Naturelike and Convergent Technologies for Developing Lithosphere Mineral Resources

Recent changes in public consciousness have inevitably led to the greening of thinking in all spheres of human activity. The most illustrative reflection of this phenomenon is the growing interest in naturelike technologies, which are associated with the main hopes for the settlement of the global environmental crisis, generated by a long-term antagonistic confrontation between the technosphere and the biosphere. In considering the concept of naturelike technologies as a designation of the principal trend in modernizing the general technological paradigm, it is necessary to distinguish two specific areas depending on whether the technologies that we use are present or absent in wildlife: first, the construction of technologies by duplicating in the technosphere effective processes observed in wildlife (nature-reproducing technologies) and, second, the creation of technological systems by transferring to the technosphere the effective functional structure of the circulation of matter and energy in biological systems (convergent technologies). Regarding the ecologization of the technological paradigm of the mineral resource complex, the methodology of creating an ecologically balanced technology as a multiobject cluster is based on the well-known principles of homeostatics, i.e., on the phased formation of a technological homeostat on the basis of the structure of a biological homeostat with the replacement of its essential elements with geotechnological target analogues. The result of this transformation is the construction of a convergent mining technology for integrated field development. Its use will ensure the development of technical systems that make it possible to limit external environmental impacts owing to the postexploitation self-restoration of natural biota phytocoenoses.