Post-mining landscapes offer unique opportunities with the possibility to reshape the land from scratch. The Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA) Fürst-Pückler-Land provides a platform, September 15-17, 2009 for an interdisciplinary discussion and exchange of the capabilities and problems with the design of post-mining landscapes. The international conference Opportunity: Post-Mining Landscapes will take place on the IBA terraces, Großräschen in eastern Germany, where a former open-pit mine has been transformed to a lakeland. At this setting, which makes the possible structural change clear like no other place in Lusatia, attention will turn to  transformation in various mining regions of the world, including France and China with the black coal regions of Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Xhuzhou respectively, and ore regions in the Iberian Pyrite Belt in Portugal. The South-African Centre for Sustainable Mining and Industry and Britain’s Post-Mining-Alliance will present strategies for coping with structural change.

The participants will discuss the complex problems of mine rehabilitation in seminars and ‘open space’ discussions as well as on the excursion into the Lusatian mining area. Central themes include: regional development, supervision of planning culture, the identity of regions in the process of transformation, and also adding value to the landscape and redesigning landscapes after mining. The conference will provide the opportunity to exchange experiences, to get new ideas and to develop proposals for handling post-mining landscapes.

The conference appeals to an interdisciplinary professional audience from all over the world – from mining engineers, planners, sociologists, agronomists and forestry engineers through to artists – as well as decision makers in politics and administration, companies, universities, societies and associations as well as research facilities dealing with the development of mining regions.

The current program is as follows:

• September 15 – Mining regions from all over the world will be represented on the first day of the conference – from Lusatia to other European regions like the Czech Republic, France, Portugal, USA, South Africa, Chile and China. Subsequently, 10 recommendations about handling post-mining landscapes will be presented
• September 16 – On the second day three simultaneous seminars will deal with the control of the transformation process, the formation of a regional identity as well as current demands for using the landscape. After the ‘open space’ discussion about the 10 recommendations, the participants will go on a discovery tour at the active open-pit mine and into the newly developing Lusatian Lakeland
• September 17 – On the third day of the conference the threads will be brought together. The results of the conference will be evaluated in a panel discussion and specific recommendations for action will be made. Various worldwide networks will show how these experiences can be exchanged and spread.

Registration details for the conference are available on www.iba-see.de