Welcome to CESME 
The goal of the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Mining and Exploration is to encourage and support research, education and outreach activities regarding the nature and impacts of mineral resource exploration and extraction particularly in Northern Ontario.
Northern Ontario’s dynamic mining sector is booming, creating challenges regarding how best to undertake sustainable economic development while ensuring environmental protection and respecting constitutionally protected Aboriginal and Treaty rights. The Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Mining and Exploration is working to address these challenges by linking Lakehead University researchers with partners from First Nations, Metis, government, and industry. This collaborative approach recognizes that Canadian natural resource development requires sophisticated planning, collaboration, assessment, implementation, and remediation strategies that are calculated to minimize negative environmental, socio-economic, and cultural impacts.
Through the Centre academic, community, government, and industry partners are carrying out cutting-edge research in discovery, advanced exploration, and development, and are addressing the environmental and social aspects of mineral extraction.
The activities of the Centre will fall into three broad themes:
- Mineral exploration and mineral extraction including mine development and mineral processing
- Social, economic and environmental impacts of mineral resource exploration and extraction
- First Nations and Métis engagement
In 2014 we organized a conference on the Role of Government Policy in Sustainable Mining Development, on December 5 and 6 at Lakehead University. Videos and presentations from this conference can be found here. More recently we co-sponsored the a conference on the Ring of Fire with the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law. The day was a great success and video recording of the panels can be found here.
For more information about the Centre contact:
Dr. Peter Hollings, Director
Email: peter.hollings@lakeheadu.ca
Phone: 807 343 8329
Or download our new brochure here.