RCS continues to be invited as expert speakers and participants at conferences in our four key sectors: extractive industries, conflict minerals, forestry and land investment. RCS Senior Consultant Usman Ali will speak about the "Role of the Civil Society Organizations in LSM-SSM relations" at the National Assembly of Pakistan on March 26th. RCS Director and Head of Standards Compliance, Harrison Mitchell, will be a panelist at the high-profile expert meeting at Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich on the “Effectiveness of Global Standards and Certification Schemes in Sustainability Governance” on March 21-23 in Munich, Germany. RCS Consultant, Dan Paget is speaking at the Oxford African Studies Seminars on “When Does Political Competition Become Less Ethnic and Clientalistic” on the 26 of January at the Nissan Lecture Theatre at Oxford University, UK. Our participation comes on the back of several speaking opportunities in Q4/2011, where RCS Senior Consultant Nick Bates chaired the Gold Working Group of the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Conflict Affected and High Risk Areas in November 2011 in Paris. RCS Director and Head of Business Sustainability, Nicholas Garrett, spoke about the linkages between “conflict minerals and sustainable business” at UBS’s annual Sustainable and Responsible Investment (SRI) conference on October 5, 2011 in London, UK. Nicholas Garrett also spoke about “business and NGO partnership opportunities and challenges” as well as the “value of political economy analysis as a risk mitigation tool for businesses” at the SR Mining Seminar on Corporate Social Responsibility in September in Santiago, Chile.