INTRAW had the honour to be invited to the OECD Government Foresight Community Annual Meeting on 6-7 October 2025 in Paris and to present its 2050 Future Mining Scenarios. This meeting brought together more than 130 delegates from government foresight departments, research organisations, foresight consultancies, NGOs, trade organisations, financial institutions, the UN, the European Commission and staff from a variety of OECD departments.
This year’s meeting focused on the first day on how AI will influence the foresight practice. On the morning of the second day, INTRAW’s president, Eberhard Falck, gave an introductory speech on the Scenarios, followed by a Focus Group style session in which feedback and thoughts on the Scenarios were solicited from the participants. The session was based on the 2050 Future Mining Scenarios factbook, which had been distributed to the participants before the meeting.
Overall, the participants found the Scenario very thought-provoking and they were praised as providing a valuable benchmark for future government foresight work. The discussions also brought mineral raw materials as a basis for our socio-economic development into the picture for many participants. Appropriately, that morning session was titled ‘Rematerialisation of the Global Economy: Implications for the Futures of Economic Security’. It raised the awareness of many (government) foresight practitioners, that (critical) mineral resources and indeed processing and reefing capacities are outside their respective jurisdiction, which exposes many OECD countries to serious supply security risks.
The afternoon of the second day was dedicated to ‘Gold and geo-financial futures’ and how the burgeoning gold mining and market may also have repercussions for the mining and supply with (critical) mineral raw materials.