Electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and other clean energy technologies are driving booming demand for metals and minerals – including copper, lithium, cobalt and nickel – which many countries now consider “critical” to their security. But will procuring those supplies harm the environment and human rights?
Across the world, from Africa and Asia to Latin America, a growing number of mining projects has been associated with nature destruction, pollution, labour abuses and conflict, while local communities often shoulder much of the cost and share little of the benefit.
As the scramble for minerals for the energy transition rises to the top of the political agenda, there are mounting calls for international cooperation to ensure production of these resources is sustainable and equitable, alongside a flurry of proposed initiatives for global standards and stronger governance.
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Colombia is drumming up support for a legally binding minerals agreement based on the model of global negotiations for a plastic treaty. An alliance of NGOs wants to get the issue onto the agenda of this year’s COP30 climate talks, and experts are calling for a new materials data hub.
The United Nations, which oversees the most advanced efforts to create a global framework for energy transition minerals, insists it remains the best-placed broker for thrashing out global norms, despite a funding crisis.
This month, the International Energy Agency (IEA) joined a chorus of voices calling for more cooperation on the issue. In its latest Critical Minerals Outlook report, it warned of growing risks of disruption to mineral supply chains as the market becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, with China controlling around 70% of the refining of 19 out of 20 strategic minerals analysed by the agency.
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Meanwhile, since returning to the White House, US President Donald Trump has taken a new approach to resource diplomacy, negotiating access to Ukraine’s mineral resources as a condition for American support and eyeing mineral-rich Greenland and Canada.
“It’s climate change, security, development and geopolitical elements intersecting – which I think is why there’s so much appetite and urgency around improving multilateralism to address this really complex issue,” Erica Westenberg, director of governance programmes at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, told Climate Home News.
Plan for an international minerals treaty
Colombia’s proposal for a global minerals treaty is motivated by the aim of rooting out extensive illegal gold mining, a source of environmental destruction and pollution that is threatening people’s health in the Amazon nation.
“[Existing] norms and standards are optional, and this isn’t good enough,” Mauricio Cabrera Leal, Colombia’s vice minister for environmental policy, told a conference at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris earlier this month.
“We need to have a mandatory agreement to assess the whole value chain with transparency and traceability at the international level,” he added.
Colombia plans to put forward a resolution for countries to begin negotiations on a binding minerals treaty at the UN Environment Assembly in December. If approved, countries would then need to decide on the scope of the agreement, Cabrera Leal told Climate Home – an approach that has proved highly contentious and so far unsuccessful in talks for a plastic treaty.
But the idea has received a “good response” from some African and European nations, he added. And others agree with the principle.
A high-level council of former ministers and leaders of international institutions convened by the Paris Peace Forum to reflect on mineral supply chain challenges has also called for an international agreement on resource management and the creation of a separate repository for mineral data.
Justin Vaïsse, director general of the Paris Peace Forum, told the OECD conference it was “now time to think seriously” about these proposals.
Observers in the mining sector caution that any agreement must build on hard-learned lessons and existing best practices, including the need to ensure that affected communities and Indigenous people are at the negotiating table.
An international materials agency?
The co-chairs of the International Resource Panel (IRP), a body of policy experts established by the UN Environment Programme, meanwhile are advocating for the creation of an international materials agency.
This data hub would cover all the materials needed to deliver on global climate and development goals, including critical minerals. It would help make supply chains more transparent and track their environmental implications.
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Janez Potočnik, the IRP’s co-chair, told Climate Home the proposed agency would “complement” the IEA’s growing work on the security of mineral supplies by considering the impacts of mineral production and consumption models with a mandate that could evolve over time to include international negotiations on materials.
Potočnik said the proposal is backed by the International Chamber of Commerce and the World Economic Forum – demonstrating the private sector’s interest in more transparent data.
UN push for better standards
Last year, UN boss António Guterres convened a panel of governments, international organisations and experts which defined seven principles to underpin the responsible, fair and sustainable extraction of energy transition minerals.
The UN is now expected to release a plan to implement those principles and appoint an advisory group to draft a global framework to make mineral supply chains more transparent, traceable and accountable.
Efforts to define responsible mining are not new. But there are currently around 200 voluntary mining standards and “a lot of them are not the best standards”, said Sascha Raabe, who heads the UN Industrial Development Organization’s (UNIDO) Global Alliance for Responsible and Green Minerals. It aims to bring together governments, the private sector, NGOs and communities to help countries develop sustainability policies that can add value to their resources.
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UNIDO’s alliance will also work alongside other UN agencies to define a set of concrete environmental, social and governance criteria – such as a living wage – for assessing existing voluntary mining standards, Raabe explained.
“It’s important that the UN set up these criteria to give direction to the private sector and consumers and create a global level playing field,” said Raabe, adding that “the UN is the best forum to bring these global goals together”.
One of the largest efforts to harmonise voluntary mining standards is the Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative, which is being developed by four mining industry groups covering 100 companies. But campaign groups have criticised the industry’s efforts to self-regulate as “weak” and at “risk of creating a race to the bottom”.
Instead, they back the The Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance’s standard, which is overseen by a collaborative process including industry, civil society, labour groups and community representatives.
Putting minerals on the COP30 agenda
Campaigners are also pushing for stronger links between the challenges of obtaining minerals for the clean energy transition and the UN’s climate and nature policy processes.
At UN biodiversity talks in Colombia last year, governments agreed to “avoid or, if not possible, minimise, the negative impacts of climate actions on biodiversity”, without singling out transition minerals.
Now a coalition of NGOs is urging the Brazilian COP30 presidency to put ways to tackle the environmental and social risks associated with these minerals on the agenda of the UN climate summit in Belém in November.
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Campaigners want governments at COP30 to recognise the risks posed by unmanaged extraction to global climate and biodiversity goals, endorse the work of the UN’s advisory group on responsible sourcing and designate “no-go” mining zones in climate-critical ecosystems and Indigenous territories.
“This is a once-in-a-generation chance for Brazil to lead on climate justice and ensure that the clean energy transition doesn’t come at the expense of frontline communities, the planet’s last intact forests, and other critical ecosystems that should be marked as no-go zones,” said Emily Iona Stewart, head of policy for Global Witness’s transition minerals campaign.
The Brazilian environment ministry and COP30 Presidency did not respond to Climate Home’s requests for comment by the time of publication.
