Fabrice Colin is married and has three children, Hanae, Leif and Mathis. He comes from a family of miners from the north and east of France and has been inspired by the life of miners and their values of solidarity for his professional and personal career. He is a Knight of the Legion of Honor since 2010.
Fabrice is a research director at the Centre de Recherche et d'Enseignement de Géosciences de l'Environnement (CEREGE-IRD). D. in Geochemistry from the University of Paris VI-VII in 1984, he joined the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD) to conduct research in West Africa on gold-bearing subtropical laterites.
Researcher at the University of California at Berkeley between 1989 and 1992, he obtained his habilitation to lead research at the University of Aix-Marseille in 1992, and then continued his research by coordinating numerous international research programs from 1992 to 2001 in countries of the Mediterranean and tropical zone in South America, West Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific: his research focuses on soil-biosphere-hydrosphere interfaces, particularly in relation to mining environments. In 2002, he and his research team moved to New Caledonia, a French community in the Pacific, where he was assigned by the French government ministers in charge of research and overseas territories to initiate a research center on mining and the environment, which was created in 2007 (CNRT nickel and its environment). Director of the IRD research center in Noumea, and IRD representative in the Pacific between 2004 and 2010, he also initiated in 2008 the mining environment observatory (l'Œil) in New Caledonia. He then became Research and Innovation Advisor to the Government of New Caledonia from 2010 to 2012, during which time he coordinated the creation of the New Caledonian Technopole, dedicated to innovative technology transfer from public and private research, particularly around the development of substances of economic interest from terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
From 2012 to date, his activity aims to promote international programs of research / development and innovation, public-private partnerships and international cooperation, in the field of vulnerability and development of unsustainable resources (and sustainable), especially regarding mining activities, associated ecosystems for a responsible mining activity, part of a sustainable and equitable circular economy.
He is the author, in collaboration with his partners in southern countries, of about a hundred international publications, several books and participations in books, and numerous popularization articles.
From 2017 to 2021, he was Vice President of the Scientific Council of IRD.
He created and coordinated the AMEDEE platform (mining, environment, development, economy and ethics), created in 2017, a south-south-north network bringing together research projects from about twenty countries in the subtropical and Mediterranean zone. He is also co-founder in 2020 of the international joint laboratory AMIR (responsible mining in Morocco: issues, challenges, and solutions) and is currently a scientific referent of the PARTNER project (AFD / IRD) linking African centers of excellence in the theme "mines, societies and mining environment" promoted by the World Bank.
Thus, the AMEDEE network is in the process of evolving, integrating the African centers of excellence and their partners through the AMR2D network (responsible mining and sustainable development). AMEDEE has thus become AMEDEE-AMR2D. The objective is to develop links between the actors of the mining arena in a South-South and South-North dimension in order to make mining projects evolving towards inclusive projects for the development of more cohesive, more egalitarian societies, through the shared development of research and training capacity building.
