The ex­trac­tive sec­tor–the min­ing, quar­ry­ing, dredg­ing, oil and gas ex­trac­tion in­dus­tries–plays an im­por­tant role in the glob­al eco­nom­ic land­scape, con­tribut­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the GDP of its host coun­tries. These in­dus­tries are ca­pa­ble of con­tribut­ing to the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of com­mu­ni­ties and to the wider econ­o­my when in­ter­ven­tions are im­ple­ment­ed, tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the rights of the peo­ple most af­fect­ed.

With­in this con­text, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Unit (TEDU) is stag­ing a con­fer­ence en­ti­tled Achiev­ing Sus­tain­abil­i­ty in Re­gions with Ex­trac­tive In­dus­try, on June 14 from 9am.

The con­fer­ence will in­form stake­hold­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty and in the wider econ­o­my of the ben­e­fits of a stake­hold­er ap­proach to de­vel­op­ment plan­ning.It will bring to­geth­er lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts in the field of sus­tain­abil­i­ty in re­gions with ex­trac­tive in­dus­tries, to present the 'best prac­tices' as­so­ci­at­ed with the de­vel­op­ment chal­lenges pe­cu­liar to these re­gions, and to en­hance over­all gov­er­nance process­es for re­gions with ex­trac­tive in­dus­tries.

Key speak­er is Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment.