The entire social and overall development of mankind has constantly been linked directly to the exploitation of natural resources. Throughout time, only the tools to exploit natural resources have changed and become more and more effective. Modern machinery and equipment enable extensive environmental interventions, with the aim to obtain as many and as much mineral resources as possible in the shortest possible span of time.
State’s legal framework, which represents the base for states ownership of mineral resources, imposes restrictions and conditions on those, who already legally exploit natural resources or who intend to start exploiting as well as defines sanctions for those exploiting natural resources illegally. The aim of the regulation is also to protect our living environment. I described the general legal acts governing the exploitation of mineral resources in Chapter Three.
In this particular chapter there are exposed the legal mechanisms, by which the state protects the environment or in other words there are counted restrictions and conditions that potential investors ought to consider before they could be allowed to exploit mineral resources. In this chapter I describe the process of acquiring the mining right, the supervision of mining right, and the process of ceasing the exploitation of mineral resources. In this chapter I also define the state's action in the case of illegal exploitation of mineral resources.
Since I live in Litija, I chose to describe the problem of the abandoned Sitarjevec mine, which ceased to operate at a time, when the existing legal framework has not yet been in force and at the closing time the criteria set by the current regulation in this area were not respected.
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