Last month, Australia and the US signed a landmark agreement committing more than US$3 billion (£2.3 million) to securing critical minerals supply chains between the two countries. These new projects are set to supply 10 per cent of global gallium and 5 per cent of rare earths production. Moreover, they signal renewed industrialisation of Australia’s economy, centred around geological material extraction and processing.

Yet this historic opportunity is threatened by a dangerous irony. Since 2020, Australia has been systematically dismantling university programmes essential for building the geoscientific expertise needed to deliver on its promises to the US – not to mention meet our own net zero targets by 2050.

The evidence is stark. In eastern Australia, Macquarie University, the University of Newcastle and Wollongong University have dropped their geology majors entirely, and many other universities have seen significant staffing cuts in geoscience-adjacent fields. The Australian National University laid off 20 permanent staff from its Research School of Earth Sciences and closed its mechanical workshop, for instance. Queensland University of Technology is currently targeting three staff for redundancy in its School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

Nationally, the picture is equally grim. According to the Australian Geoscience Council’s 2021 , geoscience academic staff numbers fell 19 per cent between 2017 and 2021, also undermining related subjects such as geography and environmental science.

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These cuts accelerated after the federal government’s 2020 Job-Ready Graduates Package slashed funding for Earth and Environmental Sciences by 29 per cent – approximately A$10,000 per student annually. When universities were excluded from the Covid-era JobKeeper support, 17,300 jobs vanished across the sector, according to .

The timing of this decline could not be worse. Achieving net zero emissions by 2050 will require an unprecedented expansion of mining because minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare earth elements are of many clean energy technologies. Accordingly, the International Energy Agency projects that critical mineral demand will nearly triple by 2030. Meeting this demand will require approximately 80 new copper mines, 70 new lithium mines, 70 new nickel mines, and 30 new cobalt mines globally – all within this decade.

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Australia is uniquely positioned to capitalise on this opportunity. We produce roughly half of the world’s lithium and hold the largest reserves of numerous other critical minerals. We also have the greatest potential to upscale production of rare earth metals.

Government projections suggest that expanding critical minerals exports could create 115,000 new jobs and add up to A$140 billion to GDP by 2040. As resources minister Madeleine King often , “The road to net zero runs through Australia’s resources sector.”

But the increase in mining will create inevitable environmental and social complexities. We must avoid greenwashing, fanciful marketing and “smoke and mirrors”. We must tackle the challenge head on.

Bioethanol provides a cautionary case study that illustrates why expert geoscience capacity is so critical. Ethanol from corn was promoted as a climate solution, expected to reduce emissions by 20 per cent. Yet a published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that it actually increased emissions by at least 24 per cent compared with using petroleum alone.

Lack of expertise failed to factor in land use changes requiring vast fertiliser inputs, conversion of grasslands and forests to crop production, and generation of significant greenhouse gas emissions. This also dramatically increased the cost of corn for food, disproportionately disadvantaging the most vulnerable populations in the world.

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Avoiding similar geoscience policy failures demands exactly the kind of expertise Australia is losing: professionals who understand not just where minerals are but how to extract them responsibly, minimise environmental impacts, collaborate meaningfully with First Nations communities and develop circular economy approaches to moderate long-term environmental impacts.

The recently released report from the Australian Academy of Science sounds a clear alarm. The report identifies geoscience as one of eight science capabilities experiencing critical gaps. Academy president Chennupati Jagadish : “Our economy relies heavily on resources and critical minerals, yet Australia isn’t training enough geoscientists.”

The report’s authors emphasise that “scientific capability is not something you can simply conjure up on a whim.” Developing geoscience expertise requires a “reservoir of talent” built over decades. Yet that reservoir is draining fast. Less than 10 per cent of Australia’s geoscientists are in the first decade of their careers, while up to one-third face retirement within the next 10 years.

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Geologists are now on the priority skilled migration list, and Jobs and Skills Australia is reporting an acute national skills shortage. Yet Australian universities continue to cut geoscience programmes, and nor is importing expertise easy to do given that universities everywhere else – except China – have been doing the same.

We face a stark choice. We can allow the continued erosion of geoscience education and watch our critical minerals opportunity pass to countries that maintained their capability. Or we can recognise that sovereign scientific capacity is a strategic asset requiring sustained investment, and act now.

This means immediately reversing the continual decline in federal funding for science, providing dedicated support for geoscience programmes and ensuring universities can maintain the essential field-based training and laboratory infrastructure that makes these programmes costly. It means partnerships between universities, industry and government to create clear pathways for graduates. And it means ensuring that First Nations peoples, whose lands contain many of these minerals, have access to geoscience education and career opportunities.

The US-Australia minerals agreement offers Australia a generational economic opportunity worth potentially hundreds of billions of dollars. But if we allow the reservoir of geoscientists to dry up, all that money and opportunity will remain locked up beneath the country’s parched red earth.

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is a Robinson Fellow in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney. He would like to acknowledge the contributions of , , , , , , Ann El Khoury, , Rohini Anant, , , , , and .