Critical Minerals are a key area of interest for CCG and one of the cross-cutting themes for all of our Programmed Research activities. We thought that now was a good time to celebrate the progress made so far because last week some of our Research colleagues, including those from the newly formed Cambridge Critical Minerals Lab (CCML), hosted a Policy Forum in London to launch the CCML. They were joined by guests from academia and government including Lily Ryan-Collins, Senior Infrastructure Adviser at the FCDO.
Professor Jonathan Cullen presented key policy insights from CCML’s latest policy and knowledge briefs, all of which were supported by funding from CCG. These are:
Critical Minerals in the UK: Insights from the Analysis of 10 Net Zero Pathways
Securing the UK Lithium Supply: If supply is Constrained, can basic needs be met?
Strengthening Critical Mineral Supply Chain Resilience through Multi-Scale Geospatial Monitoring
Strengthening Future UK Raw Material Criticality Assessments
Rethinking Value Chain Upgrading and Value Capture in Mineral-Rich Countries
Prof Stephanie Hirmer presented the CCG Oxford team’s latest policy insights on mining in Zambia, with a particular emphasis on #GESI (Gender Equality and Social Inclusion). She said that there are opportunities to increase women’s participation in Zambia’s mineral value-chain and identified the gender-specific challenges. A new Policy Brief has just been published on this topic by Rebecca Clube and others.
Stephi also outlined the impact on communities and identified environmental and social drivers of risk and mitigation across Copperbelt and Northwestern provinces with a focus on women and children.
Dr Gerald Arhin from CCG and UCL presented on Critical Minerals, Communities and Value Addition. His key points from research on Ghana and Southern Africa included:
- Critical Mineral value addition is a political promise as much as an economic strategy and the gap between the two is large.
- Regional cooperation is instrumental for value addition but politically contested and structurally underdeveloped.
- Governance frameworks determine who captures value and who bears the costs.
You can read Gerald’s Policy Brief “Protecting Community Rights in Ghana’s Lithium Sector” here.
CCG and other Critical Minerals Research led by the CCG International Partnerships team
As Critical Minerals are not just a cross-cutting theme for all our Research Communities but are also a core part of CCG, there are of course other Policy Briefs and Articles that have been produced. “Beyond Extraction: Simulating Increased Battery Mineral Value Addition in Southern Africa” was written by a team led by Vivien Foster and Karla Cervantes Barron from CCG and Imperial and presented at the recent African Mining Indaba.
The preprint of the academic paper that will accompany this can be found here.
