Second International Conference on Sustainable Development Indicators in the Minerals Industry - SDIMI 2005
Aachen, Germany, May 18-20, 2005

200 participants from industry, ministries, governmental organisations, NGO’s, associations, financing institutions, research organisations etc. had the opportunity to discuss topics like sustainable development indicators, sustainability assessment, reporting and data evaluation, LCA and environmental protection, social aspects and raw minerals supply. The 80 contributions from Europe, USA, Asia, Africa, South America and Australia covered this range of issues.

Overarching conference themes were:

• Higher Scientific Understanding and Agreement
• Sustainable Development: Body of Knowledge
• Critical Mass of Collaborating Scientists and Experts
• On the Ground Applications
• Need for Interdisciplinary Expertise
• Global Growth of Energy and Minerals Consumption
• Human Resource Crisis at all Levels
• SD Training and Education (within and outside industry)
• Transparency and Communications
• LCA
• SD Comparisons, Thresholds, and Benchmarking
• SD Policy

The participants recognised that benchmarking and branch versus regional indicators, linkages to mineral policies and laws as well as the request for the development of a SD culture and as a consequence thereof value creation for communities and enterprises still will be on the agenda. Another emerging question deals with the implementation of sustainable development. This requires the design of tools applicable on operational and management level as well as the set-up of global knowledge hubs

The progress of the minerals industry on their path towards sustainable development will be discussed in 2007 at SDIMI 2007.