PRETORIA (miningweekly.com) – Holistic regional economic hub building needs to replace the current site-by-site approach to mine rehabilitation and far more productive post-mining landscaping needs to be implemented, new Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) natural resources and the environment executive director May Hermanus said on Monday.

“We need to interface in a much more effective way with building our economy,” Hermanus said in her first media interview since being appointed a month ago.

The former director and adjunct-professor at the Centre for Sustainability in Mining and Industry at the University of the Witwatersrand, sees her appointment as an opportunity to show that environmental specialists can revitalise the economy while regenerating mined-out areas.

There was a need to formulate policy-frameworked economy-boosting regeneration when closing old mines and to provide scope for optimum development when opening new ones.

“Perhaps this is a real opportunity to show both how this science is fundamental to decision-making and also what it can offer when we think about the future that lies within the carrying capacity of our natural resources,” Hermanus said.

With gold mining in decline and coal mining poised to relocate, at this stage the thoughts of the one-time United Nations International Labour Organisation associate are focused mainly on post-mining landscapes.

Recalling the brilliance of the regeneration plan for a mined-out coal area she visited in Germany, Hermanus proposed that South Africa put together a range of initiatives to landscape the depleting Mpumalanga coalfields while thoughtfully planning the upcoming Waterberg coal aspiration.

In the mined-out coal area she visited in eastern Germany, acid mine drainage had given way to well-watered landscapes and the vision of power stations continuing on biomass in the absence of coal.

Solar and wind-energy installations were envisaged for location on old coal-mining sites and in pits so that power grids could continue to be used.

Mooted was the creation of a lake district, with the minerals extracted during the water-cleaning process becoming the inputs for new industries.

South Africa, which already extracted gypsum from polluted coal-mine water in eMalahleni and then used the gypsum to make bricks, now needed to shift from site-by-site rehabilitation to regional regeneration.

The extent to which art and creative vision were included in the German approach was also worth emulating, with structures linked to its mining past being put to recreational use.