This chapter explores mining as a social process of continuous change into the future. Following new environmental legislation, environmental remediation and re-wilding are becoming practices of restoring landscapes altered by extraction. These are also political, social, and cultural processes involving multiple actors making choices. Remediation and re-wilding, still in an exploratory stage in the Arctic, demonstrate the entangled nature of sustainability. In order for extraction to become “sustainable” it is essential that governance has a focus on what is left when peak extraction is passed. If that is done in a hasty and irresponsible manner it will take a long time to heal “landscape scars” and other wounds that extraction has brought. The chapter focuses on the environmental remediation of two former mining sites – the Nautanen mine in Norrbotten in Sweden and the Lunckefjell mine and Sveagruvan on Svalbard – with very different contexts. At Lunckefjell, the wider framework was to safeguard Norwegian sovereignty on Svalbard. At Nautanen, remediation was limited to an attempt to make a profit from mining waste and eventually failed because of a conflict over responsibility.
ISBN for host publication: 9781009110044