How do we balance the environmental and social benefits of the new technologies versus the costs and benefits of mining and extraction?
Mineral Wealth: How do we balance the environment and societal benefits of the new technologies versus the costs and benefits of mining and extraction?
The products that we use for new clean and digital technologies (such as wind turbines, low energy lighting, battery-powered cars, mobile phones, computer tablets) contain a wider range of elements than many traditional technologies. All require additional resources to be mined. The dilemma will seek to answer how we balance the environmental and social benefits of the new technologies versus the costs and benefits of mining and extraction? Themes that will be investigated include the supply and demand of long-term resources, the environmental impact and remediation of mining, water use and conservation in mining, the energy and carbon footprint of mining and extraction, the social impact of mining – in good and bad ways, the role of mining in economic development and many others.
Lead academic: Professor Frances Wall
Anchor academics: Dr Kathryn Moore
Taster session
Date: 29 October
Time: 14:30 - 16:00
Location: Chapel Lecture Theatre
Description: ‘We are all miners!’
Students will participate in electronic audience voting at the beginning of this taster session in order to gain an awareness of their own perceptions towards low-carbon energy technologies, their personal recycling habits and their attitudes towards international mining operations and practices. With the aid of the ‘Mineral Wealth’ team, we will use the audience votes to consider the personal responsibility of any individual (including students) for current mining trends internationally! The fundamental questions of whether mining does more harm than good, whether mining can find a natural place in a sustainable society and what constitutes responsible mining will be introduced. At the end of the taster session, students will have an appreciation of the diverse economic, social and environmental approaches that will be used to investigate these questions, to understand the realities and consequences of Mineral Wealth in the 21st century. The Grand Challenge will culminate at the Eden Project (a regenerated clay mine!), where the inquiry groups from Exeter and Cornwall will unite for a thought-provoking workshop in order to place their findings in the wider context.
Sign up: If you miss this session you can view it on ELE.
If you wish to pick this dilemma sign up through My Career Zone from 5th November.
Frances Wall
Frances Wall is Associate Professor of Applied Mineralogy and Head of Camborne School of Mines, Exeter University, She is also a Scientific Associate at the Natural History Museum, London. After a geochemistry degree at Queen Mary College London, Frances joined the Mineralogy Department at the Natural History Museum, gaining a PhD from London University on the formation of rare earth ore deposits. She has a long standing interest in some of the Earth’s strangest volcanic rocks and the exotic, and now critical, metals that they contain, and has worked with scientists around the world and with mining companies. Frances moved to Camborne School of Mines in 2007 and broadened her interests to responsible mining topics; thinking about how we can extract the materials vital to our everyday lives in the best ways possible.
Caroline Digby
Caroline Digby is Sustainability Director at the Eden Project. She joined Eden in 2004 to develop the Post-Mining Alliance which works to promote good practice in post-mining regeneration. She was previously a Programme Director of the International Council on Mining and Metals, where she saw through the implementation of some of the key recommendations of the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development (MMSD) project. Caroline was the Research Director for the MMSD project, a two-year process of analysis and consultation seeking to understand how the mining and minerals sector could contribute to sustainable development, hosted by the International Institute for Environment and Development from 2000 to 2002. An environmental economist by training, she has worked in the mining and metals sector for most of her career.
Inquiry Groups
If you sign up for this dilemma you will have the opportunity to work in an inquiry group focusing on one of these areas (please note these are still under discussion so may change).
Inquiry Groups
- Enhanced recovery to reduce waste
- Responsible sourcing of metals
- Resource Nationalism: independence and security
- Social impacts – the good versus the bad
- Mining for economic development
- Mines as a limit or a catalyst for biodiversity
- Water quality and conservation during mining
- Feasibility of a mining operation
- Conflict minerals
- Fairtrade in mining
- Mining and indigenous people
Outputs
- Industrial methods of processing metal from rock: mining and processing as energy consumers
- A vision of the future? Development of a scheme
- An interactive overview of indigenous geological materials and their potential applications
- Potential for reworking disused resources
- Video documentary with geo-referenced case studies (cross campus collaboration?)
- Diversity assessment, video documentary and commentary
- Spatially-resolved water chemistry analysis and recommendations for water conservation
- Draft feasibility study and visual communication
- Design a campaign
