The value of geoscience information in less developed countries

Geological conditions and processes profoundly affect all our lives, though few ordinary people in the ‘developed’ world are perhaps aware of this. Those living in more deprived regions, struggling to secure the bare necessities of life, such as a safe supply of potable water or a secure dwelling place, may develop an intuitive but unexpressed awareness of the importance of geology in sustaining, and sometimes threatening, their existence. But wherever people live, local geological information and knowledge provides the key to our successful coexistence with a fundamental but often ignored aspect of the natural world — the earth beneath our feet. Most countries possess a national geological survey organisation that effectively operates as a national geoscience information service. Traditionally, such organisations are financed either by national or provincial governments. However, with pressure on governments to spend less of the national GDP on publicly funded services, the actual ‘value for money’ spent on those services is increasingly under investigation. Many geological survey organisations are now being asked to justify the continuation of government investment in national geoscience information services. This requires an evaluation of the benefits resulting from the provision of geoscience information. In this report we concentrate only on the economic benefits that may accrue from the provision of new geoscience information and its application to mineral and groundwater exploration projects. For many, the former of these applications is a controversial topic, and they would argue that the environmental and societal costs of the resulting natural resource exploitation might exceed the economic benefits. However, the world demand for minerals continues unabated and their production makes an important contribution to the economies of many developing countries, while access to a clean water supply is now seen as a basic human right. We briefly review the uses of geoscience information and discuss how a value may be placed on such information. This is explored both theoretically and by examining the outcomes of several large UK-funded technical co-operation projects that resulted in the production of geoscience maps and other information of use to the mineral exploration industry in South America, Africa and Asia. Finally, we demonstrate a quantitative cost-benefit evaluation of a recently completed project to collect and apply new geological information to groundwater exploration in Nigeria. It is hoped that this report will encourage more geological survey organisations to critically examine the value of their own projects in a climate where users of publicly funded geoscience information increasingly expect value from their investment.