Carlia Cooper’s research while affiliated with University of Technology Sydney and other places

Attempts to pursue sustainability in the minerals sector have largely focused on reducing impacts at mining and processing sites. The Mineral Resources Landscape (Cooper and Giurco, 2011), offers an expanded conceptualisation of minerals sustainability, spanning production, consumption and recycling and connecting social, ecological, technological, economic and governance domains, across local and global scales. By mapping issues and impacts, the Minerals Resources Landscape makes explicit the disconnect between externalised impacts and the potential leverage points where they can be addressed. This paper applies the Mineral Resources Landscape to map stakeholder concerns for the case of deep sea mining in Australia. It found that in exploring the future use of this technology to meet growing resource demand, the potential role of dematerialisation and recycling were overlooked. The paper concludes with reflections on the usefulness of the approach for citizens, companies and governments.

This paper explores the complexity of the resource development and sustainability problematique. The Mineral Resources Landscape presented in this paper links minerals production and consumption and connects social, ecological, technological, economic and governance domains across local, national and global scales. Using the framework to map current research shows an industry focus on 'resource availability' and developing new 'technology for processing' whilst ignoring the in use 'services and value' offered by the minerals. These overlooked areas are proposed as being integral to developing sustainable systems of Australian minerals production and consumption, across multiple scales and domains.

The ways in which Australia's minerals resources are used to support sustainable futures merits serious and broad discussion. This paper reviews the issues associated with minerals and sustainability and the contemporary responses to these issues by stakeholders at the global, national and local scale. A framework for integrating minerals and sustainability - the Mineral Resources Landscape - is used to map the contemporary issues and stakeholder activities relative to each other and provides a platform for discussion of further research questions required to position the Australian minerals sector as 'metals service provider' in a sustainable future. This research begins part of a three year 'Mineral Futures' collaboration between universities and CSIRO exploring commodity futures, technology futures and mineral-rich regions in transition.