Integrated environmental management and planning for closure: The challenges

Abstract

This article provides a framework for the collection of papers on integrated environmental management through planning for closure from the outset. It provides an overview of the environmental impacts of mining and underlines the imperative of improved environmental management and planning. It argues that pollution prevention, through planning for closure, from the outset can lead to cost effective strategies for operationalising sustainable minerals development. This seems to be most true for greenfield sites since, generally, the earlier closure planning and pollution prevention is built into a project, the more cost‐effective and environmentally benign closure will be. Furthermore, for greenfield sites, pollution prevention techniques can be employed from the outset, at the stages of exploration and mine development, and then monitored and improved through the operation stage to closure. The article then discusses how global changes in the industry, following the liberalisation of investment regimes, and mergers and strategic alliances between key firms, has, by virtue of the diffusion of new technology, led to further opportunities to prevent pollution through planning for closure from the outset. The objectives and components of closure plans are also reviewed as the article draws on the case studies to highlight some of the possible constraints and challenges to pollution prevention that may be faced in operationalising such plans at the level of both public policy and corporate strategy. Finally, the article concludes by suggesting a forward looking approach to integrated environmental management based on a dynamic model for an environmental management system.