resources Article Instruments of Mineral Deposit Safeguarding in Poland, Slovakia and Czechia—Comparative Analysis Slávka Gała´s 1,* , Alicja Kot-Niewiadomska 2 , Andrzej Gała´s 2 , Julián Kondela 3 and Blažena Wertichová 4 1 Faculty of Geology, Geophysics and Environmental Protection, AGH University of Science and Technology, al. Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, Poland 2 Mineral and Energy Economy Research Institute, Polish Academy of Science, Provision of Mineral Policy, Wybickiego 7A, 31-261 Krakow, Poland;
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[email protected] Abstract: Mineral deposits are essential for the economic, technological and social development. However, to enable them to play an appropriate role in the process of sustainable development, they need to be safeguarded in a comprehensive and systemic manner in the same measure as other elements of the environment. The practice of securing access to areas where the mineral deposits can be found is based on the statement that they can be extracted only in places where they occur. This fact defines the type and scope of instruments for safeguarding prospective deposit areas of minerals and their documented deposits. These issues gained in significance in the EU level in recent years however views on this subject across the Member States still vary. The paper subjects instruments of Citation: Gała´s,S.; Kot-Niewiadomska, A.; Gała´s,A.; mineral deposit safeguarding used in Poland, Slovakia and Czechia to the analysis and multi-criteria Kondela, J.; Wertichová, B.