In Section 6.1 Areas to be excluded from prospecting and mining, the Policy requires that a Decision Support Tool shall be used to identify and classify areas both in and outside protected areas and other areas with high value species or environmentally sensitive areas according to their sensitivity. This Tool will assist the Mineral Prospecting and Mining Rights Advisory Committee (MPMRAC) to determine whether exploration and mining should be allowed in a given area, based on the best available information. A first iteration Decision Support Tool is described here, as the basis for further work and improvements as more information becomes available. The Decision Support Tool is needed to: a) identify the exact location of a potential prospecting or mining site in relation to important attributes such as: its exact location within a protected area o its exact location within a specific protected area management zone; its exact location within areas with high value species; its exact location within environmentally sensitive areas noting that the scale of protected area maps, management zonation maps and areas to be excluded from prospecting and mining in this Policy is too large to allow accurate application of this Policy to specific sites; and similarly concerning other areas with high value species with known biodiversity attributes or environmentally sensitive areas that that have not yet been accurately mapped or contain information of a sensitive nature that should not become publicly accessible; and b) enable further information that becomes available through research and surveys concerning biodiversity and habitat attributes inside and outside protected areas and environmentally sensitive areas can be used without requiring the maps in this Policy to be continuously updated. Access to such a Decision Support Tool should not just be limited to the MPMRAC but should be institutionalised and made accessible to a wider range of stakeholders to help make decisions with regards to any kind of development in environmentally sensitive areas. The Decision Support Tool can be designed to provide access to different layers of information to different officials to e.g. ensure that the localities of rare, endangered or commercially valuable species and their habitats that are currently treated as restricted information by MEFT do not become more widely available than necessary for their protection. It can be noted that the mining cadastre of MIME already provides public information on protected areas or parts thereof that are withdrawn from prospecting and mining.