Keynote Speakers
Mine Closure 2025
23–25 September 2025 | Luleå, Sweden
Keynote Paper Presenters Include:
Professor Dag Avango
Professor and Head of Subject
Luleå University, Sweden
Karsten Feucht
Industrial Heritage Manager of Berlin
Berlin Center for Industrial Culture, Germany
Karsten is passionate about consciously shaping the environment to bring humanity and the planet forward. He is committed to healing the legacy of industry in the landscape and in heritage sites. Coming from architecture and sociology, he has patented the Percepción-Workshop® as a method to perceive and develop the quality of places and landscapes together with those involved and affected. He has gained experiences in the development of post-mining landscapes and reutilisation strategies for industrial heritage in Latin America, Europe and Asia.
The development of the hidden potentials of post-mining landscapes and industrial legacies requires a focus on the perception. The question is: How do we perceive the potentials of what is left by industry? And how can we design an emptied space as a former mine for an as-yet-empty future? For this purpose, the method of the Perception Workshop® provides an innovative instrument for the discovery of the value and for the development of adequate and sustainable concepts of (re)design and (re)utilisation of post-industrial sites. The experience in the post-mining region of Lusatia in Germany, in the iron ore mine in Austria and in the urban context of Berlin teaches that perceptiveness plays a crucial role in such complex situations and can also be helpful as a seismograph for our current and future culture of industry. This is how industrial culture takes on a meaning, as industrial ethics that adds a human, ecological, and global perspective to present economy.
Tove Hägglund
Biodiversity Business Director
Ecogain, Sweden
Tove is a senior advisor in business and biodiversity strategy at Ecogain. She has worked in ecological restoration of mine sites for 15 years, bringing insights from hands-on fieldwork to a strategic level. With Tove’s support, many mining companies have developed biodiversity goals and guidelines. She led the development of Mining with nature, Sweden’s first industry roadmap for biodiversity, along with subsequent guidance and training materials.
Tove assists clients in implementation of biodiversity goals, including biodiversity management plans and training, and contributes to method development, such as the CLIMB biodiversity metric. The CLIMB biodiversity metric is essential for the mining industry to track progress toward targets and quantify the measures needed to contribute to biodiversity net gain.
Mining with nature is Sweden’s first industry-wide roadmap for biodiversity, inspired by the Towards Sustainable Mining protocol, the work of the International Council on Mining and Metals, and Sweden’s industry roadmaps for fossil-free competitiveness. Tailored to Swedish conditions, it identifies a common goal to contribute to biodiversity net gain by 2030, concrete actions towards this goal, innovation gaps and calls to politicians and authorities. The roadmap operates within a pre-competitive space, providing a shared direction for the mining sector.
The development of Mining with nature was a learning process for the industry, bringing companies together to build a common understanding of biodiversity challenges and opportunities. This collective learning continues as companies work toward the roadmap’s commitments, which emphasise continuous learning, knowledge sharing, and collaboration.
Anchored in the mitigation hierarchy – avoid, minimise, restore, and compensate – this roadmap has enabled the industry to collectively build and share knowledge, foster innovation, and develop best practices under Swedish conditions. It serves as a platform for testing new methods, advancing restoration efforts, and strengthening biodiversity management.
Concrete examples include:
- long-term vision for the area after mine closure (e.g. LKAB Kiruna)
- arctic mining restoration, such as revegetation of former mine sites in mountain environments (e.g. test plots in Stekenjokk and LKAB Kiruna)
- vegetation establishment on waste rock, exemplified by the Waste2Place initiative
- limestone quarry rehabilitation in southern Sweden, with learnings from Degerhamn.
A long-term vision is key – integrating biodiversity management plans that enable progressive restoration where possible. The roadmap’s commitments include not only setting targets but also actively monitoring progress. The CLIMB biodiversity metric plays a crucial role in both monitoring progress towards the 2030 goal and guiding the industry towards the first steps of the mitigation hierarchy, emphasising restoration.
While Mining with nature focuses on ecosystems, it ultimately addresses a societal challenge. Nature forms the foundation of our communities and human wellbeing. Long-term sustainability is not only about technical stability, safety, and preventing environmental harm but also about restoring functional ecosystems that support other industries (e.g. reindeer herding, tourism) and local communities. It is about giving back a functional landscape.
The Mining with nature roadmap is available in four languages and will continue to evolve to better support the industry’s journey toward its goals. A dedicated website provides a space where the sector shares best practices, offering inspiration and learning opportunities for others.
Mike O’Kane
Senior Technical Advisor
Okane Consultants, Canada
Mike O’Kane founded Okane Consultants in 1996, to provide integrated mine planning, closure, and relinquishment solutions globally. He serves as chair of Okane’s board and continues as a senior technical advisor, applying his expertise in risk management, closure planning, and design. Recognised as a subject matter expert in landform and cover system design, and the application of unsaturated zone hydrology and geochemistry, Mike also serves as a director and co-chair of the Technical Advisory Panel for the Landform Design Institute. He holds a Global ESG Competent Boards designation and received the University of Saskatchewan Alumni Achievement Award in 2014 for global business development and philanthropy.
Dr Peter Whitbread-Abrutat
Managing Director
Future Terrains International, UK
Peter is an environmental specialist of over 25 years’ diverse experience of natural resources management and sustainable development. He established Future Terrains to convert this experience into delivering better practice on the ground and has worked widely with the international mining industry on many commodities including base metals, precious metals, coal, industrial minerals, and in the tropical forestry sector – always with a focus on improving practice or restoring degraded lands. He has extensive experience across Europe, North and South America, Africa, Southeast Asia, Australasia, Central Asia and the former Soviet Union. He is particularly interested in environmental and social performance, mine closure and landscape restoration.
Humans apply meanings to spaces that ultimately turns them into ‘places’. Such ‘sense of place’ is a cultural construct, and can be beneficial as well as detrimental for a place and the people associated with it. Within the cultural context of how mining modifies – or creates – places from spaces and landscapes from land, mining activities are, for better or worse, transformational.
Drawing on lessons from examples of mine closure/transition and regeneration, this paper will explore what we mean by ‘sense of place’ and how we recognise it in a mining context, discuss why it is important, and consider how it can be nurtured to support better outcomes when mining ends.
Invited Speakers
Jörgen Olsson
Chief Executive Officer
Gruvaktiebolaget Viscaria, Sweden
Jörgen Olsson is the chief executive officer of Gruvaktiebolaget Viscaria, a Swedish publicly traded company scaling up to become a modern and responsible mining company through the reopening of the Viscaria copper mine in Kiruna. The high copper content of the deposit, assessed mineral resources, geographical location, and growing team of employees mean that Viscaria is well-positioned to deliver sustainable high-quality copper.
Jörgen Olsson is currently also the chairman of Kiruna Växer (Kiruna Grows), an economic association to enhance the conditions for the local community in Kiruna. Previously, he served as chief executive officer and chairman of the debt management company Hoist Finance. He holds a Bachelor of Science in business and economics from Luleå University and has a solid background in corporate culture, financing, and profitable growth.
Mikael Staffas
President & CEO
Boliden, Sweden