Mining in the European Arctic continues and is heading into a bright future. This was a message that was delivered in numerous presentations, flyers and brochures of exploration and mining companies that sent delegates to Levi to promote their business. The major reasons for the mentioned bright future lay in the ore potentials in the Arctic soil, which were supported by vast amounts of geological data, the slight recovery of metal prices on the international markets and the implementation of novel technologies, which allow more cost-efficient and, as sometimes also claimed, more eco-efficient exploitation and production of metals and minerals.

Throughout many speeches in the plenary sessions, but also at the individual booths to represent companies and research institutes, the participants could receive the message that there is strong cooperation among mining actors in the three Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland) and Canada. One example of these cooperation efforts is the adaptation of the Canadian “Towards Sustainability Mining (TSM)” standard in Finland, with a few changes. In addition Finnish and Canadian delegates used the opportunity of the event to celebrate several times the 100th year of Finland´s independence and the 150th anniversary of confederation of Canada in year 2017.

Another frequent topic at the conference was mining in Greenland and its potentials. In the past few years, Greenland´s government pursues to diversify its economy from mainly fishing and hunting to extraction of minerals and metals on the large land areas. To this date there is one mine in operation with 55 exploration licenses issued. Further operating mines will open in the years to come. These efforts certainly change a lot in Greenland, as lots of infrastructural development is needed to be able to transport the products to the global overseas markets, as Greenland itself can be hardly seen as a market in terms of metal and mineral demands.

By considering social responsibility of the mining industry in the Arctic, the most relevant topic which found enormous attention among the participants was automation. The idea that machines take over the jobs of human beings is not new, but technological innovations and improvements in cost efficiencies give the industry new opportunities to develop the approaches of remote control further. The benefits of automated processes in mining can be diverse and imply the reduction of accidents, lowering the operational costs and improvements of quality. On the backside of the coin, human labour might be more irrelevant and local communities might suffer from higher unemployment rates.

At the end of the event, it was possible for two groups of participants to visit two of the largest mines in Finnish Lapland. The participants could choose to visit either the Kittilä Gold mine or the Kevitsä Copper-Nickel open-pit mine. The visitors of the Kevitsä mine could learn that when a multinational Canadian mining company sells a mine (Kevitsä) to a multinational Swedish mining company, that in fact not much happens on the mine site. Some chairs in the local head offices are replaced with new faces and the workers get a new logo on their work clothes and equipment and that is it. While the process of the sale took several months in early 2016, the mining operations continued as usual in the past few years.

Text & Photos: Adrian Braun