The year 2020 has, for many people, seemed apocalyptic: the unprecedented fires of the summer, damaging storms, locust plagues, the global pandemic and rising geopolitical tensions. The Australian resources sector offers hope for combating war, pestilence, famine and death by providing the raw materials, including critical minerals, for making modern technologies and developing new ones. We use minerals for renewable energy, defence capability, medical diagnostics and treatment, transport, communications, entertainment and agriculture. The Australian Government has assessed the nation's minerals inventory since 1975, recognising that understanding our identified resource potential is the first step to realising the responsible production of the minerals needed for longer, healthier and wealthier human life across the world. In 2020 and beyond, Australia's minerals sector has an opportunity to spearhead the Covid-19 recovery and support the technologies needed for a cleaner, environmentally robust and prosperous planet - stopping the four horsemen in their tracks.

<div>This data accompanies the Australian Operating Mines Map 2021 (twenty-second edition) March 2022. The Australian Operating Mines Map 2021 may be downloaded from the Geoscience Australia website at: https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/146335</div>