Green mountains and water reappear mining area transformed into a scenic spot



China is a big mining country. The exploitation and utilization of mining resources not only promote economic development, but also bring negative impact on ecological environment. In recent years, abandoned mines have been actively restored in various places, and a large number of deserted mining areas have reappeared green mountains and rivers, and become new places for people's leisure and vacation.

Repair the "scar"

Many mines not only become exposed waste mines after mining, but also cause damage to the ecological environment in the development and utilization process, such as excavation, compression, collapse, soil erosion, tail sand storage and so on. According to relevant statistics, China's mining abandoned land has a large area and complex types, and the ecological restoration rate is lower than that of developed countries.

In Shanxi Province, which is a large resource province, mineral exploitation not only causes the decrease of runoff, the decrease of groundwater level and the shrinkage of wetland, but also affects the surface vegetation by producing the funnel-shaped radiation area of goaf.

In the Yangtze Economic Belt, mining has also left many environmental scars. According to statistics in previous years, a large number of historical mines not only caused large-scale land damage, but also the "point-line-plane" development and utilization pattern generated by mining activities caused the destruction of wildlife habitats and migration corridors, affecting the integrity of regional ecosystems. In the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the environmental pollution caused by the development of coal, non-ferrous metals, phosphate ore and other resources is prominent, among which the rapid development of phosphate mining and chemical industry has made total phosphorus become a pollution factor exceeding the standard of the Yangtze River.

According to reports, the Xinshan area of Dabaoshan Mine, which spans Qujiang District and Wengyuan county in Shaoguan city, Guangdong province, has been left with geological damage, soil erosion and other ecological damage after more than 30 years of disorderly mining. Among them, tailings and mineral processing wastewater have brought hidden dangers to the drinking water safety of tens of millions of people downstream in Qingyuan, Foshan, Guangzhou and other places.

With the improvement of people's living standards, improving the ecology and living environment of the mine and its surrounding environment has gradually become the common demand of all sectors of society, and has become an important content of building a beautiful China.

Beautiful transformation

From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, the ecological restoration of abandoned mining land in China began to enter the legal track, and many large coal mining areas began to rebuild the ecology of mining areas through reclamation and greening.

However, due to many historical debts and insufficient capital investment, the pace of mine restoration still cannot catch up with people's expectations. How to quickly turn tens of millions of acres of damaged land into treasure? In 2019, a new system of promoting mine ecological restoration by using market-oriented methods was born - the Ministry of Natural Resources published the Opinions on Exploring the Use of Market-oriented methods to promote Mine ecological restoration, proposing that the government should be led, enterprises should be the main body, social organizations and the public should participate together, encourage and attract social input, and promote market-oriented operation and scientific governance. We will accelerate ecological restoration in mines.

In the same year, in order to solve the problem of insufficient investment in mine restoration funds, the Ministry of Natural Resources studied and drafted the Opinions on Establishing an incentive Mechanism to Accelerate the Promotion of Mine ecological Restoration (Draft for Comments). The draft for Comments clearly encourages the comprehensive restoration and utilization of mine land.

The draft also specifically proposes to encourage all localities to develop tourism, agricultural comprehensive development, elderly care services and other industries on the land after the restoration of mines in accordance with the territorial spatial planning.

According to the direction required by the policy, many abandoned mines have achieved gorgeous transformation through ecological restoration and become a famous tourist attraction.

Nanjing Tangshan Mine National Park slope reconstruction mine restoration project, in the form of rockery waterfall repair damaged mountain, successfully combines the restoration of natural ecological environment with the leisure life of the city.

The Shimao Deep Pit Hotel in Shanghai Sheshan is a hotel built in a waste rock pit. The hotel was originally an abandoned mine 80 meters deep, and the designer built the hotel rooms along the cliff to become one of the lowest hotels in the world.

The maximum depth of the abandoned pit in the Tongluoshan open-pit mine in Chongqing is more than 90 meters, and the deepest water in the pit is more than 20 meters, which poses a threat to the life of the surrounding residents. In the process of ecological restoration of the abandoned open-pit mine in Causeway Mountain, the principle of ecological priority is highlighted, the characteristic landscape is developed, the new landscape design and tourism industry are implanted, and social capital investment is guided to maximize the ecological and economic value of the abandoned mine land.

After eight years of ecological restoration, Dabaoshan Mine in Guangdong Province is now "healing".

There is a long way to go

In the 21st century, China's mine management has achieved remarkable results. According to statistics, from 2001 to 2018, a total of 100.46 million hectares of land was restored, and 7,298 mines were restored in 2018.

In terms of restoration concept, various places have transitioned from the simple restoration of green in the past to the restoration of ecological functions. "Previously, the earliest method proposed for mine restoration was greening, and with the continuous deepening of greening work, it was further proposed to strengthen biodiversity protection." As the mining area expands and the nature changes, it is not enough to just stay in the biodiversity restoration stage, we must enter the ecological function restoration stage." Gao Jixi, distinguished professor of the School of Environment of Renmin University of China, believes that the ecological restoration of mines is not only the restoration of the natural ecosystem, but also the restoration of the economic and social systems matching the natural ecosystem, and the two systems must be interrelated and inseparable.

Although the state vigorously control the abandoned mines, the ecological restoration of mines is a long-term undertaking with a long way to go. Experts believe that for the ecological restoration of mines in China, it is also necessary to establish a more perfect land reclamation system, laws and regulations and a mature management system.

Zhou Jinjeng, director of the Ecological Civilization Research Center of Peking University, suggested that in the future, mine restoration should be fully from the macro and systematic perspective of "landscape, forest, sky, lake and grass are a life community", based on the "three axioms" of pollution control - no harm, nondiffusion, and full publicity, and the overall framework of mine restoration work should be formulated.