A consortium of European universities, including TU Bergakademie Freiberg, is developing a new training format for future managers in the raw materials and mining industries. From 2025, future specialists and managers for the raw materials sector will receive international and interdisciplinary training in a previously underrepresented field of expertise in order to overcome current challenges relating to sustainability and the environment, social issues and governance and to be able to incorporate these into their business decisions.
"Implementing Europe's digital and green transformation agenda requires raw materials with secure supply chains that have been mined and produced in the most socially and environmentally responsible way possible. However, in Europe in particular, parts of the population are opposed to potential mining projects and the establishment of new recycling companies," explains Prof Gari Walkowitz from TU Bergakademie Freiberg. "This poses new challenges for future specialists and managers in the raw materials industry to improve the management and transparency of the environmental and social impact of mining projects and recycling companies," says the holder of the Chair of Behavioural and Business Ethics.
EU funds summer schools at nine universities
In several summer schools, the doctoral students will work on interdisciplinary case studies on current mining and recycling projects, learning in close cooperation with industry partners how the reputation of the extractive industry suffers from a negative image in many European regions and how companies can improve the social acceptance of mining projects and new industrial settlements through more transparent communication, minimisation of environmental impact and better involvement of local communities. New EU directives on sustainability reporting (CSRD) also require large companies to report in more detail on sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. The European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) will also redefine disclosure requirements for companies, including mining, processing and recycling.
"Future decision-makers will need new skills to meet these complex requirements and procedures. For example, the new supply chain law introduced in Europe a year ago makes manufacturing companies responsible for shaping working conditions, health issues, environmental impacts, infrastructural changes and the protection of indigenous groups and their culture by their raw material suppliers on the other side of the world," says Dr Kristina Wopat, Head of the Graduate and Research Academy at TU Bergakademie Freiberg. "And civil society actors are rightly and more successfully defending themselves against grievances, so that such factors are becoming tough investment criteria."
About the EU-wide further education project
The team at TU Bergakademie Freiberg has joined forces with several European institutions to develop the content and innovative methodology of the PRO-SLO (Building PROfessional SLO (Social Licence to Operate) Competence) doctoral programme. The aim is to apply for the EIT label for the programme, which is one of the highest-rated quality seals for innovative further training at doctoral level in Europe. The project is being coordinated by the University of Leoben. Other partners are the Polish AGH University of Science and Technology and the Mineral and Energy Economy Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Luleå University of Technology in Sweden, the National Technical University of Athens (Greece), the Graz University of Technology (Austria), the University of Zagreb, and the Spanish Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. The consortium is completed by three partner companies from Eastern and Southern Europe. The project is being funded with around 1 million euros until 2026 as part of the EIT Raw Materials programme.