About the project
SUMEX is a 36-months project funded by the European Commission that has started on 1 November 2020. The project supports the set-up of a European sustainability framework to improve the permitting procedure along the extractive value chain (prospecting, exploration, extraction, processing, closure, post closure activities), to guarantee timely decisions, a transparent governmental regulatory regime, appealing financial and administrative conditions and sustainable natural environmental and social conditions. The main mission of SUMEX is to assist policymakers and other stakeholders in seizing this opportunity.
In order to foster more, but sustainable mineral production in the EU, SUMEX (SUstainable Management in EXtractive industries) will establish a sustainability framework for the extractive industry in Europe. It does so by considering the Sustainable Development Goals, the European Green Deal, as well as EU Social License to Operate considerations and will involve stakeholders from industry, government, academia and civil society backgrounds from all across the EU.
This framework is then applied across the extractive value chain to analyse the mineral, as well as relevant economic, environmental and social policy frameworks of the EU, member states and selected regions along five focus areas – socio-economic and environmental impact assessments, land use planning, health and safety, reporting official statistics and permitting processes/policy integration-to find, or build, where needed, good practices or tools for an open access toolkit, which will be embedded in a broader Community of Practise (CoP) and which forms the basis for capacity building. This CoP will consider relevant stakeholder groups, with a focus on permitting authorities, across the EU, providing a digital platform and using a series of workshops and webinars. In SUMEX, the experience from other projects like MINGUIDE, MINLAND, MIREU, STRADE builds a powerful foundation for addressing the challenge of how best to implement sustainability considerations into the whole raw materials value chain.
SUMEX Project
SUstainable Management in EXtractive Industries
Challenge: No common understanding of sustainable management in extractive industries
SUMEX supports the set-up of a European sustainability framework to improve the permitting procedure along the extractive value chain (prospecting, exploration, extraction, processing, closure, post closure activities), to guarantee timely decisions, a transparent governmental regulatory regime, appealing financial and administrative conditions and sustainable natural environmental and social conditions. The main mission of SUMEX is to assist policymakers and other stakeholders in seizing this opportunity.
Objectives of SUMEX
Strengthen policy coordination and agenda setting along the mineral extraction value chain
- Improve the understanding of mechanisms of horizontal and vertical coordination along the value chain
- Identify conditions that support the horizontal and vertical coordination and permitting procedures
- Foster agenda setting for mineral extraction
Propose a uniform EU sustainable management in extractive industries context
- Operationalisation of SD framework
- Identify needs and gaps in permitting and planning practise, regarding policy coordination and agenda setting
Cluster with other projects to identify good practices and good practise principles
- Clustering with projects based in the fields of mineral management, land-use planning, socio-environmental management to gain a comprehensive (holistic) perspective
- Foster strong meta research, to avoid duplication
Identify good practices and good practice principles for policy strategies and policy integration
- Identify good practises and principles for policy strategies and strategic approaches, coordination/integration and approaches and property rights regimes for different institutional systems
- Fill the gaps identified in the gap analysis from O2, through in-dept analysis of the use cases a) battery materials and b) construction materials
- Review and analyse mapped practices that lead to recommendations and training material
- Validate the results in peer learning workshops
- Identify stakeholder learning needs and requirements
- Foster decision making practices and decision quality by providing the online toolkit and testing it regularly during the project (based on the feed-back from the CoP)
- Establish a CoP via the Leaders & Learners League (3L) approach
Deploy an open access toolkit for capacity building across EU and with all stakeholders
- Support knowledge management and knowledge brokerage by 3L
- Evoke and establish interactive single-, double- and triple-loop learning, via digital and virtual training materials and social learning experiences
- Establish a three-step approach for horizontal and vertical policy learning through a series of different workshop types (a) needs analysis, (b) peer learning & validation workshops and (c) toolkit diffusion workshop and webinars
- Establish the self-sustainability of the digital platform
The Project partners
Montanuniversitaet Leoben (MUL; www.unileoben.ac.at) is well-known as one of the best universities in Austria and a “global centre of excellence” in the core disciplines focussed along the entire “value-added lifecycle” of raw materials, from exploration to extraction and mineral processing, followed by fields such as metallurgy, high-performance materials, process and product engineering, and finally, to environmental engineering and recycling. Close connection to and cooperation with industry (incl. SMEs) guarantees the stimulation and support of the entire innovation process in industrial companies as well as the successful exploitation of research results. One of MUL’s core objectives is to consider sustainability aspects throughout entire life cycles, all the way from raw materials to the finished product, on to disposal and, to close the loop, its recycling and reuse as secondary raw materials. 
The Oeko-Institut is an independent German research institute. About 140 researchers work in interdisciplinary project teams on environmental and social topics for national and international clients. In the sector of responsible sourcing and mining, the Oeko-Institut provides broad experience in national and international contexts. Oeko-Institut has been the coordinator of the Horizon2020 project STRADE “Strategic Dialogue on Sustainable Raw Materials for Europe”.
Tallinn University of Technology
Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) was established in 1918 and is the leading engineering R&D institution in Estonia. The mission of TalTech is to support Estonia’s sustainable development through R&D and science-based higher education in the field of engineering, technology, natural and social sciences. In addition to the classification scheme (CERCS) T140 also other research fields are related to the energy research in TalTech (P305 Environmental chemistry, P360 Inorganic chemistry, P430 Mineral deposits, economic geology, T150 Material technology, T190 Electrical engineering, T270 Environmental technology, pollution control, T340 Mining, T350 Chemical technology and engineering, T370 Carbochemistry, petrochemistry, fuels and explosives technology).