However, the team’s review suggests the UK is underprepared for navigating the social and environmental impacts and opportunities of domestic critical minerals projects. Understanding and governing these impacts and opportunities will become decisive in the success or failure of UK critical minerals extraction.
The review outlines opportunities including biodiversity restoration and tackling rural poverty. The review also identifies key challenges, including the ability of stakeholders to implement effective regulation; the impacts of delays on industry and investors; and mistrust among former mining communities, influenced by the UK’s legacy of deindustrialisation.
The review is published by the Agile Initiative along with a brief for policymakers. Insights from the paper have been submitted to the UK Parliament’s Critical Minerals inquiry to help inform debate on this issue of national significance.
The Agile Initiative, based at the Oxford Martin School, brings together researchers across the University of Oxford to address, time-critical research questions, identified by policymakers, in rapid interdisciplinary “Sprint” projects.
“The UK has a reasonable understanding of risks in principle, but a weak evidence base for navigating risk in practice and a gap between ambition and implementation. Our review provides clarity on the knowledge gaps facing the critical minerals sector in the UK”.
Jamie Hinch, report lead writer
