JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Leaving behind a positive legacy was increasingly becoming an important component of responsible mining, University of the Witwatersrand Centre for Sustainability in Mining and Industry director Professor Caroline Digby said on Wednesday at the opening session of the Mine Closure 2014 conference, in Sandton.

She pointed out that, in addition to the well-known aspects of responsible mining, such as respecting human rights; providing safe, healthy and respectful workplaces; and avoiding or minimising harm to the environment, the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance had also included leaving a positive legacy in its Standard for Responsible Mining, which was currently open for public comment.

Digby emphasised the importance of this standard, of which a draft had been published in July, saying it could provide a one-stop shop for small or junior miners in terms of what had to be done to mine responsibly and, therefore, the inclusion of a mine’s legacy in the standard was worth noting.

“We need to get on the front foot [in terms of mine closure]. As functioning practitioners we are reactive, reactive to the legislation, reactive to civil society,” she said.

However, mine closure was a complicated and complex subject, Digby said, explaining that there were a lot of variables that could not be predicted, which made an adaptive management approach important.

She added that there were also various other challenges that prevented mining companies from “getting mine closure right”.

These included a deep resistance to talking about mine closure and the fact that mines never really closed but were rather continuously passed on to smaller miners to mine what remained of the resource.

“Those that open the mines, develop closure plans, build relationships with communities and make financial provision, seldom close the mine, [which leads to] promises not being kept,” she said.

Further, there were also problems relating to the governance of an asset after closure, as well as to the timeframes relating to ensuring sustainable mine closures – as building social and human capital could take longer than the life of the mine.  

The scale of most mine closure plans was also problematic as these mostly focused on an individual mine, as opposed to considering the entire area surrounding the mine, which might include other mines, and the labour sending areas.

Meanwhile, South Africa’s legislation also did not adequately accommodate social issues relating to mine closure.

Digby noted that the job losses that occurred when a mine closed and the impact of this on the surrounding community, was also something that had to be considered in mine closure plans.

“Employment in [the] gold mining [sector] in South Africa has gone from 528 000 to 134 000 in 2013. This is mine closure,” she said, noting that once respectable workers had become unemployed through this period.

To deal effectively with these issues, Digby believed there had to be a cross-disciplinary approach to mine closure.

Further, there also had to be good local government plans to drive the process and regulators in the government departments had to be trained to deal with issues.

Digby said the private sector could be part of the solution in this respect through providing training and mentorship to employees in the local municipalities where they operated.