Sustainability
thrive here. Thanks to a NZ$50,000 (£26,300) injection, the local visitors centre has been revamped too, promising a jump in tourism and new career opportunities for thousands. You’ve probably guessed by now, but Reefton was not always this idyllic. For a decade until 2016, what looks like virgin territory was actually the Globe Progress Mine, a pit mining operation run by OceanaGold, a place that once stretched over 260 hectares and produced 610,000 ounces of precious metal. But before the first nugget of gold was ever mined, Scanlan and his team were resolved not to abandon the landscape they inherited. To a certain extent, Scanlan puts the marvels of this new Reefton down to forward planning. Calling closure an “iterative process” he emphasises that rock dumps were revegetated and pits reshaped as soon as mining ceased. Science, he might have added, has played a role too. Using natural chemical processes, OceanaGold has cut the levels of naturally occurring arsenic from Reefton’s water channels. But beyond this technical wizardry, it’s clear that modern mine rehabilitation is equally based on thoughtful human relationships. “We work really strongly with the community,” Kauthen says of her own role at Business for Development, “understanding their needs, understanding the barriers and challenges that they face.” Though better tourist booths are certainly a start, Kauthen shows just how far this approach can go. Working with Glencore, Business for Development successfully helped grow winter wheat on remediated mining land in South Africa, along the way supporting over 14,300 smallholder farming families. And as Kauthen adds, choosing a remote corner of the country for her project is hardly accidental. At a time when many miners live in poor communities – and where 100 million ‘artisanal’ workers hack out a living informally – offering genuine employment opportunities post- mining can be a real boon for desperate people. In a similar vein, both Kauthen and Scanlan agree that mine rehabilitation can’t end five or even ten years after an operation packs up. In part, that’s a question of sustainability. Think of it like this: it’s all well and good for an operator to promise they’ll keep toxic waste from local streams. But what if they leave and a tailings mine breaks a decade later? Lucky, then, that staff at the Reefton site are careful to carry out continuous testing of nearby water sources, using data analysis to ensure they’re meeting environmental targets. It’s obvious the same principles are being enacted when it comes to community management too. Apart from offering ex-staff training in new lines of work, Scanlan says OceanaGold says they were “supported into local employment where they did not seek to move away from Reefton”.
World Mining Frontiers /
www.nsenergybusiness.com
Closed for business
Where Reefton has led, the rest of the world is quickly following. Aside from its work in South Africa, Glencore spent $30m in rehabilitating old Australian coal mines in 2020 alone. Staying in the Antipodes, Rio Tinto now employs ex-miners to work on rehabilitation and monitoring efforts. Beyond the obvious PR benefits of this work, Kauthen hints that even the most cynical mining concerns are increasingly conscious of what their shareholders expect. “The investor community is looking at ESG,” she says. “Mining companies need investors for current assets and new assets – they’re really improving how they manage them.” Her point is reflected by the numbers: with 63% of investors claiming they’d avoid mining companies that failed to meet their decarbonisation targets – according to Accenture’s Global Institutional Investor Study of ESG in Mining, 2022 – rehabilitation is rapidly becoming less a happy bonus and more a business necessity. All the same, it’d be glib to suggest that we can expect every ex-pit to become an unkempt wilderness anytime soon. One challenge is if a mining company goes bankrupt. If it does, Kauthen wonders, who can be expected to shepherd a site towards a better tomorrow? Scanlan, for his part, offers something of a solution. “Most mining jurisdictions have government securities in place,” he says. “In general, these provisions – via bank guarantees or other security arrangements – are sufficient. But government regulations are important to support mine closure and ensure minimum closure standards are met by mining companies.” That last point, in fact, probably continues to be the biggest barrier to proper mine rehabilitation. Scanlan and Kauthen both stress that enforcement is improving, but corruption and vested interests persist. And though even countries like South Africa are making headway, publishing a new policy to formalise artisanal mining in March 2022, it may nonetheless be too late to prevent another Ermelo, or a tragedy like it. ●
The Globe Progress Mine that once occupied the site that Reefton now sits in was designed from the beginning with rewilding in mind.
$30m
The amount spent by Glencore on rehabilitating old Australian coal mines in 2020 alone.
Glencore 21
OceanaGold
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