CCML Policy Forum

On Friday 24th April, the Cambridge Critical Materials Lab (CCML) and the Programmed Research team from the Climate Compatible Growth Programme hosted a Policy Forum event at the National Liberal Club, London. The team was joined by stakeholders from academia and government. In this post we detail some of the highlights from the event.

The leader of the Resource Efficiency Collective, Professor Jonathan Cullen, presented key policy insights from CCML’s latest policy and knowledge briefs. These are detailed and linked here:

CCML Policy Briefs:

• Critical Minerals in the UK: Insights from the Analysis of 10 Net Zero Pathways
• Strengthening ESG Integration into Critical Mineral Supply Chains in Zambia: Lessons for Low- and Middle Income Countries
• Securing the UK Lithium Supply: If supply is Constrained, can basic needs be met?

CCML Knowledge Briefs:

• 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, covering the following three points:

• Impact on women in the mining sector: Examining opportunities for increasing women’s participation in Zambia’s mineral value-chain & identifying the gender-specific challenges.
• Impact of mining on communities: Identify place-based environmental & social drivers of risk & mitigation across Copperbelt and Northwestern provinceswith a focus on women & children.
• System-level impact of 3 million tonne target: Systems analysis of mining impacts across water sector (quantity & quality), power system, and land use (land conversion, ecosystem loss, soil degradation, and competition with agriculture & settlements) to identify cross-sector trade-offs and cumulative impacts to inform policy.

Dr Gerald Arhin from UCL presented on Critical Minerals, Communities & Value Addition
Policy/research Insights from Ghana and Southern Africa, with some of the following key points:

• 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 & Who Bears The Costs.

Click here to read a recent policy brief authored by Gerald.

The event was also a great opportunity to officially launch CCML, whose mission is to support mineral-rich countries in navigating the complex social, economic, and environmental challenges of the global energy transition by producing cutting-edge policy-relevant research on critical minerals. 

We hope to continue these important discussions on supply security, value capture, governance, and accountability across critical mineral supply chains.

Photo credits: Mehrnoosh Heydari & Luc Le Lay.