Global demand for critical minerals has sharpened political interest in how they are extracted and by whom. Licensing terms, local content requirements and resource nationalism tend to move with government priorities and commodity cycles, not with a project's construction timeline, and terms agreed at the start of a project are rarely guaranteed to hold at the end of it.
Mining and critical minerals
Community relations carry similar weight. A mine's social licence to operate can shift with a change in local leadership as readily as with a change in national government.
How we approach it
We track how licensing terms and resource policy are likely to evolve over a project's life, alongside the local leadership and community dynamics that shape social licence. This combines our political economy analysis and stakeholder engagement services, applied to the specific pressures mining and critical minerals projects face.
What clients gain
A view of licensing and community risk that accounts for how resource policy actually shifts in practice, beyond what current terms suggest.
The clients we see most often
Investors assessing licensing and political risk before committing capital. Corporates managing community relations and local content obligations. Development finance institutions structuring investment around the realistic trajectory of resource policy.