1661 Over the past decade, closure planning has evolved from compliance with generic environmental quality standards toward the application of integrated risk assessments, including both Human Health Risk Assessment (HHRA) and Ecological Risk Assessment (ERA). These approaches explicitly link closure success criteria, remediation decisions, and future land-use scenarios. The ICMM Good Practice Guide (2025) consolidates this transition by incorporating tools for risk and opportunity management, long-term monitoring, and adaptive post-closure management. In parallel, international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) have reinforced the need to demonstrate protection of human health and the environment through risk assessments proportional to site conditions and proposed future uses (World Bank, 2024; IFC, 2007; IFC, 2012). In regulatory practice, some countries have advanced in the implementation of this approach. For example, Western Australia’s Mining Development and Closure Proposals guidelines require development and closure proposals to incorporate iterative risk assessments integrated with closure criteria, cost estimation, and progressive design updates throughout the life of the operation (DMPE, 2025). In the Peruvian context, Law No. 28090 and its Regulations (Supreme Decree No. 033-2005-EM) establish the obligation to plan and execute mine closure ensuring physical and chemical stability, as well as protection of human health, the environment, and property. However, current regulations do not explicitly require evaluation of future land-use scenarios or systematic assessment of human health and environmental risks associated with those scenarios within approved closure plans. This regulatory gap implies that mining projects may comply with closure requirements without necessarily ensuring that the adopted closure design enables safe, productive, and socially viable post-mining land uses. At the same time, Peru has a Guide for the Assessment of Risks to Health and the Environment (MINAM, 2015), developed within the regulatory framework for contaminated sites management, which defines methodologies for risk assessment and remediation target setting. While current regulations allow the optional application of these studies as support tools for remediation (MINAM, 2024), their use in mining sites has been mainly limited to the operational stage. Consequently, their potential to inform closure, post-closure, and future land-use decisions remains underutilized, and no clear operational linkage exists between risk assessment instruments and mine closure planning. This gap represents both a challenge and an opportunity. The prospective application of risk assessment across closure, post-closure, and future use stages can become a key tool for anticipating risks, guiding rehabilitation and closure design decisions, building trust, and generating shared value with surrounding communities. Aligned with the Post-Mining Areas, Reclamation and Revitalisation thematic track of WMC 2026, this paper proposes a methodological framework for the implementation of risk assessment integration into mine closure planning, aiming to move beyond regulatory compliance, strengthen social legitimacy through community participation, and accelerate the transition toward safe, productive, and socially accepted post-mining landscapes. 2. METHODOLOGY Human health and ecological risk assessment provides a structured framework to determine whether the level of contamination present at a site poses a risk to human health or the environment and, if so, whether that risk is acceptable or requires the implementation of remediation or risk management measures. This methodology integrates qualitative and quantitative analyses, considering the nature, magnitude, and likelihood of adverse effects on human and ecological receptors resulting from exposure to contaminants through multiple pathways (MINAM, 2015). When applied to mining operations entering the closure stage, risk assessment should be conducted prospectively, explicitly accounting for the evolution of site conditions over time. In this study, the assessment is structured across three differentiated stages: closure, post-closure, and future land use. Each
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