The objective of the assignment was to: 1) obtain a clear idea of the scale and composition of the environmental and social issues the CCA countries are facing regarding abandoned mine sites and ongoing mines that are approaching closure, as well as ability to address these problems from policy, technical and financial perspectives; 2) articulate a toolbox/checklist for governments on good practices for Mine closure, technical, social and environmental, including good practice mechanisms for estimating mine closure costs, as well as related financial surety mobilization, management and realise; 3) Develop guidelines/recommendations, based on good examples, of economic repurposing of closed mines, including specific usage for key parts of mining operations together with success factors.
Description of actual services provided by your staff within the assignment:
The specific objectives of the project are:
- Review the legacy and ongoing mineral operations in the three sample countries (Armenia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan) and distinguish between sites where the main issues are environmental, those where socio-economic and environmental issues still are or will become important mine closure issues, and those in which socio-economic issues are likely to dominate
- Identify the “hotspots” which potentially pose the greatest acute and chronic social, environmental and economic risks
- Identify policy and institutional changes, including access to resources, in order to reduce future accumulation of improperly decommissioned minerals projects while promoting socially and environmentally responsible approaches to mine closure
- Recommend the technical standards/guides useful to the governments to properly manage and monitor actual physical closure activities including checklist of analytical works, standards and guides to enable a clear and transparent mechanisms for assessment by key stakeholders
- Develop a cost estimation tool using three approaches by countries with good experience with closure, together with an articulation of good practice of how they are released for the actual work and other related mechanisms to inform stakeholders
- Discuss current approaches to social closure, successes and constraints, and potential good way forward for policy implications
- Analyze the potential for economic regeneration in communities or regions with abandoned or closed mines through the development of alternative livelihoods, including projects or programs linked to land reclamation (habitat, leisure, agriculture, fishing, pasture, etc.) and economic repurposing of all or parts of closed mines together with success factors and lessons learned that would be useful for mining countries around the world.
The study consists of 4 components:
- First component will entail a desk review of available documentation, including spatial data on abandoned, ongoing and planned mines in three countries, as well as the past and current policies, regulations and implementation of such with respect to mine closure.
- Second component consists of in-country work in order to locate more precisely the abandoned mine sites, identify the sites that are having or are likely to have the greatest environmental rehabilitation costs on closure and provide advice on the development of methodology to project the cost for closing sites in such countries.
- Third component envisages assessment of relevant global good practices of successful economic transformation, socio-economic regeneration and other productive uses of previously mined areas, focusing on experiences in former FSU countries.
- Fourth component entails provision of recommendations on how to guide the CCA and other developing countries to follow good practices in environmental and socio-economic closure based on global good practice. In particular, the roadmap will identify binding constraints (e.g. physical, operational, financial, regulatory or enabling environment) that must be overcome to unlock private and innovative technological, financial and regulatory solutions to address physical rehabilitation and socio-economic regeneration of mining sites.