The absence of legal criteria to support the responsible closure of large-scale mines is a significant global issue. Mine closure regulation primarily focuses on the physical aspects of mining, with limited attention paid to social aspects of mine closure. This paper examines the extent to which regulatory instruments across three major Australian mining jurisdictions – New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia – include provisions that require proponents to consider the social aspects of mine closure. We found that regulatory frameworks broadly cover social aspects, but often without explicit text in legislation or policy guidelines. We also found that regulators rely on front-end approval processes to account for and mitigate the social impacts of mining and that, following approval, regulators rely on stakeholder engagement, rather than also requiring evidence-based analysis and impact management. In the absence of restrictive regulatory elements in the latter stages of the project life cycle, we conclude that mining companies are relatively unhindered, free to enter into indefinite care and maintenance mode, or divest their assets. The current approach allows the costs of mine closure to sit ‘outside’ the life of mine planning processes.

中文翻译：

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规范澳大利亚三个州的矿山关闭的社会方面

缺乏支持负责任地关闭大型矿山的法律标准是一个重大的全球性问题。矿山关闭法规主要集中在采矿的物理方面，而对矿山关闭的社会方面的关注很少。本文研究了澳大利亚三个主要矿业管辖区（新南威尔士州，昆士兰州和西澳大利亚州）的法规在多大程度上涵盖了要求支持者考虑关闭煤矿的社会方面的规定。我们发现，监管框架广泛涵盖了社会方面，但通常在立法或政策指南中没有明确的文字。我们还发现，监管机构依靠前端审批流程来说明和减轻采矿的社会影响，并且在审批之后，监管机构依靠利益相关者的参与，而不是还需要基于证据的分析和影响管理。在项目生命周期的后期阶段，在没有限制性的监管要素的情况下，我们得出的结论是，矿业公司相对不受阻碍，可以自由地进入无限期的照护和维护模式，或剥离其资产。当前的方法使矿山关闭的成本“超出”了矿山规划流程的寿命。