What Did the Government Do to Restore the Land So That It Could Be Useful Again?

Lesson i – cost benefit analysis

Should rehabilitation be undertaken? Naif's first position was to reply the question by cost-benefit analysis (CBA), on the rationale of maximizing return on investment. If the rehabilitation cost was more than the benefits that accrued from doing it, so rehabilitation was not justified, and the funds should be invested in other opportunities that yielded a higher return. This was conceived in a static view of fixed technology, products, processes and consumer demands with ever stricter regulation (Porter and van der Linde 1998). Over time the static view gave way to a dynamic one involving innovation (Lesson ix). However, before that fundamental problems emerged with CBA in the context of rehabilitation projects. Offset, long time spans are involved. Rehabilitation is 'forever', which means discounting supposedly should be applied. Still there is no definitive reply to what discount charge per unit to apply. If a loftier discount is applied then guarantee on the wellbeing of future generations is foreclosed. Even at a depression discount charge per unit, long-term survival is in question. If discounting were the but problem, CBA might nevertheless be useful. Even so, a second serious flaw relates to the nature of the assets involved. In conventional utilise of CBA things like labour and machinery are interchangeable. If it is inexpensive and plentiful, use manual labour to build the bridge, otherwise apply mechanism. By comparing, in that location are no substitutes for environmental processes such as nutrient cycling, photosynthesis, succession and the weather condition. Natural upper-case letter is indispensable and irreplaceable. This ways that even a slow rate of environmental loss cannot be tolerated for long without impairing biospheric function whatever the worth of the immediate benefits and costs of avoiding and remedying any ill-effects. 3rd, natural capital does not change hands betwixt willing buyer and willing seller. In that location is no explicit market value for the assets. Prices must be imputed. Word of discounting, pricing and sustainability in environmental contexts can exist institute in, for example, (Pearce et al. 1989), Farber and Hemmersbaugh (1993) and Martinez-Paz et al. (2016). It may be that project planning can exist informed by CBA despite its shortcomings, but plain CBA tin exist adjusted to back up preconceptions.

Lesson 1 therefore is that CBA cannot be relied on for an objective answer to whether or non to rehabilitate. An alternative and hopefully more than definitive decision criterion than cost-do good is needed.

Lesson 2 – value neutrality of science and engineering

To a naïve environmentalist the answer to whether or not to rehabilitate is 'plainly yes'. He observes that Nature's cocky-healing powers are insufficient to quickly remedy the degradation caused by many projects, and unless environmental harm is avoided in the first example, rehabilitation is necessary if environmental services are to be preserved. Though details might be debated, the technicalities and truth of this are beyond dispute. Yet technical statements, sound as they might be, are silent on the desirability of, say, short-term employment and economic development at the cost of, say, loss of topsoil and curtailed future country productivity. In full general, normative arguments (how the globe should be) are not derivable from positive statements (how the world is) (attributed to Scottish philosopher David Hume 1711–1776).

Implicit in the naïve environmentalist's 'obviously aye' respond is adoption of the sustainability or similar ethic. Adopting such an ethic is not a technical but a value judgement. The ethic is not in conflict with our technical understanding of the biosphere, just it is not a necessary consequence of that understanding unless or until value is fastened to the wellbeing of present and future generations. If the ethic is not adopted nationally, and not enforced, then organizations that condone detrimental environmental externalities must, at least, erode natural capital or, more than probable, average out competitively superior and come to dominate in the market place, with consequent run-down of environmental part. If the ethic is to take effect then an ultimate frame of reference is needed to guide law and action so as to forestall environmentally degrading effects of activities being externalized.

An example of the kind of ultimate frame of reference needed is given in Table ane in which relevant extracts from the Constitution of the Democracy of South Africa are presented. In this commodity repeated resort to the Southward African state of affairs is made, not with any pretence that information technology is the model case, or that information technology is not paralleled at to the lowest degree to an extent elsewhere (Bong 2002 and 2013; Macdonald et al. 2015), merely because information technology helps illustrate the bug involved.

Table 1 Extracts from the Constitution of the Republic of Southward Africa

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In South Africa any activity causing ecological degradation, if not prevented in the kickoff instance, requires rehabilitation. This is and then in terms of the Constitution (Table i). Sections of enabling law support information technology. For example both the National Environmental Direction Act and the National Water Deed incorporate clauses on duty of care holding anyone who causes, has caused, or will cause pollution or environmental damage accountable. In that location is now precedent for enforcement of this in example law (Harmony Gold Company Ltd. vs Regional Managing director: Section of Water Affairs 2013 ZASCA). A miner sold his mine. The heir-apparent 'disappeared'. The original mine possessor was judged responsible for the unrehabilitated mine works. Further, it is also often a condition of environmental authorization of a project to rehabilitate. The answer therefore to any question in Southward Africa near 'should I rehabilitate?' is unambiguously 'yes'. This answer is not a necessary consequence of positive knowledge (how the globe is) but rests on a normative frame of reference (in South Africa this is the Constitution and supporting laws).

In other situations and countries there might not be an effective Constitution or equivalent ultimate frame of reference. In these cases there is a variety of options to choose from: e.g. Agenda 21 (output from the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, the standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States, the procedures of the ecology directives of the Eu, Earth Banking concern protocols, the environmental and social performance standards of the International Finance Corporation, the Equator Principles, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) or some combination of these. In South Africa such other documents could only exist additive for if they conflict with the Constitution they are invalid. In the absenteeism of an obvious frame of reference, the stakeholders should concur on a frame of their ain before embarking on projects and their rehabilitation. A merit of a suitably worded Constitution and supportive regulation is that rehabilitation then has the force of police force backside it. This law is necessary to subject the reluctant rehabilitator. The progressive business organisation will use the law and other documents to devise its appetite for hazard in a policy that commits the system to relevant societal values (Mentis 2019).

Lesson two therefore was that 'The guidance nosotros seek for this work cannot be establish in science or technology, the value of which utterly depends on the ends they serve, but it tin can still be found in the traditional wisdom of flesh' (Schumacher 1973).

Lesson three – rehabilitation standard

The naïve position was that the standard to which rehabilitation should be done depended on such factors as the nature of the deposition, the hereafter intended land-utilize, and the affordability of the rehabilitation exercise.

Contrary to naif's original position, a variable standard for rehabilitation is not realistic, and rather rehabilitation must e'er be to 1 and the same loftier standard, for the following interrelated reasons. First, rehabilitation is mandatory (in Due south Africa), equally already explained. 2d, it is easier to utilize a law or principle always rather than just sometimes, due east.g. 100% rather than 98% of the time. If exceptions to applying the dominion are allowed, further rules are required to define when exceptions are allowed. Then possibly exceptions to the exceptions will be required, and so on. This raises a third reason, namely the Constitutional provisions (in South Africa) for equality before the law and the right to lawful, reasonable and procedurally fair assistants (Table 1). If an exception to effective rehabilitation is allowed in one instance, why not in another, even for different reasons? And how are exceptions administered lawfully, reasonably and adequately? Manifestly any exception risks flouting the Constitution and running down natural uppercase. A quaternary reason is that if partial rather than total rehabilitation occurs on whatever lawful or unlawful basis, fifty-fifty merely on occasions, then cumulative loss of environmental structure and role is inevitable.

Turning to the hereafter land utilize, several different shortcomings and oversights can arise. At that place tin can be an inclination to downscale the mail service-rehabilitation required land capability from, say, a pre-mining arable potential to grazing land capability because of the difficulty of reinstating arable land. Frequently in opencast mining the acme 1.v to 2 1000 of soil is stripped off and all regarded, and stockpiled, as topsoil. Proper topsoil is usually only about 0.three thousand deep, so that when the 1.5 to 2 m of scrambled topsoil and subsoil is emplaced on the new landscape the proper topsoil is so diluted that 'topsoiling' is done with subsoil comprising, for instance, rock, saprolite, pedocrete and acid materials which are low in soil organic carbon and high in manganese and iron concretions that have a propensity to gear up phosphate so it is non available to plants. Abundant land capability criteria are then not met. Reinstating to arable state is indeed challenging, but tractor-drawn pull-scrapers tin can be used to enable stripping of topsoil to be done more than clinically than is electric current common practice. The per capita availability of high potential state is so scarce in some parts of the world, like Due south Africa, that no loss of abundant land is affordable, and applicants for projects on abundant country should be required to reinstate to abundant, or project authorization refused. In terms of sustainability, pre-project arable or other loftier-quality country should be restored mail-projection to abundant or similar high-quality land irrespective that the immediate or foreseeable intended futurity land use does not demand high land capability. The future is uncertain and a principle of sustainability is that unimpaired environmental potential be handed on not to the lowest degree considering it is non known how country volition need to be used in the future. In effect, it is non the intended, and uncertain, future land utilize that is of focal concern, but the pre-existing land adequacy which must be restored – a standard that can be hard to run across merely is capable of consistent application. This position conflicts which much of the literature (Bong 2002 and 2013; Tanner and Möhr-Swart 2007; de Klerk and Claasen 2015; Hatting et al. 2019) where the intended land use looms large.

There are other cases, analogous to high potential country, of scarce, rare and endangered or valuable resources put at risk by projects and difficult to reinstate. Examples include wetlands, biodiversity and even common, but prized, native pasture grasses such equally cherry grass (Themeda triandra).

Seemingly simple activities, such every bit construction of buried fuel, gas and h2o pipelines, tin have surprising effects. A pipeline downwards a hillside tin destroy a hillslope seep wetland, considering an impermeable layer is punctured, or because the back-filled trench is comparatively compacted, is more permeable than the adjoining undisturbed soil, and acts as a conduit draining the wetland. On state with low relief, and sandy topsoil over clayey subsoil, pipeline structure can transform upslope state from arable or forest capability to wetland where cropping or tree planting are no longer possible. With the pipeline laid at the bottom of the trench, using the sandy topsoil every bit bedding fabric, and back-filling with the clayey subsoil, the whole acts as an underground dam impeding subsurface water flow. Understanding the structure, and in item the hydrological operation, of the landscape helps to blueprint the projection and to guide reinstatement and then the original condition is restored and land degradation avoided.

Former biodiversity can exist challenging to restore. Typically later on disturbance a blank, hostile site exists, with no or few species present. By process of secondary succession weather condition ameliorate, colonization by species from near and far occurs, there is gradual accretion in species richness, and ecosystem structure and part develop. Secondary succession tin span decades or centuries. This is expected with forests, though in cases the projected restoration of climax species richness and composition can be less than 70 years (Mentis and Ellery 1998). Of course, projections can fail, for instance considering species with limited propagule dispersal might take a long time to colonize. 'Islands' of native vegetation left undisturbed in a 'sea' of disturbed area can facilitate recovery of species richness and composition (Macdonald et al. 2015). These principles would be expected to apply non only to forests only to all vegetation types. Secondary succession in savanna and steppe might be expected to be quicker than for forest. However, in the humid and semi-arid grasslands of southern Africa recovery can besides span decades. Subsequently 50 years the routes of cached fuel and water pipelines are easily detectable from infinite by satellite imagery and at shut quarters from soil texture, depression soil organic carbon and phosphate, and sparse and weedy or seral composition of the herb layer (Mentis 2006, 2019). Climax grass species, such equally red grass, are notorious for their tardiness to return after they have been lost past overgrazing or ploughing or other state disturbance.

On the i hand it might be expected that there are limits to speeding up natural process, such every bit succession. Inquiry on old field succession institute that succession was accelerated by application of fertilizer (Davidson 1964; Roux 1969). My ain observations are that with infertile soil, especially scarcity of soil phosphate, merely a few pioneer species survive, plants remain small and sparse, and there is no increase in soil organic carbon for 20 years and more. This contrasts with the fertile situation with vigorous plants, dense comprehend and increasing soil organic carbon and species richness. Macdonald et al. (2015) pointed to a variety of site conditions in forest rehabilitation after surface mining that tin impede colonization, including soil fertility, soil texture, substrate layering, soil moisture, and types of soil organic matter. Bell (2013) described a range of soil conditions that can constrain plant establishment, performance and survival.

Many attempts have been fabricated to restore carmine grass, with inconsistent results (Snyman et al. 2013). On some pipeline projects red grass grown in nurseries was planted out, but mostly the red grass died out. On Transnet's New Multi Products Pipeline from Durban to Gauteng, natural recovery of carmine grass after half dozen years was a function of soil base status (percent red grass = − 4.71 + 1.43 cations in cmol·kg^− one, n = 61, R ⁱⁱ = 0.33, P < 0.0001)(Fig. 1). Since scarlet grass does not always recover quickly on base-rich soils, just always recovers slowly on base of operations-poor soils, information technology is inferred that high base condition is a necessary only bereft status for fast reddish grass recovery. Macdonald et al. (2015) explained that the species composition of the establishment biota in forest areas subjected to surface mining is affected by site conditions including topography, drainage and surface roughness in addition to the factors mentioned in the previous paragraph. To promote forest biodiversity Macdonald et al. (2015) advised that a variable rather than uniform terrain exist constructed during landscaping the surface mining disturbance.

Fig. 1

Recovery of blood-red grass (percentage of sward composition) equally a function of soil base status (cations in cmol·kg⁻¹)

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On the other hand, but still in the context of natural process taking time, attempted restoration of biodiversity and climax species can be premature, for case if soil role has not been re-established. As already mentioned, in severely dystrophic situations soil organic carbon does non increase and species do not accrete. Soil organic carbon is generally regarded every bit an indicator of soil office, and tin can exist an important factor in nutrient supply and nutrient cycling, peculiarly in coarse-textured soils (Murphy 2014; Macdonald et al. 2015). Later on coal mining on the Eastern Highveld of Southward Africa, replaced soil has a typical soil organic carbon content of 0.5%, while unmined topland soils have about ii% carbon. The rate of carbon replenishment is slow. In a regression analysis using information from 23 fertilized sites, the per centum of carbon was a significant function (P < 0.0001) of management intensity (rated on five–four–3-2-1 basis with two applications of nitrogen fertilizer and ii defoliations per summer scoring 5, and no nitrogen and no confusion scoring i, R ² = 0.1239) and pasture historic period (years since institution, R ^two = 0.1718), viz.

$$ \mathrm{Percentage}\ \mathrm{carbon}=\hbox{-} 0.021+0.053\left(\mathrm{age}\right)+0.235\left(\mathrm{direction}\right)\kern0.5em \left({\mathrm{R}}^2=0.2687\correct) $$

Macdonald et al. (2015) reported similarly boring rates of accession of soil organic matter after surface mining in woods areas.

Regarding affordability, to the reluctant rehabilitator any rehabilitation is unaffordable. Simply if unaffordability is truly the case and then the project should be redesigned and if rehabilitation is still unaffordable then projection authorization withheld. At that place might notwithstanding be cases, for example old projects for which rehabilitation was not contemplated at the outset, where the country users do non accept the ways to undertake the necessary rehabilitation. Other common instances are where miners have gone insolvent or disappeared leaving unrehabilitated mine works. Outside intervention would then be warranted, probably at taxpayer's or donor's expense. Affordability per se should non affect the standard to which rehabilitation should exist done, simply how it is supported.

Naif's Lesson 3 then is that the standard to which rehabilitation should be done is better non conditional to this or that, but ever be to the same standard which, if it is to be consequent, is to restore information technology as it was, i.due east. to 'the high standard' (meet beneath). Any leniency risks flouting equality before the police, and is on a slippery slope to biospheric ruin. In the instance of new projects, it is either rehabilitate to the high standard or the project is non authorized. For existing and completed projects where affordability is in question, the loftier standard of rehabilitation should not exist relaxed, and the party responsible held answerable, otherwise there is a legal loophole for reluctant rehabilitators. Awarding of rehabilitation to the high standard must be tempered with the fact that natural processes (e.g. succession, restoration of soil function) can exist hurried along only within limits. Still, the land of process can be monitored, e.k. the replenishment of soil organic carbon, as an index of soil function, can exist measured.

Lesson four – sustainability

Rehabilitation is supposedly 'forever', or a permanent fix that is 'sustainable'. What might sustainable rehabilitation hateful? Naif always had a problem with early definitions of sustainability, such as that of the Brundtland Committee. This defined sustainable evolution as coming together the needs of the present without compromising the power of time to come generations to encounter their own needs (World Committee on Surround and Development 1987). There are several difficulties. First, at that place are two objective functions – meeting present needs and not compromising the future. These objectives are liable to conflict. Merely about any environmental controls, to protect the futurity, might exist interpreted to mean less immediate profit and therefore not meet present needs. Whatsoever attempted merchandise-off here faces the problems already raised on CBA. Second, the needs and the wants of future generations are uncertain. Tertiary, operational guidance is not offered on how to go on. Since the Brundtland Committee, 'sustainable' has become a clichéd discussion often invoking dubious trading off, discounting, pricing, substitution, maximization and optimization, or it is used without its pregnant defined.

Lesson 4 was therefore not to rely on clichéd 'sustainability', but to define the necessary foreverness of rehabilitation in operational terms. For example, rehabilitation to 'the high standard' means restoring the environment and so that information technology looks and functions every bit information technology previously did, without passing on to posterity whatsoever maintenance or land direction more than is needed for bordering like but undisturbed land. 'Sustainability' is defined in operational terms by Macdonald et al. (2015) equally ' … reclaimed forest is productive and self-sustaining and if it fulfills ecological, economic and social objectives'.

Lesson five – rehabilitation criteria

In the context of Lesson 4 the question arises every bit to whether it is possible to restore information technology the aforementioned as it was. It is improbable that any two spots on world, or whatever spot at unlike times, are exactly the same. There is near an infinity of parameters, the earth and the universe are 'evolving' irreversibly, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle imposes limits to measuring and knowing. To 'put it back the same as it was' requires the key criteria of 'the same' to be specified. These key criteria are not everything, not all conceivable parameters, but a select few variables relevant to the detail application and measurable within the resources constraints of budget, expertise and time.

Lesson five was to identify a select few rehabilitation variables and work out how to mensurate and study them efficiently. At the outset it was unclear what constituted good rehabilitation and how it might exist distinguished from poor rehabilitation. Naif had to notice, try out ideas, collect data, analyze and develop a perspective (Mentis 1999, 2006, 2019), and he now proposes to his clients that rehabilitation might be approached as follows.

The objective is to minimize the price of putting information technology back like it was subject to boundary conditions, for instance every bit follows.

• Land capability not less than p

• Landscape form exceeds q

• Soil loss does not exceed r

• Soil fertility exceeds due south

• Species limerick exceeds t

• Vegetation structure exceeds u

• Vegetation vigour exceeds v

where p, q, r, s, t, u and v are specifications defined by an verbal reckoner algorithm. For case, if the state capability to exist restored is 'arable', and so the reckoner algorithm specifies the conditions of soil depth, land gradient, etc. that must be met for the rehabilitation to be inside the boundary atmospheric condition of 'abundant land capability'. Enter the site data into the estimator and the algorithm consistently outputs an objective result – this meets, or does not encounter, the land adequacy requirement.

The claim of this kind of arroyo include the following.

There is only one objective function. Maximizing, minimizing or optimizing ii or more objective functions simultaneously is improbable, and potential complication and conflict are avoided.

Minimizing the toll is an objective to which clients and project managers are favourably disposed. It aligns with the business organization purpose to maximize the wealth of the business organization owners. Of course such maximization is subject to health, safety, environmental and other constraints. The specifications of getting the rehabilitation done to the high standard are among these constraints on doing business, and they are spelled out exactly. The specifications bound or define what is the acceptable rehabilitation product. This is not a CBA problem involving questionable discounting and pricing of natural capital, but a matter of containing the cost to restore the environment to run into specifications.

Meeting specifications can exist of the pass or fail type, or graded to index degree of conformance. This aids in identifying where failures or weaknesses lie, and is a key stride in knowing what to gear up and then working out how to fix it.

The specifications are partly a cognition-base. They are accumulated experience. They are amenable to on-going research, revision, improvement and, of import, adaptation to varying circumstances. The arroyo tin exist tailored to fit many of a variety of applications. The specifications are also partly a function of ambition for gamble, a notion indexing how accepting or balky an system is to attaining a particular functioning level. The approach of Bell (2013) is analogous in that it identifies limiting factors or constraints on rehabilitation that would vary according to circumstances merely that might be developed into the specifications suggested above. The same applies in the case of Macdonald et al. (2015) who described landscape, site (soil) characteristics and management as determinants of rehabilitation outcomes such as productivity, biodiversity and meeting ecological, economic and social requirements.

The objective part and its boundary conditions do not encompass everything near the environment. It is not possible to measure, let lonely restore, 'everything'. The resources of budget, manpower and time are finite, so if the objective role and constraints are fabricated 'comprehensive' it is likely that the project will be complicated, demanding on resources, therefore costly to implement, and liable not to be continued or even put into result at all. Partial knowledge is better than no knowledge. Partial cognition, focused on fundamental functioning indicators, is better withal. At that place is a need for simple powerful metrics (Lesson half dozen).

Lesson five, learning about rehabilitation criteria, turned out, after resolving the consequence of ultimate frame of reference, central to the rehabilitation image. A few fundamental indicators are needed. Information technology is not possible to consider 'everything'. The selected indicators must be like shooting fish in a barrel to measure and tell a lot. Not only must they individually abode in on the primal features of landscapes and ecosystems, merely their framework must be generic, flexible and scalable. Projects vary in scope and context, and it is useful to have an approach that tin can exist scaled upwardly for rehabilitating massive disturbance such equally open-pit mining, or scaled downward to accost simple projects such as buried pipelines that stretch for hundreds of kilometers, and across different bioclimatic regions and scores of properties. The suite of advisable rehabilitation criteria might likewise need to modify over projection lifetime. Initially on rehabilitating opencast mines, focus is on restoring land capability, landscape and environmental function. 10 or 20 years later on other indicators – such as biodiversity, certain valued species such as red grass, or ingather product – might be more relevant. The indicators must be capable of consistent measurement or rating, so performance against standards can be assessed, shortcomings identified and progress determined. Uncomplicated quantification permits development of a relational knowledge so that, for example, if a minimum soil fertility is not met, revegetation will neglect to see a specified standard, or soil organic carbon will not accrete, or if a threshold vegetation construction is not met within 2 years so establishment has failed and must exist repeated, and so on.

Lesson vi – measurement

Naif'south starting position on measurement was that of conventional science. The facts must be obtained by repeatable methods. Notwithstanding, in parallel with developing rehabilitation criteria, the metrics became more just measurement in environmental and social sciences. They were necessary tools for projection management. The business organisation adage practical: if you don't measure out you can't manage and improve. Measured and reported often, metrics informed stakeholders on whether the rehabilitation standards were met, what variances in that location were, where corrections were necessary, and for what satisfactorily completed work a contractor was to exist compensated.

A further naïve view was scientific description and measurement were any it took. However, the more circuitous and costly a technique is the less likely information technology will be continued over time. Decision-makers are reluctant to fund exercises that are difficult to execute, people do not understand and the utility of which is not obvious. To paraphrase Schumacher (1973), any idiot can blueprint a circuitous technique only information technology takes thought and awarding to make it into Einstein'southward ' … unproblematic, merely not too simple'.

Adopting an objective function and boundary conditions, and resorting to simple metrics, enables construction of industry functioning and a ground for benchmarking. For example, for naif's coal mining clients, rehabilitation functioning on the 7 criteria (purlieus conditions) is rated on a 5–4–iii-2-i scale. In that location are of course limitations to manipulating ordinal data, such as these ratings. To effort to make scales on the seven criteria comparable the post-obit were applied across all criteria: 5 means 'best' (beyond criticism), iv is 'practiced' (non perfect), 3 is 'fair' (adjoining on non-sustainable), 2 is 'unsatisfactory' (non sustainable – passes on costs or macerated environmental services to posterity) and 1 means 'very unsatisfactory' (little or no constructive endeavor to improve). To illustrate, for rating soil loss permit the rate of soil genesis be to the order of 1 t·ha^− 1·a^− 1, so in assessments modelled rate of soil loss < ii t·ha^− 1·a^− ane rates 5 (all-time), two–4 t·ha^− i·a^− one rates 4 (adept), four–eight t·ha^− 1·a^− 1 rates 3 (fair), 8–12 t·ha^− 1·a^− 1 rates unsatisfactory (2), and > 12 t·ha^− 1·a^− ane rates 1 (very unsatisfactory).

Rehabilitation operation at a colliery tin then be adamant by assessing all seven criteria at several to many sample sites, and past calculating a mean score over all criteria for each colliery at each assessment. Effigy two shows the frequency distribution of colliery mean scores for 215 assessments undertaken since 2000. Taking this kind of arroyo, it is possible to make comparisons inside times between collieries, and between times within collieries. An individual colliery tin can be tracked over time, and and then can the industry equally a whole. Possibly the data are non representative and it is only the near go-ahead companies that subject area themselves to outside scrutiny. It might be expected then that the true industry boilerplate operation is worse than Fig. 2 shows. There can be other factors that bear upon performance cess. First is subjectivity in collecting and using data. One mode to limit this problem is to use unambiguously definable parameters for each criterion. For example, country adequacy uses the methods of agricultural country capability cess that operate on the basis of constraints involving factors such as soil depth and land slope. The field data canvas must require categorical or numerical information that are easy to determine accurately and repeatably. The data interpretation (scoring against the standards) is best done past an exact computer algorithm, for instance using if-then-else logic. This takes the tedium out of scoring, helps with consistency, and preserves mental energy for addressing exceptions. Inevitably a reckoner algorithm is built on common circumstances, and it is necessary to have an experienced user to bank check the output and apply his expertise to the unusual situations.

Fig. ii

Colliery rehabilitation performance since 2000 (n = 215, mean = 3.42)

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Another factor affecting rehabilitation performance cess is the evolution of the method over time. As mentioned before, the boundary conditions that get along with the rehabilitation objective are, and must be, subject to change, updating and improvement. In the instance of data for Fig. 2, scoring of performance has become more objective with formalization into a figurer algorithm. Also, the scoring has become stricter. A future improvement is to shift from scoring colliery operation using the average over all sample sites and all criteria to using the average minimum criterion score for all the sites. In the spirit of rehabilitation to the loftier standard, a site should perform well on all criteria. By analogy, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. For example, information technology is poor rehabilitation to perform well on state capability and mural form, yet be defective on environmental role.

Lesson half-dozen was therefore about the power of elementary metrics. There is a nest of interrelated requirements – simple, understandable, informative, workable, objective, consistent, reliable, economical, credible to the stakeholders, formalized into exact algorithms, and enable benchmarking. If-then-else logic, available for example in Microsoft's Excel, handles quantitative and qualitative logic. It encodes noesis in exact and testable, thereby improvable, course. If a decision turns out wrong, there is a decision trail. Is in that location a failure in understanding? Is there a figurer programming error? Was in that location a mistake in information entry? Knowledge workers believe that exact algorithms, while with shortcomings, perform better than experts (Kahneman et al. 2016). The expert, or the algorithm, alone are useful, only a proficient model with seasoned expertise is a powerful combination.

Lesson 7 – rehabilitation blueprint

At the commencement, naif's approach was to utilise CBA and follow agricultural and soil conservation design with berms on steep slopes, delivering to waterways, and using drib weirs, gabions and reno mattresses and other structures to accommodate the new steep landscapes that were 'likewise expensive' to flatten to moderate gradients. Revegetation was driven by a vision to restore native biodiversity. Presently shortcomings arose. CBA was unworkable (Lesson 1). Structures on the new landscape frequently suffered from ill-design, they required maintenance (fifty-fifty when well designed), they frequently failed causing more than soil erosion than they prevented, and they became long-term liabilities. Trying to install direct the native vegetation usually led to sparse weedy situations prone to soil erosion and conflicting invader plant colonization. The turning point in this dismal rehabilitation approach was to return to the ultimate purpose. Rehabilitation was not primarily to finish soil erosion and establish a native vegetation. At all-time, these were necessary merely insufficient goals. The key issues were to reinstate country capability, a stable mural and a performance environment that delivered the aforementioned ecosystem opportunities and services as prior to disturbance, and that did not need any management or maintenance beyond that required for adjoining undisturbed equivalent state. This led to several key blueprint criteria, every bit follows.

• Begin with the end in mind. What must this project look like upon completion?

• Pattern the new landscape every bit function of project planning.

• Avoid a new mural that requires conservation structures (berms, diversions, gabions, etc.), simply if structures are needed blueprint to be low-maintenance or maintenance-free.

• Mimic the class of the pre-existing landscape in terms of slope and drainage density.

• Reinstate the pre-existing runoff blueprint, and design to avert concentrating runoff and to disperse concentrated runoff.

• Design for big events since rehabilitation is ostensibly 'forever', viz. bear in mind climate change and blueprint for the 100-, 200- or 500-yr rather than for the 10-year result.

• Reinstate environmental function, using whatsoever are appropriate means, as a priority and as grooming for afterward native biodiversity restoration or crop species selection.

Macdonald et al. (2015), in their review of rehabilitation of surface mining in wood areas, presented a systematic design to rehabilitation on the ground that the new landscape, its profile across spatial scales and its substrate layering, strongly influence outcomes. Too, post-mining landscaping is at present being aided by software modelling based on geomorphic principles to create natural looking and natural functioning landforms (Hancock et al. 2019). An case at La Plata mine in New Mexico can be viewed in Google Earth at N 36^o59.5′ and Due west 108^o8.two′.

CBA is a stumbling cake in rehabilitation design. Not all ecology damage is fixable, or capable of rehabilitation at affordable cost. What and then? Should long term environmental functionality exist traded off against firsthand profits, jobs and economical development? The inclination of business owners and politicians to practice this is well known. Withal, CBA is not a valid means of deciding this, partly for reasons already considered, but as well because of the requirement in South African law to make financial provision for time to come liabilities and then the difficulties of reliably estimating the liabilities. To explicate this, suppose an opencast miner elects not to reduce his spoil piles to low gradients and then that, while saving on firsthand costs and increasing brusque-term profits, creates liabilities concerning the long-term integrity of the rehabilitation. Probably the lower the standard of the rehabilitation the bigger the liabilities and the greater the doubt in estimating them. The practical challenges of maintenance in the long-term are formidable. Who is going to practice it? Who is going to check it is done properly? By Parkinson's Law (Parkinson 1958), whatsoever the fiscal provision, it will likely not be sufficient. The reputation of the miner volition be at risk, every bit might be assurance of renewal of his mining licence, approval of new mining licences, and practiced standing with banks and potential shareholders to fund present and possible future operations. A visitor could face potentially ruinous claims against information technology for pollution, harm to the environment, and losses to wellness and wellbeing. The way alee is to limit uncertainties and liabilities by rehabilitating to the high standard.

Examples of 'unfixable' ecology deposition are the 'big holes' scattered across southern Africa (e.thou. copper mine at Phalaborwa, diamond-mine big holes at Kimberley and elsewhere, and opencast coal mine final voids). Whether the big holes and bordering spoil stockpiles are truly unfixable or simply costly to rehabilitate to the high standard, there is obviously no intention to restore the onetime mural and its environmental structure and role. Peradventure the agricultural land adequacy is low and the losses to ecology role and services are small in the example of some of these big holes. Yet a disquisitional upshot is the precedent created. If something short of rehabilitation to the high standard is to be permitted once, why not in others?

Since natural capital letter is indispensable and not-substitutable, there is no considerately determinable equivalence in number of jobs or corporeality of economic evolution. The upshot is that if a proposed project risks costly, unavoidable and unfixable environmental degradation then, on the sustainability ethic, the project should non exist granted authorization. Ane objection to this strict stance is that, at the get-go, the rehabilitation design to ready the damage might be unknown, even so given trial-and-error, and adaptive management, solutions might be developed. On these grounds, express pilot trials might be justifiable. In principle though, if the degradation from a project cannot be avoided or fixed, so, if sustainability is accepted, authorisation of the projection must be withheld.

Initially naif was indifferent to land capability and the landscape form in the belief that they were not critical to arresting soil erosion and restoring native biodiversity or even simply a vegetation cover. The erosion-protection methods of the 'donga doctors' and the green fingers of the revegetation experts were at hand. However, it turned out that neither soil protection nor vegetation institution and maintenance could be assured without designing the new land inside narrow bounds.

Starting with the landscape, it is user-friendly to view at three scales. At the macro scale the runoff pattern should mimic the pre-existing state of affairs, the land should bleed to the exterior, and hillslopes must have an even gradient or be concave, non convex, at the lower slope. For projects with limited touch on on the landscape, east.g. buried pipelines, information technology is simple at most locations to restore the original landscape contour and thereby preserve the natural runoff design. However, for big-impact projects like opencast mining the new landscape is challenging to design. There is a bulking factor so the new landscape will be higher than the original. If the slope to which the land is restored exceeds near 1 in 7 a tufted grass cover is insufficient to prevent soil erosion apace destroying the new landscape. Obviously, factors such every bit soil erodibility and rainfall erosivity can affect the permissible steepness. It can also be difficult to vegetate steep slopes because erosion strips off topsoil, fertilizer and propagules earlier protective institute institution occurs. The new landscape tin also exist put dorsum with too footling slope and then that, with differential subsidence of dorsum-filled spoils, there are before long hollows and internal drainage in the landscape, with ingress of rainwater into the old mine pit that tin so fill and spill acid mine drainage to the surrounds. Big areas of new landscape also need to be designed with drainage lines. Without deliberate design, drainages will in any example appear and, given the fragmented nature of the dorsum-fill, incise and initiate gully erosion in the new landscape. Erosion resistant barriers should therefore be installed in the designed drainages to provide a hard base to which landscape erosion works.

At the medium scale are conservation structures and terrain unevenness such as humps and hollows. Every bit already explained, the problem with conservation structures is the entropy law. Structures volition deteriorate and volition require maintenance if they are to remain effective. The maintenance amounts to passing on costs to posterity which conflicts with the sustainability precept. Therefore, designing the new landscape must avoid the need for conservation structures, except for the hard barriers to protect the drainages discussed above. Humps and hollows that might arise considering of insufficient landscaping, or because of differential subsidence of back-filled spoils, are undesirable. The humps drain quickly and soil in the hollows tin remain saturated for extended periods, lowering state capability. There are diverse means of countering the humps and hollows. Back-fill up can be compacted as it is emplaced. The new landscape can be left to settle for a few years before concluding smoothing and covering with topsoil. The new landscape should have sufficient slope on it so that even if differential subsidence occurs, surface drainage will still occur and ponding avoided.

At the fine scale there is surface roughness concerning stone on and in the soil, and other micro-relief factors such equally rills, ruts and incomplete surface smoothing at landscaping and topsoiling. In the interests of well-nigh post-rehabilitation country-uses, smoothness at the fine scale is desirable. Most future land-users will want easy access across the rehabilitated landscape. Surface roughness reduces land capability, increases clothing and tear on machinery, can be dangerous and injure livestock, and either raises the cost, or limits the benefits, of hereafter land utilise. However, if the pre-disturbance landscape surface was rough then it is appropriate to restore information technology similar that.

Restoring the mural and land capability overlap but they are non synonymous. Landscaping deals with land course whereas land capability concerns the chapters of the state to support utilise without resources degradation. Landscaping specifications can exist met however land capability requirements not. For example, the state might drain externally, the lower hill slope might be concave, the slope might exist small-scale so no conservation structures are needed, and the state might be smooth, yet the soil too shallow to qualify for the required, say, abundant land capability. Similarly, the required land capability of, say, grazing might be met, yet landscaping standards non satisfied, for example because of internal drainage or convex footslope.

Agricultural land adequacy is an extensively researched convention. Land capability is adamant by constraining factors such every bit land slope, soil depth, wetness and extremes of soil texture. The more than the constraints the lower the land capability. The virtually constraining cistron is operative so, for instance, even though country might take low gradient, if the soil is shallow the land adequacy volition exist low. Land that has no constraints (low gradient, deep soil, well-drained, intermediate soil texture) has loftier adequacy (i.e. arable). As the constraints increase and so the land capability reduces to pasture, grazing, forestry and wilderness capability. The categories may vary depending on the land capability classification organisation adopted. The logic of country capability rests on the conservation principle that land must never exist used across its adequacy. For example, abundant land may legitimately be used for grazing, but land of only grazing state adequacy should non exist cropped if the resources base is to be preserved.

Irrespective of futurity land utilise, adoption of sustainability requires that the landscape and land capability exist restored. Fifty-fifty though the firsthand intended country employ might be, say, grazing, sustainability requires the original land capability, say abundant, to be restored and then that an unimpaired environs is ancestral to posterity. Restoring to arable land capability is challenging, and, so far, is rarely done.

Lesson 7 is that rehabilitation must be designed not on CBA only on producing a durable rehabilitation product that limits liabilities, i.e. rehabilitation to the high standard. Naif learnt that state capability and mural form were not immaterial. They needed to be designed inside narrow limits if sustainability was to exist met. They likewise needed to be 'got correct first time' because of the difficulty and cost to fix botched country capability and landscape form, and some failures were irreparable, e.g. scrambled top and sub soil. Both land capability and landscape form can be determined by a few quick field observations. They encapsulate critical country characteristics. They exemplify simple powerful metrics for rehabilitation.

Lesson 8 – environmental role

In the context of vegetating the rehabilitation, naif'due south first inclination was to rely on secondary succession to institute the native climax species to restore natural biodiversity. This was adopted on many projects, and nonetheless is by project managers wanting to contain costs. While protagonists of this approach claim it works, the rehabilitation products do not withstand scrutiny. Relying solely on Nature yields disappointing results, and near invariably some intervention is required, ranging from a 'kick-first' to years and fifty-fifty decades of aftercare just to establish and maintain a establish cover permit alone restore ecology function and reinstate an ecological pyramid. Many buried pipeline projects have non recovered in 50 years (Mentis 2006, Lesson three). Scars are still axiomatic along the animal-drawn transport routes used when diamonds and gold were discovered on the S African highveld in the belatedly 1800s. Possibly some of the gullied pediments of eastern South Africa date dorsum to the society of grand years when the country was first cultivated.

On opencast coal mines the early rehabilitators did not rely on succession nor use native climax grasses, but instead sowed a mixture of pasture grasses, sometimes with legumes. Their rationale was that seed for the climax grasses was not bachelor in quantity, and that in any case these climax grasses were more difficult to establish than commercially available grasses. They hoped legumes would fix nitrogen, reduce the demand for expensive fertilizers, and aid revegetation. The logic for the seed mix was evidently a conventionalities that if a spectrum was sowed, hopefully one or other species might prove suitable, germinate and establish. Naif did non, at the commencement, have any improve ideas, but shortly a perspective emerged.

Sowing the seed mix of pasture grasses failed in the poor soils of about rehabilitation areas in the absence of liming and fertilizing (Mentis 1999, 2006, 2019, Lesson three). If acceptable lime and fertilizer were applied, then, in the humid steppe region, 3 sowed alpine-growing grasses (Chloris gayana, Eragrostis curvula and Digitaria eriantha) prevailed to the virtual exclusion of all else, including Cynodon dactylon, the legume lucerne (Medicago sativa), annual not-grass herbs (weeds) and declared alien invader plants (Mentis 1999, 2006, 2019). The short-growing C. dactylon was perchance shaded out past the dense tall grasses, and the legume, weeds and invader plants competitively excluded. In the plant earth, possession is indeed ix tenths of the police. While lucerne did prepare nitrogen, when cows ate lucerne they suffered bloat. Perhaps other legumes, such every bit poor man'southward lucerne (Sericea lespedeza), might exist ameliorate, but they take not been tried sufficiently.

In the early on guidelines of the old Chamber of Mines in South Africa, the belatedly Professor John de Villiers brash that a goal of rehabilitation should be to restore soil part by replenishing soil organic carbon under grass. Around this was founded a so-chosen revegetation paradigm that establishes a pasture with fertilizer-responsive grasses, maintains this high production organisation for at least a few years, later on which reversion to native grassland can be accomplished by withholding fertilizers yet continuing with defoliation management (Mentis 1999, 2006, 2019).

This revegetation paradigm was corroborated with several information bases involving hundreds of sample sites and showing association of perennial grass establishment and soil organic carbon with soil phosphate, potassium and zinc (Table 2). In regression analyses, available soil phosphate was the main independent variable to predict pasture structure, a proxy for revegetation success. That does not prove the paradigm correct, but the residue of evidence is to event that resort to conventional perennial pasture establishment and maintenance for a few years is an effective method for restoring soil function, and providing a base for an ecological pyramid. On large projects clients want balls that at that place is high chance of the revegetation method working. It is not but a matter of the contractor having to repeat the revegetation at his cost if it fails. Failed revegetation oft exposes the unprotected state to erosive storms resulting in irreversible loss of topsoil and long-term impairment to the quality of the rehabilitation. There are indeed other revegetation methods bachelor, and they may be appropriate, depending on circumstances (Mentis 2019). However, practitioners of conventional pasture establishment are far down the experience curve, the principles of Henderson'due south and Moore's laws employ (with every doubling of unit skillful production or service commitment the cost reduces past a constant fraction), and in common circumstances the technique is reliable and cost-effective.

Table ii Gene loadings in factor assay of soil and institute variables for 432 pipeline sites

Full size table

The initial idea of protecting soil with a vegetation cover comprised of native plants has been subordinated by the need to restore environmental role that does not negate the initial intention but in the long term promotes it. Key ingredients of the revegetation image are bawdy material that can exist developed into soil, fertilizer and adequate soil fertility, fertilizer-responsive grasses, and iterated 'fertilize, grow grass and defoliate (mow, graze or fire)' to produce ideally ii grass crops per growing season. In this context there is trivial direct evidence on the role, and the benefits, of the herbivore, particularly cattle. However, given that eighty%–90% of nutrients ingested past the moo-cow are returned to the pasture in dung and urine, the suspected benefits include the post-obit. Nutrient cycling is ready upwardly (compare with cut and bale where nutrients are exported in the hay). This benefits the grasses and, by appropriate grazing and resting schedules, stimulates vegetative reproduction in the grasses that so leads to grazing lawns that are protective of the soil and are productive. Instead of the nutrients being locked up in soil and plants, the nutrients are cycled and become available to an array of wild animals including grasshoppers, butterflies, birds and dung beetles which themselves aid in the nutrient cycling.

It is expected that the nature of the soil strongly affects the plants that abound in it. Bell (2013), Macdonald et al. (2015) and Mentis (2019) gave extensive treatment to soil factors equally constraints or limiting factors on revegetation in wood and other areas disturbed by mining and other agents. The constraints are liable to vary according to locality. They need to be identified to guide soil amelioration, plants species selection, propagation and aftercare. The merits of alternative approaches can usefully be compared (Parotta and Knowles 1999).

In Lesson 8 naif learnt that the needs of revegetation transcended establishing just an immediate natural vegetation or just any vegetation embrace. Revegetation tin and should be a principal means of restoring soil and thereby environmental function, and achieving this might have to precede attempts to reinstate a natural vegetation and native biodiversity, or pick of a crop to cultivate.

Lesson 9 – innovation

Naif'south starting position was that of the classic conflict between environmental regulation and company profitability or competitiveness. According to this perception, tightening regulation, such as raising rehabilitation standards, increases costs and erodes company competitiveness, so at that place is opposition to regulation.

This classic view, intuitively arrived at in Kahneman'southward mode one thinking, sees the earth as static. This view is unrealistic, though, and information technology misleads government and business concern into moderating regulation 'for the sake of the economy'. The reality is that applied science, products, processes and consumer needs are not fixed but dynamic (Porter and van der Linde 1998). Innovation permits the costs of coming together regulations to be run down. In an era of inevitably ever-increasing environmental regulation, the visitor that can develop cost-effective regulatory compliance (e.g. rehabilitate to the high standard cheaply and finer) stands to improve its lesser line, and thereby its competitiveness.

When naif sets out 25 years ago on the initiative of rehabilitation standards the level of do, and even expectations of it, fell short of what they are today. The lessons explained in this article are testimony to innovation and dynamism in environmental rehabilitation. For example, the progressive mining companies are landscaping to low profiles that do non need berms and other conservation structures, and while only 5 years ago they were saying information technology was impossible to strip top and sub soil separately they are now modifying their procedures and procuring machinery that could cutting the cost of restoring soil and environmental part and produce a better rehabilitation product.

Lesson 9 was therefore a breakaway from rehabilitation being constrained past cost. In the immediate term, the budget does indeed limit what is washed, but when project planning begins with the stop in mind, new ideas are tested, and improvements adopted, then meliorate rehabilitation costs less.

Lesson 10 – leadership

Naif's starting position was archetypically reactive – rehabilitation is normally not the core business, so adopt good practice and comply with the police. In upshot, this meant following not leading, with several unfavourable consequences that soon became credible.

The reactive approach is vulnerable to exterior intervention. For example, recently in South Africa the Centre for Environmental Rights took the coal mining industry, Department of H2o and Sanitation and Department of Mineral Resources to job for non-compliance with the conditions of water utilise licences (CER 2019). The unsatisfactory state of affairs is illustrated past one mining client showing naif the atmospheric condition of her water utilise licence. At that place were grand conditions. It is not feasible to comply with, audit and enforce such complication. This reflects badly on both business organization and regime. The trouble is not that Due south Africa is an under-resourced developing nation. During the time of the Mandela and Mbeki governments the Due south African Revenue Services developed superb efficiency. The central issue is the lack of political will in both business and government. Express resources are no excuse, but rather cogent reason why they should be deployed efficiently.

Along with being reactive is failure to relentlessly pursue efficiency – the always-better mouse-trap. The reluctant rehabilitator complains that rehabilitation is but a cost, all the same he does naught to limit that price.

The take-abode message of Lesson 10 is for concern to be proactive by taking leadership, developing standards, working out how to meet the standards, designing a few uncomplicated powerful metrics to measure functioning confronting the standards, embarking on continuous comeback, and reporting. The benefits of being the best are better rehabilitation at less cost, and the deployment of rehabilitation expertise equally an offensive weapon against industry competitors and a defensive weapon confronting would-be outside intervention by activists and authorities. Peter Drucker, the founder of modern business management, is reputed to have said 'The best manner to predict the future is to make it.'

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Source: https://forestecosyst.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40663-020-00233-4

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