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l To encourage better use of energy and natural resources and to guarantee sustained mining operations.
Different mines have different rationales and methods for site rehabilitation, and it is not feasible to restore all mine sites, as restoring or backfilling very large pits may be very difficult and uneconomic. But, ultimately, all land disturbed by mining activities has some potential for economic, recreational and aesthetic use. So the core of reclamation is to identify the unique potential of mined land and to choose appropriate technologies and measures to transform this potential into a sustained capability (Morrey, 1999). Reclaimed sites have a wide range of potential functions such as pasture, hayland, recreational areas, wildlife habitat, wetlands, fishing ponds, and swimming pools.
Some scholars insist that the achievement of sustainable mining requires proactive mine management (Hilson and Murck, 2000). Despite the validity of this argument, it is also imperative to have accompanying legislation and regulatory frameworks in place to provide the incentives and frameworks for these mining companies. The absence of either of them would possibly lead to failure or at least lower effectiveness of the mine management, and would thus undermine the goals of sustainable mining. The following section examines the importance of legislation and regulatory frameworks to mine land reclamation.
3. Major challenges facing developing countries
3.1. Laws and regulations
The mining industry plays a vital part in national economy of many developing countries,[3] and constitutes a very important source of revenue to governments.[4] This magnitude often provides policy makers with hard decisions they are required to find a balance between national economic growth and protecting the environment (Walde, 1993; Warhurst, 1994; Mather and Chapman, 1995; Bastida, 2002). The history of the Ok Tedi gold and copper mine in Papua New Guinea well illustrates the problem. Here dependence on the project for income to sustain its economic activities embarrassed the Government when it imposed environmental standards similar to those a developed economy would require for a similar operation (Mather and Chapman, 1995; Hilson and Haselip, 2004). Equally, when faced with the same question, a top Chinese environmental official accepted that economic growth must take precedence over environmental protection for years to come in China, because the former is essential not only for maintaining political stability but also for funding the environmental cleanups (Hertsgaard, 1997). The failure to fulfil the environmental goals of the Tenth Five-year Plan has further enhanced the concern of the Chinese government.[5] More recently a vigorous call to put the environment ahead of economic growth has been made by the central government, but it remains to be seen if the call will effective given China’s large population and its economic pressures.
For these very reasons, developing countries typically do not have strict environmental regulations and effective enforcement programs in place, and most of what may exist tends to be incomprehensive, vague or inapplicable (Hilson, 2000; Kahn et al., 2001; Sheldon et al., 2002). The usual case has been that these governments address mining-related environmental problems within mining and environmental acts, or related national laws (e.g. water law and land law), where the requirements for mine land reclamation are piecemeal and general. For instance, South African law requires the mining entity to “demolish all buildings” and to “remove all debris”, but there is no specific requirement for the mined land to be returned to its pre-mining condition (Basset, 1998). In comparison, developed countries tend to have more wide-ranging, stringent and effective regulations in place. For example, the US Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) provides for detailed and explicit standards and procedural steps. The German Federal Mining Law (Bundesberggesetz, BbergG) specifies a whole spectrum of different kinds of ‘operation plans’--skeleton, regular, specialized and joint plans” (Kuhne, 1992; Bismarck, 1999; Pan, 2002).
Furthermore, in order to achieve compliance, developed countries stress on-going restoration at all phases of the extraction processes by requiring mines to develop comprehensive environmental management plans, to install expensive environmental technologies, and even to hire outside expertise. But in contrast most laws in developing countries, though highly variable, attach more importance to ‘end of mine’ pollution control, or post-closure reclamation. A thorough study of environmental laws for mining in the Americas by the Environmental Law Institute has indicated an absence of adequate legal tools or policies for achieving pollution prevention during the different phases of mining (Bastida, 2002). In Africa, Zimbabwe’s mining regulations require, only on closure, a degree of cleanup and of protection of the mine openings to the satisfaction of the landowner and the mines inspector before the site can be abandoned (Hollaway, 2000). The problem with this end-of-mine control method is that mine operators are unlikely to mitigate and clean up environmental impacts during mining operations.
Moreover, most developing countries place heavy reliance on traditionally direct controls of environmental policy, and fail to provide incentives such as performance bonding, trusts or financial sureties for mining companies to conduct environmentally acceptable operations (Kahn et al., 2001; Bastida, 2002). Conversely, developed countries, like the US, Canada and Australia, tend to combine both command and control approach and economic incentives to stimulate best practice in the mining sector (Kahn et al., 2001).
The root cause of these poor and slowly developing environmental mandates in developing countries can be traced to the fact that, in most cases, environmental protection falls much lower on governmental agendas than economic growth, rather than to financial and technological constraints (Hilson, 2000; Bastida, 2002). Enforcement not only depends upon the existence of an efficient regulatory system and well trained and equipped enforcement officers, but also upon a corresponding political will. Indeed it is this lack of a political will which has led to the development of less stringent national policies and laws (Hilson, 2000) and which explains the poor enforcement of environmental laws in most developing countries (Bastida, 2002; Emeseh, 2004).
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