Remediating Mining Landscapes

Abstract

Remediating Mining Landscapesanne-cathrine flyen, dag avango, sandra fischer, camilla winqvist Abandoned mines are everywhere. Around the world, thousands of them are left behind where mining has ceased. Abandoned mines are not just spots made of holes in the ground. They can be open pits of immense proportions, with waste deposits on such a scale that new landforms emerge and with associated remains of derelict buildings and disused infrastructures. Mines affect entire regions. Communities have formed around them. Abandoning a mine often means emptying a village or a town.Leaving extraction is a process worthy of study in its own right. Still, we know comparatively little about it. We know that mining is a huge planetary activity, and every new mine is prepared for years with prospecting, planning, anticipation, investment, and building, followed by the period of production. We also know that mining in the Anthropocene is a massive, geo-anthropological and geo-social undertaking, a formidable network of mines and supply chains and financial institutions, indeed a "planetary mine" (Arboleda, 2020; Sörlin, 2023, see Chapter 1). Extractive industries massively affect geopolitics and global sustainability. They are a super emitter andpolluter. Abandoning mines is, consequently, an equally vast enterprise, albeit much less known. If the goal is sustainability, the process of re-purposing and re-orienting mining geographies should be a priority for further reflection and research. The Arctic is no exception.Much of the impact that mines have is environmental, which is the focus of this chapter. Over the last hundred years, mining has left increasingly large-scale wounds in the landscape, with polluted soil, water, and air, and affected plant and animal life. The mining industry is one of the largest producers of industrial waste in the world. In Sweden, the sector produced between 77 percent and 82 percent of all industrial waste in the country in the period 2010-2016 (Naturvårdsverket, 2018. Large sociotechnical systems for mining, not least infrastructures for transport and energy, may affect other land users negatively (Avango, 2020). Environmental impacts of mining have been at the center of a critical debate about metal demand in society and the interests of the mining industry, pitted against the goal of protecting natural 185