Environmental Risks Associated with Mining

Mining projects tend to be both long-lived and subject to considerable uncertainty about their environmental impact. This creates particular challenges for decision makers tasked with granting approvals. In many cases, they will need to craft conditions that will only become relevant decades into the future (e.g., mine closure plans) or that may never be required at all (e.g., financial securitie…

Mining projects tend to be both long-lived and subject to considerable uncertainty about their environmental impact. This creates particular challenges for decision makers tasked with granting approvals. In many cases, they will need to craft conditions that will only become relevant decades into the future (e.g., mine closure plans) or that may never be required at all (e.g., financial securities; management approaches triggered when certain environmental thresholds are crossed). Importantly, decision makers get one opportunity to get these conditions right – trying to alter the rules after investment decisions have been made will more often than not be difficult.

Given the recent uptick in mining interest in New Zealand, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) would like to better understand how certain environmental risks are currently managed as part of the approvals process, and how this compares with approaches in other jurisdictions. The main environmental risks of interest are acid mine drainage and tailings spills/leachates.

Two workstreams have been developed to help answer these questions.

The first workstream centres on existing practice in New Zealand. It will include discussions with various consent authorities (councils, New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals, Worksafe) and an assessment of the mining approvals they have granted over the last decade or so. This work will be undertaken in-house by PCE staff.

The second workstream centres on the approaches taken in other jurisdictions and is the focus of this RfP.