RECOVERY

RECOVERY Project will develop a framework for land rehabilitation and ecological restoration of coal mining-affected areas, aiming to accelerate the recovery of degraded and transformed ecosystems to a good ecosystem status.

It will assess the contribution of these ecosystems to human wellbeing by means of the innovative ‘ecosystem-services’ concept, evaluating the consequences of alternative courses of action so that their capacity to provide benefits to society will not be diminished but, if possible, improved.

To achieve these goals, the major aim of the project is to increase the impact of land rehabilitation and ecological restoration actions on both society and environment by demonstrating the opportunities that coal mining sites have to increase overall public welfare.

The overall concept underpinning RECOVERY is that there is almost no information available on the environmental and social cost-effectiveness of these actions. Within the private sector some far-sighted mining companies are making preliminary moves, but much remains to be done to make ecological restoration a mainstream business endeavour, as proponents and practitioners have resisted exploring cost-benefit analyses in the past, for lack of know-how and reliable data.