The 8th Annual Science & Policy Workshop was held in Santiago, Chile and took place at Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD) from December 11-12, 2023. This year’s workshop was facilitated by the IIES, Trent University, the University of Edinburgh, Universidad del Desarrollo, and SMI-ICE-Chile which is based in Santiago, Chile, and affiliated with the University of Queensland, Australia. Participants gained insight into current critical mineral mining issues in relation to research and industrial challenges, government policy, environmental regulation, impacts upon indigenous communities and the environment.
Participants had the opportunity to meet colleagues from our partner institutions as well as external industry, government and universities that were invited to the Workshop. Participants were able to present and discuss environmental issues relating to the wider workshop themes, which gave students in particular a chance to share their research and build collaborative relationships at an international level.
Image: Professor David Rubinos (SMI-ICE) presenting his topic Sustainable Minerals for a Resilient Transition to Net Zero alongside Professor Margaret Graham (University of Edinburgh)
We held twelve successful sessions covering a variety of topics, including critical minerals, sustainable mining, microplastics, circular economy, Indigenous studies, human health impacts, and many more. We want to give a huge thank you to the faculty members who chaired each of these sessions, those involved in organizing the event, as well as to the participants who presented their research. We had over 85 participants at the workshop from 19 different institutions spanning over 5 different countries.
We also want to give a special thanks our plenary speakers who each gave very interesting and informative presentations about their research, providing us with different perspectives from a variety of different backgrounds.
In addition, students and faculty were able to explore the city of Santiago and enjoy the local cuisine both as a group and individually. We finished off the conference with a group dinner, where we enjoyed a lovely Korean restaurant in the heart of the city. Some people even managed to go on a hike or two on the surrounding mountains.
Image: Hike to Cerro Manquehue (meaning “place of condors”) in Santiago, Chile
After receiving lots of positive feedback, it is safe to say that it was a successful conference. If you’d like to hear more, check out some articles written by the workshop participants:
Kyle Reyes – Master’s Student
Pearl Finkelzon – Master’s Student
Zoë Fleming – Professor
To read more, check out the following article written by the Universidad del Desarrollo.
