The report to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasized the importance of ecological progress and advanced the building of a "beautiful" China in the country's overall development plan.

Lu Yaoru, an academician from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the specific reclamation measures should include farmland cultivation and tree-planting, and more efforts should be made in ecological restoration.

However, the path is not always smooth.

Statistics from the MLR suggest that by the end of 2009, discarded mines covering more than 100 million mu had not yet been reclaimed.

The combination of rapid urbanization and industrialization has also added difficulties to the efforts, Lu said.

"Lack of supervision and capital in implementing the regulation resulted in the fact that some reclamation efforts remain up in the air," according to Lu.

For Zhang Shihe, CEO of Guizhou Panjiang Holdings Ltd, the most critical step would be for the government and enterprises to stop simply cleaning up the aftermath of the mining process, and take precautions during the mining process instead.