The conference addresses two particular questions: How can Northern Europe create socially sustainable resource extraction and what kind of dialogue do industry and regional and local communities engage in when discussing the extractive sector?

The main speakers at the conference include Markku Markkula, President of the EU Committee of the Regions, and Mattia Pellegrini, Head of Unit, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials at the European Commissions’s Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (GROW). Also speaking at the forum will be researchers in different fields from the Universities of Lapland and Helsinki, the Lapland University of Applied Sciences, Luleå University of Technology, Burgos University (Spain) and Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (Portugal). Adding further to the programme will be contributions by speakers from Poland, Great Britain and Germany.

Timo Koivurova, acting director of the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland points out that mining and other industrial activities in the Arctic should be carried out in a manner that minimizes environmental impacts. He goes on to note:

"We increasingly realize that such activities have to be acceptable to the local populace as well. They have to deal with the impacts day in and day out".

One of the concepts that will feature prominently at the conference is "social licence to operate", an idea which international mining companies, Canadian firms in particular, have highlighted in trying to set up operations in Lapland.

Commenting on this topic, Leena Suopajärvi and Pamela Lesser, a lecturer and a researcher from the University of Lapland, point out:

"In Lapland one sees a meeting of the business practices of international mining companies and local cultures. In these encounters we see companies being granted - or failing to be granted – a social licence to operate, that is, a situation in which a company’s activities are accepted or even considered desirable locally. One criterion determining whether or not a company earns such a licence is the local people’s previous experiences of how natural resources have been used. It is here that experiences in Lapland open up perspectives on how social licences to operate are earned in Europe’s northern areas."


Background on the conference

Creating economic growth in the EU requires, among other things, that we seize the opportunities offered by the circular economy and raise the degree of self-sufficiency in the production of raw materials. In practice the European Commission is aiming to achieve 80-percent self-sufficiency for European industry in the production of critical minerals. The Commission emphasizes the role of the regions in achieving sustainable growth and would like to see them accepted as partners on an equal footing when discussing the development of and investments in internal raw material production in the EU. This will require a new approach to and model for cooperation.

Describing a project to this end, Project Director Kristiina Jokelainen from the Regional Council of Lapland notes:

"A year ago, the EU Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (GROW) proposed to the Regional Council of Lapland that the Council begin building a network and cooperation between regions in the EU with mining operations. This proposal bore fruit in the form of the initiative Smart and Green Mining Regions of the EU, a development that will be among those taken up at the conference. The initiative has ten participating research and development organizations representing regions around Europe that have specialized in the raw materials and extractive sectors."

Raw Materials University Days is being arranged by the European Commission, the University of Lapland, the Regional Council of Lapland, the Lapland University of Applied Sciences and the Luleå University of Technology. It is financed by the EU programme Interreg V A Nord and the Arctic Smartness Portfolio, a project coordinated by the Regional Council of Lapland and implemented with funding from the EU Regional Development Fund. Participation in the conference is free of charge. The language of the conference will be English and the venue is the Multidimensional Tourism Institute (MTI).

The conference web page, programme and registration information

The conference has been organized to fit in with Fennoscandian Exploration and Mining (FEM 2015), an international conference of the mineral industry to be held during the same week in Levi.

The following persons will provide additional information and handle requests for interviews:

Project Director Ilari Havukainen
Tel. 050 320 1202
ilari.havukainen (at) lapinliitto.fi

Project Director Kristiina Jokelainen
Tel. 040 501 9856
kristiina.jokelainen (at) lapinliitto.fi


ULapland/Communications/SV