Growing awareness of limits set by exhaustibility of natural resources has led to a conclusion that only through their valuation in monetary terms one may assess a comprehensive economic impact of their use. Thus mineral resources have been included from the beginning to almost all studies regarding natural resources assessments. The first result, widely recognized by international community, of researches came in the 1993 – edition of the “Handbook of National Accounting: Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting”. One of the key outcomes of these works was a conclusion that measuring value of mineral resources for mineral raw materials production, alongside with physical flows of these materials, environment related transactions and measuring impact of the economy on the environment, should make basic pillars of this newly designed system, later named as the System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA). As implementation of SEEA is still in a primary stage, many methodological issues remain unsolved. This article attempts to enumerate achievements made so far and indicate issues in need for further development. Taking into account the importance of mineral resources for further economic development of Poland authors indicate a necessity to develop and implement methodologies for monetary assessment of resources/reserves available, extracted and depleted in order to form a methodological base for a meaningful policy of sustainable growth. The special challenge results from monetary assessment of explored but yet undeveloped mineral deposits.

The sterilization of mineral resources makes considerable amounts inaccessible for future use and may be a barrier to the free supply of commodities. During the exploitation of mineral deposits, some parts of their resources become sterilized as inaccessible because of natural hazards or unfavorable economic conditions. Not mining land use and the social opposition against mining is the purpose of sterilization of considerable demonstrated mineral resources of deposits not yet engaged in exploitation. The native sulfur deposits in Poland are a good example of such “not mining” sterilization, which makes a considerable part of known resources inaccessible. On the northern border of the Carpathian Foredeep within the Miocene gypsum formation, the systematic exploration had demonstrated about 1 billion tons of sulfur resources located in the deposits of varied dimensions. The sulfur opencast mining and underground melting (the modified Frasch method) flourished from 1958 up to 1993. The increasing sulfur supply, recoverable from hydrocarbons, caused the closing down of sulfur mines, leaving a place with considerable untouched resources. About 67% of sulfur resources left by closed mines and of other explored but not exploited deposits are sterilized by the advancement of settlements, industrial plants, road construction, and by social opposition against mining.

There are numerous manifestations of ore mineralization in the Polish part of the Carpathians. In the past there were episodes of mining activity too. Iron ores were mined in Tatra Mountains and Outer Carpathians) as well as a small scale exploitation of polymetallic lodes was undertaken (Tatra, Pieniny). Currently there is a lack documented deposits of metallic ores in this area. Former deposits were of small size, in addition, often significantly exhausted and did not meet current quality requirements. The last exploration works for ore deposits were carried out in the twentieth century, especially in the period after World War II. However, but they have not led to discovery of new deposits. The increasing demand for metals and the development of technologies allowing the use of ore with low levels of metals and profitable exploitation of small “hidden” deposits gives rise to reconsider the possibility of occurrence of ore deposits in the Carpathians. This paper focuses on two major topics. The first one is a discussion and analysis of available source materials and data on the old deposits and identified occurrences of ore mineralization. An attempt their interpretation in relation to the contemporary models of deposits was made. The current models geotectonic construction of the Carpathians and their development, was taken into account. The second topic, based on the results presented analyzes and thoughts, focuses to select some areas, which are prospective for the occurrence of ore deposits, especially deposits located at greater depths than previously sought. In these areas (the Bystre thrust, the area from Krynica to Wysowa as well as the zone with andesite occurrences in the Pieniny Klippen Belt) it is recommended to perform exploration, both in terms of their deep geological conditions as well as some geochemical surveys, using modern research methods.