futures – La Palma Research Centre

The La Palma Research Centre team joined a community of futures academics and researchers in Turku, Finland, for the Futures Conference 2023, entitled “Empowering Futures – Long-term Governance, Democracy and Futures Research”. This edition was dedicated to discussions on the use of foresight and futures thinking to drive future aspects of our world, especially on ESG topics – Environmental, Social and Governance.

LPRC submitted an abstract (see page 13) based on the foresight and strategic work done for the ROBOMINERS project and it was granted a presentation slot on the 14th June 2023 for the session “Foresight and Futures Research for Sustainable Transitions”, where there were around 20 people attending. The title of the LPRC presentation was “Application of Foresight Tools in Research of a Low-Impact Mining Ecosystem” and intended to show to the session participants the work done towards the creation and development of a future strategic plan for further development of the ROBOMINERS technology for the years 2030 and 2050, based on a series of foresight methodologies: Horizon Scanning, Focus Groups, Delphi Survey, Visioning, Preparation for Pilots and Roadmapping. The presentation was well received and got a few questions regarding the methodology and the results of these exercises.

For the remaining of the conference, the LPRC team attended other sessions and presentations to learn more about the implementation of foresight methodologies and engaged in discussions and networking with the other participants.