2250 In the current context of energy transition, characterized by the progressive reduction of coal and the expansion of critical minerals, closure takes on a strategic dimension. Beyond the mitigation of residual risks, it involves leading processes of territorial reconfiguration in areas where mining has shaped the productive, fiscal, and institutional structure for decades. This article analyzes recent experiences in Peru and Colombia in a comparative manner in order to identify the gaps between regulatory compliance with closure and long-term territorial sustainability. Based on this analysis, a strategic social management model is proposed that incorporates socioeconomic transition from the early stages of the mining cycle, articulates closure with territorial development, and establishes mechanisms of co-responsibility between companies, the state, and local actors aimed at building resilience and territorial legacy. 2. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Mine closure has traditionally been approached from a perspective focused on environmental rehabilitation, physical stability, and legal compliance, conceiving it as the final stage of the mining cycle. Owen and Kemp (2018) point out that this approach has tended to disconnect closure from broader social and territorial dynamics by treating social impacts as residual aspects and limiting corporate responsibility to regulatory compliance. This understanding reduces closure to a predominantly technical problem and prevents its strategic integration. Bainton and Holcombe (2018) show that the literature has privileged biophysical aspects to the detriment of social ones, which increases risks in territories with high extractive dependence. In these contexts, closure can deepen structural vulnerabilities if it is not articulated with sustained social management processes. Therefore, closure planning must be integrated in advance throughout the mining cycle, recognizing its political, institutional, and territorial dimensions. This reconceptualization finds operational support in the ICMM's Social Performance approach (2022, 2025), which proposes continuous social management, with early identification of risks and opportunities, meaningful participation, and articulation of closure with long-term sustainability strategies. In territories dependent on mining, where the activity structures economies and governance arrangements (Molina Martínez et al., 2024), closure generates systemic effects that require its linkage to territorial development strategies. Consequently, the transition associated with closure requires governance mechanisms capable of coordinating public, private, and social actors. As Gentil et al. (2019) point out, transformations in mining territories require deliberately constructed institutional arrangements. The legacy of closure is not an automatic result of regulatory compliance, but rather the product of strategic management aimed at strengthening capacities and defining a shared post-mining future. 3. CASE STUDIES 3.1 Peru Mining in Peru has historically been one of the central pillars of its economy and the configuration of its territories, particularly through an export-oriented mining enclave model with limited local productive coordination. The country is internationally recognized both for its significant endowment of strategic mineral resources for the energy transition and for the magnitude of its extractive legacy, expressed in thousands of mining environmental liabilities accumulated over centuries of exploitation (Saade Hazin, 2013). In this context, territories such as Cajamarca, Pasco, and Junín have consolidated themselves as traditional mining enclaves, with different historical trajectories but all sharing the same logic of extractive dependence and transactional relationships. Since the 1990s, Cajamarca has been the country's main center
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM0Mzk2