I spent most of yesterday in the building of the Swedish Parliament. This was a nice change to my usual environment, the campus of Stockholm University at Frescati, and the Department of Geological Sciences in the Geoscience building.
The reason why I changed my usual environment was a seminar that was hosted by two politicians from Skåne to discuss the Mineral Acts of Sweden and the current exploration permit for Vanadium in Skåne. Participants from northern Sweden (Arne Müller, Umeå), Stockholm (Barbara Wohlfarth, Stockholm University; Jonas Rudberg, the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation), western Sweden (Bert Allard, Örebro University) and southern Sweden (Jan Ehrensvärd, board of LRF; Anita Ullmann and Christa Claesson, network VetoNu) met with politicians to present facts and numbers regarding mining in general, the current ‘mining boom’, consequences for land owners who are faced with exploration permits, and the risks of mining Alum Shale.
The number of politicians who attended the seminar by far outnumbered the number of speakers, which clearly can be taken as a success. Also the many questions we got and the discussions that went on even after the seminar showed that there is a clear interest in the subject.
Bert Allard and I focused on the Alum Shale and its geochemical composition and on the lessons learned (or maybe better still to be learned) from former mines and their still leaking waste deposits. Once one becomes aware of the fact that so much old mining waste is leaking heavy metals to the groundwater, the talks about a healthy environment and the unspoiled Swedish nature becomes something of a paradox.
What also strikes me over and over again, is that geological knowledge is often neglected or absent. There really is a need for geological knowledge to become available to as many people as possible so that they can profit from the geological information that is available.
Barbara Wohlfarth 