15 October 2026 - Sharing the Benefits, ‘The Changing Political Economy of Benefit Sharing’

Thursday 15 October 2026, 6pm AEDT | 9am SAST | 3pm AWST.

In the first of 3 online dialogues about the benefits and burdens of the green and digital transitions, our speakers will examine how the meaning and practice of benefit sharing are changing in the context of renewed global demand for critical minerals.

The discussion will ask what is currently understood as a "benefit", who determines how benefits are distributed, and whether emerging arrangements are capable of producing meaningful redistribution rather than simply compensating communities for the impacts of extraction. The discussion will include: Chris Gevers (University of Witwatersrand), Mining Affected Communities United in Action (South Africa) and Charles Roche (Mineral Policy Institute, Australia).

This conversation forms part of the larger project Sharing the Benefits: Critical Minerals, Data Centres, Local Communities that brings together researchers, public officials, civil society organisations and communities to explore how the benefits and burdens of the green and digital transitions can be shared more fairly. Through an online international dialogue series and an in-person local government workshop in Melbourne, the project creates a space to compare experiences, identify emerging practices and build a longer-term research and policy network. Sharing the Benefits is a collaboration between Luis Eslava (La Trobe University), Caitlin Murphy (RMIT) and André Dao (University of Melbourne), and is supported by the Laureate Program on Global Corporations and International Law at the Melbourne Law School and BHRIGHT at RMIT.

If you would like to attend the online dialogues, please email LP-GCIL@unimelb.edu.au.

Image- Silicone Landscapes, Sinem Görücü, https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/