We have barely taken down the Christmas decorations, but stores have their Valentine’s Day merchandise out, and we’re already halfway through January.  It may feel that way, but it’s really not to early to highlight an event coming up in June – Summer will be here before we know it.

So mark your calendars, ladies and gentlemen, for this year’s Resources for Future Generations (RFG2018) conference, to be held in Vancouver, Canada from June 16-21, where several Canadian associations and organizations are partnering with the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) to discuss resource and related sustainability issues.

The speakers’ lineup promises a great event, and includes representatives from academia and industry from all over the world.  Among the speakers hailing from the United States are Yale professor emeritus Thomas Graedel, with whom ARPN followers may be familiar because we have highlighted his work on “companion metals” – or “co-products” as we have referred to them, and Allyson K. Anderson Book, who is executive director of the American Geosciences Institute (AGI), whose forthcoming webinar at the end of January we have also featured. Many others will round out the picture over the course of the four-day event.

The conference, which will “feature a range of innovative and provocative special sessions and events including panels, debates, thematic keynotes, public lectures and events for Early Career professionals,” comes at a critical juncture for North American mineral resource development, as for the first time in decades, the United States has set out to make domestic resource development a policy priority.

Against the backdrop of the release of USGS’s landmark Professional Paper 1802, and the executive order on critical minerals, the event will serve to further the – long overdue – debate on how to responsibly and sustainably harness the resources we’re blessed to have beneath our own soil.

Click here to learn more about the conference.