UNDP/GEF – Minprirody of Russia Project“Mainstreaming biodiversity conservationinto Russia’s energy sector policiesand operations”

from Rehabilitation to Landscapeand Biodiversity Restoration

SPOIL TIPSOF KUZBASS

The open-pit mining method prevalent here has a severe negative effect on biodiversity, primarily due to the huge extent of land surface disruption caused by the development of coal beds and formation of spoil tips. In Russia, as in other countries with a well-developed mining industry, the issue of land rehabilitation is an especially critical part of the set of environmental issues caused by coal mining.

All too often a coal mining company implementing a rehabilitation project in Kuzbass limits itself to the use of simplified technological solutions that fail to take into account the need for preserving biodiversity. The range

of plants used at the biological stage of rehabilitation is limited to five tree species, which depletes the genetic resources of Kuzbass ecosystems and exacerbates the existing invasive species problem. In addition to this, the tree species most often used for rehabilitation, the Scots pine, cannot always adapt to the moisture-poor substrate of a spoil tip. Areas planted with pine fail to form the shrub and herbaceous layers, and as a conse-quence, such monoculture woods suffer from fires more often due to the dry mass of dead needles, branches and dead tree trunks that accumulate under the forest canopy.

The KeyEnvironmental Problemof Coal-MiningRegions

Kemerovo Oblast is hometo the Kuznetsk coal basin (Kuzbass) that has

one the world's largest coal reserves amounting to

548 billion tonnes

"From the standpoint of today's environmental quality requirements it is more useful to restore steppes than to create pastures and hayfields, in which only 2 or 3 forage species grow. That's why our business entities will base their land rehabilitation projects on this technology."

Anatoly Poklonov,Chief Technology Officer of Kuzbasskaya Toplivnaya Company

The cooperation between the Project and Kuz-basskaya Toplivnaya Company produced results that proved useful not only to a single company. The experiment resulted in the creation of "Guide-lines on the use of the technology for restoration of steppe and meadow-steppe phytocoenoses during the planning and implementation of rehabili-tation projects by Kuzbass coal mining compa-nies", a document that contains approaches and solutions applicable on a regional scale.

Experts believe that over the longer term the devel-oped technology could be used in projects specifi-cally aimed at bringing back steppe and meadow vegetation to dozens of hectares of damaged Kuz-bass land. The optimism is grounded in the fact that the results of the experiment were acknowledged by the regional authorities: the Guidelines were officially approved and recommended for use by coal-mining companies and design companies operating in Kemerovo Oblast by the Boardof Kemerovo Oblast Administration in its OrderNo. 357-r of 10 August 2017.

From damaged land restoration experimentsto large-scale rehabilitation

Steppe areasreduced

times 10

Technology for restorationof steppe and meadow diversityof the Kuznetsk bassin

709 haof meadow andfeather-grass

steppes saved

Because the majority of the land disrupted by open-pit mining lies in the steppe core of the Kuznetsk bassin, the studies conducted to develop a new rehabilitation technology focused on the restoration of steppe and meadow plant communities.

The key milestone in this process was reached with the creation in 2012 of Karakan Ridge, a State Nature Reserve of Regional Importance. This reserve, desig-nated as an area of special conservation interest, is home to several unique endemic plants listed in the Red Data Book of the Russian Federation.

This Protected Area (PA) is made particularly signifi-cant by the fact that it was created in a joint effort by the Kemerovo Oblast authorities, the environmental community and Kuzbasskaya Toplivnaya Company and established within the company's licensed area. In a first for Kemerovo Oblast, a private coal mining company was successfully engaged in the establish-ment of a PA within its core business activity area. The company demonstrated a constructive and well-thought-out approach to the Karakan ridge issue, enabling the preservation of this natural region as a refugium of genetic material of endemic species of the Altai-Sayan floral region.

Still, the PA did not fully eliminate the threat to Kara-kan ridge biodiversity: by the time of its creation, about a fourth of this natural region had been either destroyed or had localized damage. That's why in 2014 the UNDP/GEF-RF Ministry of Natural Resourc-es Project advanced an ambitious idea of an experi-ment that had never been tried in this region before. The goal of this experiment was to restore the integri-ty of the ridge and reestablish its natural steppe vege-tation. Kuzbasskaya Toplivnaya Company and the regional authorities actively supported the idea.

Therefore, in 2014 – 2017 the UNDP/GEF-RF Ministry of Natural Resources Project carried out a full-scale experiment at the Vinogradovsky open-pit coal mine

belonging to Kuzbasskaya Toplivnaya Company by seeding steppe plant grass seed mixture (GSM) over an area of 4 ha of an external spoil tip. The GSM was produced using a donor plot located in the Bachatsky Hills regional nature reserve established in Kemerovo Oblast with support from the UNDP/GEF-RF Ministry of Natural Resources Project. In just two years of the experiment, a vegetative cover comprising over 30 steppe and meadow plant species and having a projective cover of 70 % was established at the plot.

The restoration of steppe plant cover at the spoil tip proved the efficiency of the technology. Kuzbasskaya Toplivnaya Company now had a clear proof that the technology could be used for restoration of damaged land, and decided to introduce this technology in its enterprise-level projects of land rehabilitation.

20Red Book

plantsare protected

Industrial ecology and conservationof biodiversity as important componentsof the sustainable developmentof the coal mining industry

Success of novel solutions hinges on cooperationof concerned parties

Active efforts are underway in Russia to create the legal framework necessary for the introduction of best available technologies (BATs) and to publish BAT reference books that will become part of the national standardization system.

Acting in pursuit of this goal, and based on the successful experience, the UNDP/GEF-RF Ministry of Natural Resources Project initiated the adoption, in accordance with the established procedure, of Russian National Standard (GOST) R 57446-2017 “Best Available Techniques. Disturbed Lands Rec-lamation. Restoration Of Biological Diversity”, which comes into force on 1 December 2017. Thanks to this National Standard, the approaches to the resto-ration of damaged land and the relevant knowledge will be open for use not only in Kemerovo Oblast, but in any part of Russia with a similar climate.

Another important part of this effort was the inclu-sion of the best practices accumulated by the UNDP/GEF-RF Ministry of Natural Resources Project in the "Compendium of Innovative Solutions for the Conservation of Biodiversity in The Coal-Mining Sector.” This compendium served as the basis of the BAT reference document titled “Mining industry. General Processes and Tech-niques”. This particular effort will help to create improved corporate policies and standards after the transition to the new BAT-based methods of man-aging the negative environmental impacts of coal mining.

The project jointly implemented by UNDP/GEF and the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment of Russia and titled "Mainstreaming biodiversity conserva-tion into Russia’s energy sector policies and operations" has demonstrated that when it comes to making Russia's largest coal mining companies understand the biodiversity conservation issue, it's possible to "move the needle" by engaging a wide spectrum of representa-tives belonging to the business sphere, the governmen-tal sphere, as well as the scientific and environmental communities in a constructive dialogue.

In 2014, Kuzbasskaya Toplivnaya Company, the UNDP/GEF-RF Ministry of Natural Resources Project, and the Kemerovo Oblast Department of Natural Resources and Environment signed an agreement dedi-cated to the development and implementation of new approaches to the rehabilitation of damaged land areas in pursuit of biodiversity restoration.

The signing of this agreement became a starting point in unifying previously disjointed efforts for finding optimal methods of landscape and biodiversity restoration, and also towards their subsequent adaptation for use by coal mining companies of Kemerovo Oblast.

"The experiment for restoration of natural steppe vegetation at Kemerovo Oblast spoil tips sent a strong signal to coal mining companies, showing that it is possible to achieve better results and higher efficiency in rehabilitation, while the acknowledgement of this technology by the Kemerovo Oblast Board of Administration and its inclusion in the new national rehabilitation standard could transform the attitudes of coal mining companies to rehabilitation in Kuzbass."

Head of Kemerovo Oblast Department of Natural Resourcesand Environment S.V. Vysotsky

9, Leontyevsky Lane, 125009,Moscow, Russian Federation

Tel: +7 495 787 2105Fax: +7 495 787 2101

www.bd-energy.ru