Cornwall in the limelight at the United Nations
Cornwall has been in the limelight at the United Nations today (Tuesday, April 25th), with researchers at the Camborne School of Mines delighted that two short films introducing the new United Nations Resource Management System (UNRMS) and its first application in Cornwall were launched at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.
The films, featured in the opening session of the UN Resource Management Week, introduced by Professor Frances Wall. Camborne School of Mines has been working with the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership to consider all the actions that Cornwall needs to take to make the renaissance of metals mining a success.
This work uses the new UN Resource Management System as its framework and is the first case study of the new system, which will be rolled out across the globe using learning from the first examples.
The University team has made two films to help with this: one to introduce the Cornwall case study and one as a general introduction to the UNRMS. University researchers are attending the conference to present their results from Cornwall and discuss how circular economy research can help towards the UNRMS and UN sustainable development goals.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, based in Geneva, has created its new resource management system to help national and regional governments consider the whole range of sustainable development actions needed to make sure that truly sustainable development will flow from mineral resources.
Professor Frances Wall of Camborne School of Mines said, ‘It is an exciting time in Cornwall now with several projects working hard towards producing the minerals and metals we need for energy transition technologies. Getting this new mining right is about much more than just opening a new mine, there are all kinds of environmental, skills, community, and wider economic issues to consider. In fact, we need a whole new global circular economy for technology metals and Cornwall can play a part in that.’
Dr Eva Marquis, Research Fellow at Camborne School of Mines and the Environment and Sustainability Institute said, ‘It’s really good to see Cornwall taking a lead in considering all the issues. The new UNRMS was being devised at just the right time for us to try it out in Cornwall’
Dr Kate Smith, Research Fellow at Camborne School of Mines said, ‘The films were great fun to make, and we hope they will be used at home here in Cornwall and across the World to introduce the new UNRMS. We already have sent the links to colleagues in Zambia’.
The films were made by researchers from the UKRI Met4Tech Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Centre for Technology Metals at Camborne School of Mines, University of Exeter and funded by the Department of Business and Trade to complement the UK Critical Minerals Strategy.
