Beyond compliance: How early, integrated closure planning builds environmental and social value

Effective closure starts long before production winds down, ideally at the initial planning and post advanced exploration phases and conceptual design stage. By incorporating closure considerations early, owners and operators can influence infrastructure layout, materials handling and waste management decisions that reduce long-term risks and cost during eventual closure of the facility.

Early planning enables progressive rehabilitation, spreading restoration activities throughout the mine’s life rather than deferring them to such a significant extent at or beyond the end of operations. This minimizes the final closure burden and helps secure early regulatory confidence and community trust.

Integrating closure objectives into every phase of mine planning and development means facilities can be designed for simpler decommissioning, hazardous materials can be isolated for easier remediation and water and tailings storage facility systems can be configured to support long-term sustainability.

Closure plans that are established at the outset create a baseline that can be refined over time. The benefits include a safer, more predictable and financially resilient mine — one that meets or exceeds stakeholder expectations and leaves behind a positive legacy.

Just as technical excellence delivers successful closure, trust and transparency are equally essential. Meaningful engagement with and active participation through rightsholders and stakeholders, including Indigenous and local communities, must be embedded throughout the process.

This means moving beyond consultation to co-design. Through participatory workshops and decision-making forums, communities can constructively inform and shape closure outcomes aligned with their long-term aspirations, creating opportunities for local employment, skills development and subcontracting that extend benefits well beyond the operational phases.

Early engagement also reduces the likelihood of costly disputes or redesigns late in the process. When communication about risks and responsibilities remains open, closure becomes a shared journey instead of a unilateral decision.

This collaborative model proved invaluable for the Canadian Gypsum Corporation mine closure in Eastern Canada, where we worked with stakeholders to balance environmental restoration with potential future land use. Through transparent engagement and strategic planning, the site was rehabilitated to reflect the region’s natural character while maintaining flexibility for potential restart, a demonstration of how closure planning can support both environmental resilience and economic opportunity.

As mines become more complex, data-driven tools and digital innovation are reshaping closure strategy. Geographic information systems (GIS), drones and LiDAR mapping now provide accurate, real-time data to assess site conditions and track rehabilitation progress. Predictive modeling and artificial intelligence (AI) further enhance foresight, helping teams anticipate risks and optimize remediation to inform decisions with greater precision.

Landform design and reclamation also illustrate how science and creativity intersect. Stable, natural-looking landforms require multidisciplinary collaboration among geotechnical, hydrogeological, hydrological and ecological specialists. Extensive, although suitably focused and optimized geotechnical investigations and progressive trials can help achieve long-term stability and minimize maintenance requirements after closure.

Managing emerging contaminants, such as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), is equally important. Often overlooked in early planning, these substances can persist in soil and water, posing long-term environmental risks. Proactively integrating PFAS assessment into both operations and closure can effectively guide mining companies in the protection of local ecosystems and align with broader environmental stewardship commitments.

Financial resilience underpins all these efforts. Closure cost modeling and sensitivity analysis help quantify uncertainty and guide investment decisions. Accurate, adaptable financial planning supports compliance, investor confidence and transparent reporting to keep the economic dimension of closure as robust as the technical one.

Closure is more often perceived purely as a regulatory requirement, but it can also serve as a catalyst for community and environmental regeneration if managed strategically. The integration of asset management into closure planning, including assessing the value of infrastructure, scrap materials or repurposed facilities, can even transform costs into opportunities.

For instance, at a lead-zinc smelter site, our team developed a closure strategy that addressed legacy contamination while identifying reuse options for existing infrastructure. Feasibility studies and risk assessments supported environmental compliance while unlocking potential economic and social benefits for the surrounding community.

Modern closure planning also embraces decision-support systems, such as multicriteria assessment (MCA) tools, to evaluate sustainability options. These frameworks allow teams to weigh trade-offs between environmental, social and financial outcomes in a transparent and defensible way.

Closure readiness simply cannot begin when production ends. It starts on day one, evolving alongside the mine. This forward-thinking mindset transforms closure from an end-of-life exercise into an ongoing discipline that drives operational efficiency, community partnership and long-term environmental performance.

Drawing on our deep, technical experience in asset closure and rehabilitation projects around the world, we’ve developed a set of guiding principles for successful mine closure planning:

• Plan early, adapt often: Embed closure principles from design through decommissioning to manage risk and cost proactively.

• Engage meaningfully: Partner with communities and regulators to co-design outcomes that reflect shared priorities and strengthen social license.

• Leverage innovation: Use digital tools, predictive modeling and multidisciplinary expertise to improve accuracy, safety and sustainability.

• Prioritize financial resilience: Maintain up-to-date cost models and provisions to support compliance and build investor confidence.

• Think beyond compliance: Treat closure as an opportunity to regenerate land, strengthen community resilience and create lasting value into perpetuity.

Early, integrated closure planning transforms mines from finite assets into enduring contributors to environmental and social sustainability, so when operations cease, what remains is not a liability but a positive legacy. To learn more about how we support closure planning and sustainable asset transitions, download our full report, Beyond mine closure.

This article was published in the November 2025 issue of mining.com.