Mining for Closure: Policies, practises and guidelines for sustainable mining and closure of mines

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mining for closure in see/trb

industry legacies, degrees of risk and under- standing and so forth are relatively poor; capacity within institutions supporting the extractive industries as well as those guiding transboundary risk management and/or disas- ter response are currently insufficient to deal with the task at hand; as economies in transition, national fiscal re- serves available for the financing of site recla- mation work, and/or social welfare “nets” for the support of communities affected by the environmental impacts of the extractive indus- tries, or the closure of mining operations, may be minimal or non-existent. 82. Countries are the producers or receivers of chronic and (po- tentially) acute pollution from their neighbours that can include: airborne transport of pollutants such as dust, smelter emissions, gases, vapours; mass movement of “solid” wastes (generally tail- ings containing heavy metals and toxic compounds); mass move- ment of liquid, or semi-liquid wastes (again, generally tailings containing heavy metals and toxic compounds); waterborne trans- port of wastes as suspended solids and as dissolved materials. • • • •

This section will draw together points from this document that are considered to be of particular salience in the SEE/TRB context. The choice of ma- terial here is influenced very much by a number of parameters (characteristics) that most of the SEE/ TRB countries have in common. While other coun- tries around the world share some of these charac- teristics, the mining countries of this part of Europe share a geographical location and historical pathway that combines with their geological resources in a unique manner. Some of the parameters shared by most or all countries in the region are that: the mining sector is a very important contribu- tor to local and national economies and that ongoing and new mining activities will be re- quired to underpin the economies in the fu- ture; the countries are (relatively) rich in mineral resources and have a long history of mineral resource extraction activities; there already exists a serious history of min- ing accidents, due in part to the widespread neglect of environmental safety and human security issues combined with sub-standard extraction and waste management activities, particularly in the post 1945 era; transboundary pollution risks associated with mining and mineral processing activities and the legacies of such past activities are many and marked; 82 nation states have been subject to marked changes in economic and political circum- stances, conflict, and socio-economic hardship during the 1990s that have exacerbated the problems associated with some sites; accession to the European Union is imminent or foreseeable, and compliance with a range of EU environmental and safety regulations is re- quired for that process to proceed; legislative frameworks addressing mining and minerals processing activities, extractive in- dustry legacies as well as accountability (and jurisdictional remit) for the environmental aspects of these activities are still in a state of development or flux; documentation of sites of pollution and un- derstanding of the geochemistry of extractive • • • • • • • •

Obsolete smelter and concentrator infrastructure – Romania Photograph by Philip Peck

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MINING FOR CLOSURE