Sustainability Getting closure
Mine closure is a dynamic process, ensuring mining sites recover and rewild once operations come to an end. But between lax regulations and a lack of community engagement, progress has sometimes been elusive. Andrea Valentino speaks to Meg Kauthen of Business for Development and Greg Scanlan of OceanaGold to discover why successful rehabilitation has been quite rare, how a more thoughtful, people-centric approach to mine closure can help redress the balance and how governments still need to take a tougher stance to ensure operators take their responsibilities seriously.
ining has long been central to Ermelo. Take one of the roads away from the centre, past pretty brick bungalows and shops with signs in Afrikaans, and you can see for yourself. The country here, in the grasslands east of Johannesburg, is crisscrossed by pits. Slag hills heave up against the sky, and diggers and lorries grumble past. But if Ermelo is the soul of an industry that offers jobs to thousands – and provides South Africa with 14% of its coal – it has also felt catastrophe. In 2016, two local teenagers drowned in a disused mine on the outskirts of town, after rain filled the pit and the boys got into trouble on a warm September day.
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Those twin deaths are obviously terrible – not least given the mine’s former owner apparently made no effort to fence the site off. But arguably even more shocking is the fact that there are literally thousands of similar places scattered all across South Africa. As government records concede, the Rainbow Nation hosts over 6,000
abandoned mines, each with the potential to snatch away life in a moment. Nor, of course, is drowning the only threat. From acid wastewater to the sudden combustion of exposed coal seams, South Africans are daily forced to contend with an avalanche of risks, all of which Human Rights Watch says can harm communities in “myriad ways”.
What is true for South Africa is true for us all. From the US to Australia, abandoned mines have long been a blight on landscapes and people, with many firms happy to dump their responsibilities once extraction ends. But if some mining companies continue to ignore abandoned operations, or else prioritise post-mining profits over all else, others are changing tack. Working with local communities, some firms are carefully rehabilitating exhausted mines, providing sustainable opportunities far into the future. And why not? The reputational and economic benefits of this approach, after all, are unassailable – even if lawmakers may still need to prod operators along.
World Mining Frontiers /
www.nsenergybusiness.com
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OceanaGold
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