Project Week 2024/25: Conflicts in Mining Critical Materials: Compromising in Sustainability Strategies

The course will consist of three parts, which allows for a type of experiment in how exposure to mining practices influences decision making. The first set of sessions will serve to introduce the topic and record “unexperience” and “noncollaborative” perspectives and decision choices on the mining problems presented. Next, students will be exposed actual mining practices, examine the conflicts (standing or past) onsite in visits to open-pit mines in Germany or Austria, and shall form their own views and opinions on the real-world challenges associated with sustainability in mining. Finally, the students return to the stakeholder roles to review their sustainability goals and weights assigned to them, negotiation strategies and impact oriented behavior.

The module targets students of all backgrounds interested in understanding decision-making processes, challenges associated with choices, and divergence in perspectives on the sustainability goals, in particular, in extraction of critical metals and minerals. The course will explain environmental and societal costs of mining, alongside economic benefits, in the context of the increased demand for metals and materials brought about by decarbonisation goals. Participants will learn about different approaches for addressing the intricate challenges faced by German and global mining industries striving to provide critical resources.

To complete the course, students shall form groups representing different stakeholders and play their roles in the game set up in the class; then, make a presentation (50% of the grade) and write a group report (50% of the grade): - showing their understanding of sustainability with respect to mining; -their learning on costs, benefits, and challanges faced by a given stakeholder groups; - conflicts and ways to find a compromise when it comes to mining strategies; -importance of mining and its fair development.

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Students will engage in role-playing exercises to learn the perspectives of three major stakeholder groups, (1) affected communities, (2) upstream producers, i.e. mining operators, and (3) downstream industrial consumers, e.g., automotive companies. They will use the interactive multiobjective optimization (iMO) tool, we prototyped, to test their decisions exploring interest alignments and stakeholder conflicts, fostering deeper understanding of the multifaceted issues surrounding the extraction and consumption of critical materials.