The Polish Mining Congress – Kraków 2007

The Polish Mining Congress will take place in Kraków from 19th through 21st September 2007.The Congress will precede the World Mining Congress to be held between 7th and 11th September 2008.

The 21st World Mining Congress is an important event for the global mining community. It will take place 50 years after the historic first meeting of mining scientists and practitioners from many countries which took place in Warsaw in 1958.

The first Congress was initiated by Professor Bolesław Krupiński, a prominent figure of the Polish science and mining.

The intention of the organisers of the Polish Mining Congress and its motto is to present the changes the Polish mining industry went through at the turn of the century and the challenges it faces as it stands at the threshold of the 21st century. Exactly these challenges, or more precisely the consolidation of the mining community to face them, constitute one of the most important objectives of the Congress.
This pertains in particular to:

• The energy safety of Poland,
• Defining the role and place of the mining industry in the era where the ideas of sustainable development are to be followed,
• Implementation and utilisation of the state-of-the-art technical and IT solutions in mines,
• Undertaking wide-spread efforts to inform and educate on mineral resource management and extractive processes, of which mining is an important element.

Coping with the challenges of the 21st century and entering the path of science-based economy is seen by many persons as synonymous with departing from the economy based on coal. But these are two different challenges and we have to state quite clearly that in the next ten to twenty years the ideas of the science-based society will come into being thanks to coal-based energy.

Our civilisation is approaching the moment when the level of consumption of mineral resources, and energy resources in particular, will cause the exhaustion of available deposits with simultaneous decrease of possibilities to discover new ones.

The demand for energy grows constantly, which is the reason for fierce discussions on energy safety in many countries, including Poland.

We intend to devote one entire plenary session to the energy safety of Poland and the role of the traditional energy carriers now and in the future.

How to reconcile further growth of the fuel industry with environmental concerns? What does the idea of science-based economy mean for the mining industry? What challenges await the mining industry in the area of the information technology, being still only to a small extent present in mines? These are only some of the questions we will, hopefully with numerous other attendees, attempt to answer.

Antoni TAJDUŚ, Jerzy KICKI