Articles & essays
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The Return of the Material Economy
The World Bank’s new industrial policy report signals more than a technical adjustment in development thinking. It reflects a broader return of production, strategic sectors, and state capacity to the center of the debate. Read through a Geopolitical Mining lens, that shift carries a deeper implication: industrialization in the twenty first century rests on a…
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Beyond ESG: Rethinking Sustainability in Mining
As the material economy returns, mining is forcing a more serious question: not whether sustainability matters, but whether the dominant sustainability frameworks are still fit for sectors shaped by time, permitting, legitimacy, and execution. This article revisits ESG, maps the main conceptual alternatives now emerging, and argues that mining may require a more systemic form…
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What Mining Operations Must Prove After Ramp-Up
Ramp-up is often treated as a visible milestone in mining. But the more revealing phase comes later, when an operation must prove that throughput, recoveries, mine sequence, continuity and cost discipline can hold together under real operating pressure. Using Mantoverde and Caserones as contrasting cases, this article explores why visible progress and operating maturity are…
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Minerals Turn Strategic. Exploration Capital Stays Tactical.
Mining has entered a more strategic era, but exploration capital still flows mainly toward lower. risk, shorter horizon opportunities. That tension is now visible in the latest exploration, financing, and policy data.
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When Mining Becomes Geopolitical, the State and Diplomacy Must Change
Mining is no longer operating only as an extractive sector. As critical minerals become part of industrial resilience, economic security and alliance architecture, both the State and diplomacy must adapt to a new geopolitical role for mining.
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PDAC 2026: When the Conversation Became Real Again
PDAC 2026 showed a more operational mining conversation. Permitting, timelines, costs, water, social licence, security, and execution moved to the centre, reflecting a sector increasingly focused on what it will actually take to deliver supply in this decade.
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USA and Aligned Trading Partners, USTR Maps a Plurilateral Critical Minerals Deal
USTR has opened a formal consultation on a plurilateral critical minerals agreement with aligned trading partners. Behind the legal language, the notice begins to map a potential club architecture for prices, border tools and standards, and invites comments from any interested party before 19 March 2026.
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2026: No Industrial Economy (or Industrial Security) Without Formal Mining and Social Legitimacy
By 2026, the main policy and business forums are aligned on one point: industrial security is no longer just about technology and capital. It also depends on reliable access to critical minerals and on whether formal mining is seen as legitimate by the societies that host it.
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Davos 2026 | Sixth Axis of Analysis. Fink and Musk: Legitimacy, AI and the Clock of Execution
Larry Fink and Elon Musk frame AI as both a technological leap and a system stress test, highlighting the clash between the exponential clock of technology and the slower clock of institutions, and showing why the next geopolitical cycle will be decided in the ability to deploy energy, infrastructure and fair distribution at scale.
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Davos 2026: Coordinates of the New Geopolitical Era
Geopolitical reading of Davos 2026: from the financial cycle to a new industrial and material era. Reindustrialization, middle class, legitimacy, sovereignty of speed, AI, energy transition and mineral supply chains seen through the lens of geopolitical mining and a redefined social contract.