(Justmeans.com / CSR News) - ICMM’s new toolkit, Planning for Integrated Mine Closure, provides practical guidance for a key challenge to mining: closing a mine in a sustainable manner. This is what ultimately defines the long-term environmental and social impact of a mine.

The toolkit is structured according to the mine life cycle, starting out with conceptual closure planning and becoming iteratively more detailed.

Although closure planning ideally begins early in an operation’s life cycle, the processes and tools in the toolkit are still valid for circumstances where this has not been possible. In these cases, more effort needs to be applied over a shorter span of time to allow the mine to develop its closure plan.

When undertaken in an integral and sustainable fashion, closure is a significant part of the mine’s contribution to an area’s social, economic and institutional development.

Getting closure right remains a challenge. There are both technical and management challenges as well as inherent difficulties in the way the sector works which can impede successful mine closure outcomes. ICMM’s toolkit aims to support the sector in meeting these challenges.