to have access to these mineral deposits.

The Austrian Minerals Plan as an integrating component of the Austrian minerals policy is to contribute to safeguarding the mineral deposits in the country and to make them accessible also in future. In this present chapter, the individual steps beginning with the systematic registration of all mineral deposits, their evaluation and potential spatial resistances are described. Conflict-free areas of mineral resources are finally located in an iterative process and in accordance with the possibilities of regional planning of the Federal provinces shown as resource safeguarding areas and thus accordingly protected. The Austrian Minerals Plan is – so to speak – an intergeneration contract.