Just how to better manage the historic booms and busts in Australia’s mining and energy resources cycles is to be a centrepiece of an international summit to be held in Australia later this year. The forum will be the inaugural convention of the Australia Geoscience Council which will meet for five days in Adelaide during Earth Science Week between October 14 and 18.
The Council is one of the foremost Geoscience advocacy groups in Australia and as such, has made the issue of resources-based “good times, bad times” one of four key issues to confront industry, government and community-based delegates on a specifically focused Big Issues and Ideas Day on Tuesday 16 October.
“Our objective is to use the Big Issues and Ideas Day to focus on how Geoscience’s interaction with society can assist smooth out our resources boom and bust history by evolving strategies that can be taken to government to become policy,” Convention Chairman, Dr Bill Shaw, said today.
“The Convention’s resources cycle summit will attract some of the foremost speakers and convenors across this issue and we are confident the outcomes are likely to generate a formal mining-related communique to make government, industry and the community sit up and take notice.”
More than 2,000 delegates are expected in Adelaide over the five day forum, with headline speakers including an address by renowned US academic, Professor Matthew Huber from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University, Indiana.
Other key areas of attention at the Australian Geoscience Council Convention (AGCC 2018) will be the development of northern Australia, the better management of our energy generation, feedstocks and energy security and better geoscience education and communication.
Main plenary sessions will address major issues currently impacting geoscience, including the Earth’s past and future climate; life origins and evolution; future resource security; geohazard risk and mitigation; and the future role of geoscience in our society.
The scientific program’s five themes and 55 sub-themes will focus on geoscience topics across the key disciplines of mining, energy, engineering, environment and other related resource development skillsets.
The Big Issues and Ideas day is designed to highlight the fundamental role that geoscience has as a major field of science throughout the Australasian-Pacific region.
“It is geoscience that delivers the maps that support decision making, GPS positioning on people’s mobile phones, through to environmental monitoring and understanding the nation’s resource wealth,” Shaw said.
“The convention is not just about an opportunity to discuss scientific developments and emerging technologies, but new approaches to education and communication,” he said.
All eight members of the Council are backing the Convention, sponsored by Geoscience Australia. The members are themselves leading Geoscience industry groups and organisations in Australia, representing the interests of more than 8,000 professionals.
For more information, visit www.agcc.org.au.
