The Climate Ready Mine Project began with a simple but important question: how can mine remediation and closure planning protect people and the environment not just today, but for the long term, as climate conditions continue to change? 

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The question took root in 2023, when RFS Energy was engaged by the Giant Mine Oversight Board to review how climate information was being used to support long-term planning at the site. The work confirmed something important and unsettling: climate change considerations were being incorporated into remediation planning, but the approaches for doing so were still evolving - and when it came to planning truly far into the future, the field was operating without a clear or comprehensive roadmap. The gap was real, and it extended well beyond Giant Mine. 

Then, in September 2023, Yellowknife was evacuated - the entire city - as wildfires swept across the Northwest Territories. For those already thinking about long-term risk in the region, it was a sober reminder - the climate impacts that mine closure plans are meant to account for are here now, they are not distant projections.  

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Recognizing the value of stepping back and the urgency to explore these questions more deeply, RFS Energy partnered with Dr. Nicolas Brunet of the University of Guelph's School of Environmental Design and Rural Development. Together they secured funding through Natural Resources Canada's Climate Change Adaptation Program, and the Climate Ready Mine Project was formally launched in June 2024. 

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What followed was a multi-year process of research, listening, and relationship-building - shaped through conversations with mining and remediation professionals, Indigenous organizations and leaders, climate scientists, advocacy groups, youth, and representatives from different levels of government. We come with experience and with humility, knowing that trust is built slowly and that the relationships this work depends on cannot be rushed.  

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From the beginning, the project has been grounded in the belief that this kind of work requires many ways of knowing. Engineering and technical expertise matter, and they are not enough on their own. So does climate science. So does the practical knowledge of communities who live closest to these sites and whose relationship to this land long predates the mines themselves. So does Indigenous knowledge, carrying millennia of observed, tested, and deep understanding of how ecosystems function and change and a record of sustainable relationship with land and resources that no instrument can replicate. In northern regions where instrumental climate records are sparse and the effects of warming are arriving faster and felt more severely than almost anywhere else on Earth, local knowledge is not anecdotal, it is essential and is often the most detailed and longest-running record we have.

 

This website represents the culmination of our work, a growing hub of tools, insights and resources for anyone navigating the intersection of climate change and mine closure to support ongoing learning and collaboration. From legacy sites requiring perpetual care, to the new critical mineral projects being designed right now.