Period: 2024-2026

Project Description

Critical minerals are natural resources essential to various fields, especially the manufacturing of modern, green energy transition and military high technology applications, and have the potential to become scarce globally because of geological, national security, or technical factors. It is also worth noting that there is currently no uniform identification of critical and noncritical minerals. Minerals considered to be critical vary from country to country as a function of supply and demand and strategic considerations.

All ASEAN Member States (AMS) lie in the junction of three global metallogenic domains (Eastern Tethys, Pacific Rim, and the Indo-Australian), and therefore have huge potential for critical minerals mineralization and exploration, i.e., nickel (Ni), Tin (Sn), copper (Cu), Rare earth elements (REE), etc. However, the lack of expertise, experience, resources and technology in AMS hamper the understanding, assessment and effective management strategy of critical minerals, which is urgent to be solved.

The objective of this project is to expand knowledge in critical minerals, improve capacity in field exploration, and share/optimize the smart mineral exploration technology and a real-time data platform for the sustainable development of critical minerals to support the development of the critical mineral sector in AMS. 328 participants that cover government officials and young geoscientists of ASEAN Member States will be benefited by having a better understanding and expertise in the field of critical minerals and its management through training courses and workshops. Compilation and update of the geological and mineral occurrences maps in ASEAN Member States will support the initial efforts of ASEAN to meet the minimum information requirements for the pre-competitive and technical information

The project is in line with the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Blueprint 2025 and AMCAP-III Phase 2: 2021-2025's Programme Areas on Capacity Building in Minerals (CBM) and Minerals Information and Database (MID) and will enhance ASEAN’s dialogue/cooperation with Dialogue Partners, including Republic of Korea to build mineral governance capacity across AMS for sustainable minerals development in the region.

Introduction of Proponents/Implementing Agencies

• CCOP (Proponent and Implementing Agency)

• GAI (Co-Proponent)

• KIGAM (Implementing Agency)